Disquiet Junto Project 0579: Memory Serves

Disquiet Junto
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These instructions popped up at disquiet.com/0579 (thanks, powers of automation) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on Thursday, February 2, 2023. (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.

One note from the newsletter: I’d like this Disquiet Junto newsletter to be of more use than just for sending out the instructions each week. To begin with, I’d like to begin by mentioning here any recent music releases (albums, EPs, singles, etc.) that community participants put out that include or connect in some meaningful way with Junto projects. To start off: if you’ve released such a thing since the start of January this year, let me know. I’ll mention it here, and likely on Disquiet.com as well. And if you do so in the future, please let me know, as well.

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Disquiet Junto Project 0579: Memory Serves
The Assignment: Rerecord a piece of music.

Step 1: The goal of this project is to simply perform and record again something you’ve performed and recorded previously. Think about something you’d like to revisit.

Step 2: Now rerecord the piece of music you decided upon in Step 1.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0579” (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 “disquiet0579” (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-0579-memory-serves/

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.

Deadline: Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, February 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, February 2, 2023.

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 579th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Memory Serves (The Assignment: Rerecord a piece of music), at: Disquiet Junto Project 0579: Memory Serves – Disquiet

More on the Disquiet Junto at: Disquiet Junto F.A.Q. – Disquiet

Subscribe to project announcements here: Disquiet Junto by Marc Weidenbaum (Disquiet.com)

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0579-memory-serves/

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This is a rerecording of the track ‘Hopped’ that I recorded last week.

That piece was the second of three takes, so I went back and exported the third take to share here.

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And the project instructions are now live

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Hi gang, here is a fresh re-recording of my piece Hysteresis (Hysteresis | Dave Seidel), made using Csound (my Implication Organ instrument) as the sound source instead of the Wingie2. This is a single take of a performance I did today in my studio. I am planning on adding this to the Bandcamp release as an additional track, but I will definitely keep it on SoundCloud as well.

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I wrote this last summer when I learned about my father’s dementia. I finally recorded the vocal tracks in January this year after I came back from Japan and saw my father for the first time since 2019. I’m not a singer so please be gentle on my singing!

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My first participation in over a year I think. I was a regular participant in the Junto for several years around 2016-2019 but have become way to busy to sit down and create something most of the time. I read the emails every week and sometimes think of an idea and then realise that 1 or 2 weeks has passed and that challenge is already gone!
This week, because of one of my children being poorly, I’m stuck at home looking after her and had time today to make this…

Here is a track I originally made in Summer 2020 with North American writer Francisco Cantú - which discusses his experience of the first Covid lockdowns in 2020.

For the re-recording of this track I kept the spoken word by Francisco exactly the same, with the same gaps but created a whole new backing music, much more stripped down then the older verion.
I’m very pleased with how this sounds. I should also credit Karima Walker who recorded Francisco’s original narration.
The original track can be heard on this album.

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This is a recent rework of a previously shared track, for junto 0570
https://soundcloud.com/daniel-diaz/silencio-first-demo-version I reduced and simplified the arrangement and instrumentation, and I feel that this one’s the good version for proper release (but I might be wrong), so it is my first 2023 single.

This time I re recorded the piano part, added an upright bass and a lead accordina.
I like this one better, more calm, understated an da bit slower , more on the neoclassical side while the original demo was closer to a jazz ballad feel.

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This started life as Disquiet 0570 but has, like many of my earlier pieces, just been refreshed with new life using the new version of the Euclidean Chromaticon. Not sure at the moment if the addition of a ‘standard’ house beat is the ultimate answer for this track but, as it stands. its definitely a way forward for the time being … :slight_smile: :grinning:

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And the playlist is rolling:

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Something a bit different this week and certainly something I couldn’t perform in SuperCollider!

For as long as I’ve been seriously making music (25-ish years) I’ve written songs as part of that continuum. Sometimes the songwriting has become my primary activity and other times it’s been consigned to the background. My 30s during the 2010’s were pretty interesting in that regard. I’d started off not writing lyrics (let along performing) for quite sometime and then mid-decade songwriting and performing became my primary creative activity. That’s where and when this song, “Queen Tide” first materialised.

It’s a song that’s been hanging around for about 7 to 8 years now and I’ve never been able to settle on a structure that feels quite right. Initially, it fell square into a strummed acoustic folk idiom and I’d often perform it under my Garden Ruin moniker with my friend Tom accompanying on guitar. I’ve included a video of a live performance from back in 2017 that gives an indication of what it sounds like and how I’ve attempted to record it in the past.

For whatever reason - and about 12 versions later - it just hasn’t happened. As this year began, I realised I hadn’t worked on songs in quite some time and thought it might be time to revisit some older material and see if it motivated me to work on some newer material. I was up super-early this morning and upon seeing the Junto prompt this morning my thoughts drifted towards revisiting “Queen Tide” and approaching it a bit differently.

