Disquiet Junto Project 0574: Audio Journal 2022

[disquiet]

These instructions popped up at disquiet.com/0574 (powers of automation willing) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on Thursday, December 29th. (I was asleep at the time.) The email containing those instructions went out via tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto later in the morning (after I woke up), and then I posted them here, on the Junto Slack, and my Mastodon account, and Instagram, etc. (I’m taking a Twitter break at the moment.) And if you’re on Mastodon, please use the #DisquietJunto tag. Much appreciated.

Disquiet Junto Project 0574: Audio Journal 2022
The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.

As has become the tradition at the end of each calendar year, this week’s Junto project is a sound journal: a selective audio history of your past 12 months.

Step 1: You will select a different audio element to represent each of the past 12 months of 2022 — or you might opt for even more elements, choosing a segment for each week, or each day, for example. These audio elements will most likely be of music that you have yourself composed and recorded, but they might also consist of phone messages, field recordings, or other source material. These items should be somehow personal in nature, suitable to the autobiographical intention of the project; they should be of your own making, your own devising, and not drawn from third-party sources.

Step 2: You will then select one segment from each of these (most likely) dozen audio elements. If you’re doing a dozen items, one for each month, then five-second segments are recommended, for a total of one minute. Ultimately, though, the length of the segments and of the overall finished track are up to you.

Step 3: Then you will stitch these segments together, equally weighted, in chronological order to form one single track. There should be no overlap or gap between segments; they should simply proceed from one to the next.

Step 4: In the notes field accompanying the track, identify each of the audio segments.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0574” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0574” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0574-audio-journal-2022/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. Did your year fly by, or was it a slog?

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 574th weekly Disquiet Junto project – Audio Journal 2022 (The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments) – at: https://disquiet.com/0574/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0574-audio-journal-2022/

[bassling]

MMXXII [disquiet0574]

You can see there are five one-second snippets from each month this year.

I’ve been prompted by the Junto to compile these videos since 2015 and it’s an engaging way to look over one’s output.

This year I’m surprised to see how much synthesisers were used and that led to a few performances.

The video contains a second from a Junto project with RPLKTR and ends with a second from a video recorded by Andrew Glassop for Orana Arts.

Along the way there are also collaborations with my partner Jo and son Oscar, as well as various art-based projects like the Rescue of Riverina Birds exhibition and development an installation that will be at Burning Seed.

Thanks to the Disquiet community for inspiration and encouragement.

[RabMusicLab]

This is my second year in this wonderful community - and thus I already had thought about what tracks are significant for me this year. Only two tracks were not part of a Disquiet Junto projects.
The two first (and the last) months are represented by collaboration projects - I love the result one can get if creativity is combined. There are tracks that helped me to leave my comfort zone and venture out in new territories (March). New Disquiet inspirations resulting in beloved tracks (April and May).
There is the discovery of repetition - initially inspired by a @AlvaroDeCampos contribution (June). The great motivation of being part of the Musikfestival Bern, again with wonderful inspirations outside of my comfort zone (July and August). (Re-) discovering the piano as lead-instrument, backed by field-recordings or other non-musical backgrounds (September and October). Returning to algorithmic creation from time to time (November) and again thoroughly enjoying a collaboration (December).
Track-links can be found on SoundCloud.

Technical details: I cut out 12 s snippets of the tracks and did a 2 s cross-fade (ignoring the proposal by Marc to paste the audio without overlap). I wanted to have a continuity in the music. For the first snippet I added a 1 s fade-in, and for the last a 1 s reverb and fade-out.

Wishing you a Happy New Year 2023
Klaus

[morgulbee]

Looking Back 2022 - disquiet0574

Looking back at the music I created in 2022, I collected 5-second snippets of 12 of my recordings into a short one-minute overview video. I recorded some Disquiet Junto prompts and some music performance videos, including my first live in-person synth performance at Freq Boutique in Denver.

I made all my music during the first five months of the year. In May I started packing up my music gear, and everything else, as I prepared to sell my house and move to a new place. After several delays and tons of stress, the move finally happened in October. I’m mostly unpacked now and have a nice new space for creating. My new year’s resolution is to pick up where I left off in May and start recording music again.

Here are the segments in chronological order:

1. Terror in Outer Space, video created for the Colorado Modular Synth Society (CMSS) 3 Module Challenge
2. A Minor Drone, audio for Disquiet Junto 0525
3. Duo Magic, audio for Disquiet Junto 0526 (collaboration with Creatures_Once)
4. Non Positive, audio for Disquiet Junto 0527 (collaboration with SinnySounds and gis_sweden)
5. 23 and Thee, audio sketch for an incomplete Junto project
6. Signs of Sines, audio for Disquiet Junto 0530
7. Glory to Ukraine, video created for the CMSS Drones for Peace project
8. Jazz Pads, audio sketch playing with a new VST
9. Phrygian Jam, video created for the CMSS Key Challenge
10. Blackbird Spring, video with audio from my live performance at Freq Boutique in Denver, Colorado
11. Gravity Well, video created for the CMSS May Skies compilation of space music
12. Anomaly, video created for International Drone Day 2022, included in the Rocky Mountain Synth Society Drone Day compilation

[xiiixxi]

The only music I’ve produced this year are the 21 pieces I’ve submitted to the Disquiet Junto Challenges since June (Disquiet Junto Project 0549).

I have used all of them in this collage, 21 segments of equal length, in chronological order, with a short fade in, and out, to help with the listening process.

Wishing everyone a Happy and Successful Year in 2023

[beto]

My music production tends to be heterogeneously distributed throughout the year, so I don’t have segments for all the months. For this project I compiled my 12 favorite songs of 2022, cut 5 seconds from each, and stitched them in chronological order for a 1 minute collage.

(My initial reaction was that 5 seconds was too short, but I noticed it actually helps blending the segments because you don’t have enough time to “latch” into a song. Really interesting!)

The songs are:

1. Godspeed, giant ball of flame, my first song of the year, for FAWM. I always start FAWM with a song that celebrates the sun.
2. How does it feel? (FAWM), an angry punk song aimed at billionaires.
3. Hey, sister (FAWM), a “letter” I wrote to my sister, who I then hadn’t seen for 3 years.
4. Elephant Cemetery (FAWM).
5. The bookworm (FAWM), a remote video collaboration.
6. I’m not a good person (FAWM), an experiment in making a song as a fake band.
7. The making of Aurora, my first song for the 50/90 challenge (50 songs in 90 days), written on the OP-Z.
8. gaROLg== (50/90), also on the OP-Z.
9. Joy (50/90), one of my favorite OP-Z songs.
10. Nevada City, from my cassette release Pisces, originally written in 2016 but remixed and remastered for a release in November 2022.
11. Rasputin (Pisces), written the day Rasputin Music closed in SF.
12. Bay Trail (Pisces), inspired by the seagulls in the SF Bay trail, when I used to commute by bike.

[OhWell]

I also wasn’t making tracks until I began contributing to Disquiet Junto in August. I wasn’t recording myself either.

During the first half of the year my main musical activities involved playing the flute every day, jamming with friends on various instruments about once a month, and experimenting with digital modular without any particular goal in mind. The first half of my diary is 2 recent recordings (solo flute then a clip from a jam), followed by a recording of a VCV patch I made mid summer that feel representative of what I was doing for the first half of the year. Variations on that VCV patch are on most of my disquiet tracks too.

The second half of the diary is exerpts from 5 tracks I made starting in August, one from each month. 4 of them were Disquiet contributions. I end with my Disquiet 573 track (featuring @33per’s rhythm track) which is probably my favorite thing I made this year.

Sources list:

1. Solo flute (recorded for disquiet 563, but representative of the first half of the year)
2. Jam with friends (recorded in the fall, but representative of first half of the year)
3. VCV chaotic patch experiment (summer)
4. August: Disquiet 555 5 Sines (I’ve revisited variants of this patch a ton for disquiet)
5. September: Disquiet 560 Wikipedia logo, Blippoos of All Knowledge
6. October: Disquiet 563 Routine Flute Chase
7. November: Conference travel song: Crumbs and Clouds
8. December: Disquiet 573 Swings vs Winter w. 33per

I’m really grateful for the disquiet community. I hadn’t been making actual tracks since the mid 2000’s. The combination of the community with the creative prompts and the time constraint of working on these over a single weekend was exactly what I needed to jump back into making music that has beginnings, middle, and ends, and that I’m excited to listen back to and to share. Thank you!

[HippiesWearMuzzles]

Here is my submission for the last assignment of the year. I used excerpts averaging 10 seconds from each month of 2022 and spliced them consecutively. The source material includes experiments and sketches as well as more fleshed out tracks and some of the instruments used include modular synth, Lyra-8 and Octatrack.

Overall, sorting through all of my recordings from the year was an interesting exercise and I found a number of things I had completely forgotten about. It’s good to take a step back from time to time.

[sunhammer]

I always love the year-end Disquiet Junto project, and make it a point to return to it each year. This year’s contribution is quite similar to last year’s.

A little background:
This year I worked on many sound design projects (including my first series and my first major film), landed my work in several trailers, and contributed a large number of pieces to music and sound design libraries. In addition, I found a couple of new collaborators whose work and ideas helped to strengthen and diversify my own music, and led to a number of completed tracks. This selection of 24 brief snippets is representative of all this, a combination of completed tracks, unfinished pieces from my sketchbook, and miscellaneous sound design.

Tracklist:
Jan: Short Sighted / Succession Type Beat
Feb: Inventio / Musings / Hatch
Mar: Ectoplex
Apr: Stargazing / 923 / Parc Palais
May: Moving Horizon / 10BPM Techno
Jun: Poisonous Whisper
Jul: Marina Herlop - Miu (Remix) / Impassionista / Exercise 5
Aug: How to Make a Beat / The Foghorn
Sep: From Somewhere Else / Death Grips - Trash (Remix)
Oct: 101922_SawScreech
Nov: Above the Clouds
Dec: Without a Whisper / S.O.T. / Press to Initiate

[alanholding]

Hello. Hope everyone’s good. Here’s my contribution. Lost cassette from 2022.

I use Audio Hijack from Rogue Amoeba to capture all sorts of doodles and things, so I went back through the recordings from January to December, picking the first thing from each month which made me smile or brought back a memory, therefore probably skipping better things from the queue.

They being:

1. January: An extract of a minute long recording of me swirling an ice cube around a glass, which ended up being the source of samples for my contribution to Disquiet Junto 0523: Chill Communication.
2. February: An extract of a riff played on a synthetic flute sound where I was messing with odd note divisions. Sounds a bit Tudoresque. Done in Reaktor 6.
3. March: Just a beat. I like playing with just the drum machine now and then as it brings on the bopping and the dancing.
4. April: An apologetic car horn made in VCV Rack which formed my contribution to Disquiet Junto 0537: Penitent Honk. For some reason this has the most plays on my Soundcloud account. (!)
5. May: A riff / sound made by modulating the chords model in Plaits. It opened my eyes a bit to what I could do with my modular a bit more. But I mainly like it as it sounds a bit like an opening to a film from my youth.
6. June: A little guitaresque riff played in Rings. I was trying to push myself to get more confident improvising with different note “shapes” this year and I like the little run of the three chords in this clip a lot.
7. July: Just a stupid modular noise but made me laugh.
8. August: An extract from my “camelamabagabber” contribution to Disquiet Junto Project 0556: Gabber Ambient. I just couldn’t get the image of camels gabber dancing out of my head.
9. September: I was lucky enough to get a Grayscale Supercell in September so I spent a lot of time with it. This is an extract of just one of the many doodles I recorded whilst getting to know it.
10. October: A fake fretless bass done in Rings. I just like the way it sounds.
11. November: This is a Marbles (playing the “trumpet”) with a Grayscale Permutation (on the “drums”) making something which brings to my mind the image of a cartoon mouse posse on the charge.
12. December: This year has seen a lot of changes at home for me which has meant not being able to spend much time on actual “developed” pieces of music. It’s just been mostly doodling. But I’ve got the bug with one I’m currently working on (and it’s in a weird time signature which is nice) and this is the start of it. Nothing special but means a lot to me.

I edited and spliced the clips using Amadeus Pro and probably went a bit overboard on the effects to glue them together, but what the hey.

Thanks!

[El90]

What a fun prompt- this is my first year participating in the Junto so I didn’t see it coming!

These are all snippets from things I made this year:

1. Kpanlogo- based on a Ghanaian dance rhythm made up of a number of beautifully interlocking parts. Features percussion, electronic wind instrument and baritone sax. I wrote it for my first ever live electronic performance.
2. Good Dream- features alto saxophone and Cwejman S1 mk2. Another one written for my first performance.
3. Glide- written as a demo during my first weekend playing with Oberheim OBX8.
4. Cocoquantus song- audio taken from an experiment with a Ciat-Lonbarde Cocoquantus. Sadly I don’t own this wonderful instrument but Patch Point Berlin generously allowed me to play for it the afternoon while I was visiting.
5. Disquiet 0566 (Outdoor Furniture Music)- multitracked clarinets, melodic minor harmony.
6. Remix contest entry – this is one of my first properly beat-based songs, I had fun programming the quintuplet groove in this clip.
7. ‘Cwejman nice chords and modulation’- this is from my dropbox folder of snippets that haven’t yet been used. I made it using a small modular setup based around Cwejman QMMF4.
8. Bembe and Abakua: opening section of a song I wrote based on two Afro-Cuban rhythms. This extract only has the Bembe, if you want to hear how the Abakua sounds as a counter-melody you’ll have to check out the full song on soundcloud!
9. ‘Click song’- this is another file from my dropbox folder of unused snippets. I made it while experimenting with the Strymon Magneto tape delay module.
10. Beat 1- another of the songs I wrote for my first live electronic performance.
11. Disquiet 0565 (Musical Folly)- features my 100-year old slide saxophone. I posted a picture of this rather unusual instrument in the original Junto thread, and I’ve included again at the bottom of this post as some people found it interesting to see last time.
12. ‘Nice bassline’- admittedly scraping the barrel here, this another one from my dropbox folder of unused snippets. Who knows, maybe something to build on in the new year…

P.s. as promised here is a photo of the model of slide sax I have (as used on no.11):

[SinnySounds]

January: Fleece Fortitude (disquiet0525)
February: Shifting 23 (disquiet0529)
March: Windy House (disquiet0531)
April: Cooking Up a Storm (disquiet0536)
May: Rototom Rampage (disquiet0543)
June: Warning Code [Secret Word] (disquiet0546)
July: Illuminated Driveway (disquiet0550)
August: Gabbling Blubber (disquiet0556)
September: Tea and Coffee (disquiet0557)
October: The Town Brain (disquiet0561)
November: A Thankful Feast (disquiet0569)
December: We’re Going to the Fair (disquiet0572)

[fakeg3nius]

Wow, what a year. Thank you, everyone, for this weekly dose of inspiration and communication. And, especially, @disquiet for organizing !

When I was creating this retrospective the concept I had in mind was taking every track I made over the year, cutting it off at 1 min or extending it to 1 min by repeating it, then randomizing each one of its volumes with an LFO. Felt less musical to execute and it certainly has become somewhat cacaphonous in its result, but I went with it, even tweaked volumes and applied some light EQ on the end result.

Best wishes for the new year, and hope to see you again in 2023.

[ray_cobley]

[markrushton]

Snippets of 12 tracks I released in 2022 under my name and various pseudonyms. I regularly work with processed lap steel, ambient & electronics, cut-up technique, and field recordings. More about me at https://www.markrushton.com

I made a Spotify playlist of all the full tracks: Spotify

[Aaron_Taylor-Waldman]

What a fun project to collect and assemble a dozen snippets of music projects from the past year. Quite a challenge in some ways, and rewarding to listen back with this particular lens.

Enjoying listening to everyone’s collections, and looking forward to many more sounds in 2023.

[derangement]

Glad that this year I started recording more to WAV, and writing down more notes.

Intentionally picked stuff that (as far as I remember) didn’t make it to specific disquiet junto submissions, really aiming to piece together snapshots of the role music has played in my day to day life without particular purpose

descriptions taken verbatim from notes accompanying the recordings:

17/01 “skiff long evening jam dub influenced”
03/02 “skiff practice - more controls added to this week s patch”
03/03 [no note]
29/03 “record long take of this week patch - no happy with voicing hard to click through plaits voiced need to focus on one particular with intent”
08/05 “skiff table patch marbles t orange mode (recorded on Tascam)”
12/06 “main rack jam continued - upload snapshot to soundcloud”
28/07 “palette jam - morphing chords into beads + kick recorded on tascam”
25/08 “main rack second krell patch”
14/09 “palette jam seq switched filter outs recorded on Tascam”
25/10 “skiff quick patch frozen beads int nice drone at the end”
15/11 “main rack quick patch break rings into dip w tapped noise recorded on Tascam”
17/12 skiff jam beads as source w sample freeze feedback w rings recorded on Tascam"

[leonclowes]

I’m grateful for having the Disquiet Junto and Naviar Records prompts each week, which I started responding to in the first half of this year. They’ve helped me re-engage with music making after 25 years of not creating anything. While my artistic practice now is transdisciplinary, it was music I studied at university in the late 80s, and of all artforms, sound and music will always be my first love (as the song goes).

I was going to do an end-of-year update on my website (www.leonclowes.com) anyway, and so was very happy to see this week’s Disquiet Junto project.

2022 has been quite the year for me:

00:00 January, I made a film with the Grove Park Library community for Day One of Lewisham being The Mayor’s Borough of Culture
00:05 February, Britten Pears Arts gave me, Andrea Edwards, Kelly O’Brien and Gerry McNee the Jerwood Kiln Space in Snape and we created the ‘SECRETS:The Last Five Days of Sandra’ performance installation
00:10 March, with Emma Bettine Hewitt, at SET Lewisham Gallery we put on a joint exhibition: ‘Recovery: Shadows and Light’
00:15 April, having completed EBC’s Night School, and having been awarded a scholarship to start a 3-year practice research PhD at London College of Music (University of West London), I created an animation ‘Secrets keep us sick’ in response to finally being given full access to my adoption papers (at the age of 52)
00:20 May, with the gentle and kind mentoring of Jan Pulsford via the Help Musicians UK Co-Pilot scheme, I started to write new music again
00:25 June, I completed my Nan Kids project as part of Wandsworth Arts Fringe and through this, and started responding to the Disquiet Junto weekly prompts
00:30 July, I started composing music in response to the Naviar Records weekly haiku prompts
00:35 August, QUEEF Experimental took my queer trauma comedy film ‘SHAMES: Looking Never Hurt’ to Supernormal festival
00:40 September, I began at Open School East as an Associate Artist and played my first music gig in about 25 years at Woodbridge Ambient Festival
00:45 October, I performed the story about my mother telling me who my father was on her deathbed at Emergency 22 in Contact Theatre and Frieze Art Fair
00:50 November, my lo-fi film ‘SHAMES: Looking Never Hurt’ had it’s London premiere at the Exploding Cinema
00:55 December, I played Cafe Oto at the Naviar Haiku Fest and was given a Space and Time residency at Crate Space Margate via Margate Pride.

[disquiet]

The playlist is now rolling:

[he_nu_ri]

2022 was the year that I finally got back into playing and creating music, just for fun, after a 20+ year lull. It’s been an incredible learning experience. The segments below are listed in loose chronological order.

Thank you to this incredible community for information, guidance and inspiration the past several months. Wishing everyone a happy and musical 2023.

1. Barlow Knife (interpretation) – Along with electronic music, I also like old-time. I’ve also been learning clawhammer banjo for the past few years and consider myself a beginner. Perhaps someday, I’ll play better and merge the two genres.

2. Little Bug Watching the Clouds Go By – I hastily threw together an album of electronic music, Nine Trails Out, during the first few months of 2022. I didn’t know what I was doing, and to a certain extent, still don’t. I had a good time creating it though. This, and the following two excerpts, are from that album.

3. Going to Woot’s Place

4. Drifting Milkweed

5. Peace Message – Created to support an online initiative to oppose the invasion of Ukraine and to promote peace.

6. Dusk to Evening – I occasionally post sketches on Instagram and YouTube. This was one of the first pieces I created after acquiring a Norns Shield.

7. Afternoon Rain – I mostly use Ableton Live to create music, but also use an iPad and hardware. This was done with an iPad using Zynthesizr and Zoa in AUM.

8. Shy Fronds Waving – Created for an album that may, or may not, get released sometime next year.

9. Disquiet Junto 0557: Four Fields of View – This was one of my first submissions to Disquiet Junto back in August. Thank you @disquiet for putting together these assignments and letting us participate. I’ve learned an incredible amount the past few months.

10. Coming and Going – From an Instagram post. Created using Max for live devices in Ableton Live.

11. Rhythmorphic Dream Sketch – Instagram post, Played around with Rhythmorphic , a cool Max for Live device by Dillon Bastan.

12. Captured By Sly – Video was also posted online. This was done in July but wanted to add this last to my list, since it’s probably my favorite track of this year. Used an iPad into a Hologram Microcosm, then recorded it to cassette tape. I hope to experiment more with tape in 2023.