Turning my thoughts to a song like “Queen Tide” could have also been the byproduct of the bizarre climactic interlude that has interrupted an otherwise straightforward summer here in Adelaide, South Australia. For the past couple of days, wind gusts have been huge, a cold southerly whipping from the Antarctic has dumped rain and the skies have looked volatile and foreboding. It’s pure climate change stuff. “Queen Tide” is about climate change as well and is written from the perspective of wandering around my hometown of Normanville on the Fleurieu Peninsula in the aftermath of a climactic catastrophe.

One of the things I’ve always liked about the song is the use of an Em sus9 (or Em+2) chord in the main verse. My partner Lauren has often referred to this as the ‘Twin Peaks’ song, since the melody and structure does echo the TP theme a little bit. It’s always sounded fine on guitar, but this morning I thought I’d change it up and find a way to replicate it on piano. I’ve been listening to a lot of John Cale’s work lately as well, so I thought I’d drop the key by a few increments and sing it a bit lower.

So that’s how it started and I spent a few hours on it with a few overdubs that turned into several. That was what became the ‘kitchensink’ version, completely with an ‘iPad pedal steel’ in the bridge and two simultaneous sets of algorithmically programmed drums. I’ve spared you of the ‘kitchensink’ version and presented a more sensibly austere version with a bit of additional keyboard accompaniment, restrained guitar and backing vocals.

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I long ago worked on a piece I simply named concrete, consisting of simple gestures to generate two constantly evolving voices, one consisting of [noise]-[sound], the other being a constantly evolving melodic [texture]. I recreated that process using new devices to accomplish old tricks and new sound sources.

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I was trying to do something with “Chackra frequencies” (I will not comment them) on my modular. I made something, but I did not really like the result. Then I saw this assignment. Perfect timing. I started to play with ChucK (havn’t used it in a while). Ended up with one simple short script. I decided to make something really simple, slow ang long. Just because i can.

I started with one of the chakra frequencies but decided to use tones of the harmonic series, with that chackra frequency as a starting point. As I use an array in the ChucK script I could only use frequencies that are integer numbers. I use 5 frequencies. The script randomly selects one of the 5 frequencies and plays that in a 1 minute long tone (triangle wave form). I start a new instance of the script every 10th second. I start 6 instances.

1 instance at 0:00
2 at 0:10
3 at 0:20
4 at 0:30
5 at 0:40
6 at 0:50
Then it’s time for the first instance to play a new tone.

As I run the script I can see the selected frequency in a console window. Result. Very mono. Very electronic. Nothing extra. Can’t keep this long track on my soundcloud… Will be deleted next time i up-load. File saved in mp3-format.

EDIT: The script is 286 characters :mag:

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A guitar improvisation through the one of the Triad patches I made for Disquiet 576.

When I first read the prompt, I was tempted to improve a VCV generative piece I like but that I find poorly mixed. But then the fact that my flute is at the repair shop this week for maintenance gave me a different idea. What if I revisited a flute piece but with an instrument I’m not as into these days, the guitar?

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I produced this track back in August 2022 but wasn’t quite happy with the way the mix turned out. This week’s assignment gave me the incentive to re-visit the piece and make some tweaks. Created with the o-o-o script on the Norns Shield along with Ableton Live instruments and Max for Live effects. Globular Cluster NGC 1850 image by NASA Hubble Space Telescope.

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This picks up on the same project that prompted my response to disquiet0576. As a late teenager / young person I used an Elka synth, Roland drum machine, and Tascam Porta One to create electro pop songs, that, in retrospect, captured something of the queer trauma of being a gay teenager during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. I’m revisiting these songs now. Not least because I have faith, more than anything, that there is a set of really damn good songs here.

How though, do I capture the spirit, DIY and drive of what I did originally (listen here to the Tascam recording: https://on.soundcloud.com/ovFcY). Some 30 years later I’m only just getting back into creative practice and this was made on Garageband (yesterday upgraded to Logic Pro, so some learning to do). So what is here is a demo, and I’ve still much learning to do. I’m mostly unsatisfied with the drums though. Anyway. a work in progress. Feedback will be gratefully listened to, and taken on board!

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Hey All, I used a riiff that I wrote in high school when I was in a band back in the 80s. I combined it with the beat battle this week. Hope all are well.

Peace, Hugh

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Revisiting a disquiet junto recording from 3 years ago - (disquiet0420!) - even managed to find the rudimentary graphic score I jotted down for it at the time.

Voices different this time, but picked a similar bright chord for halfway through.

Though I think my original recording deviated from the score a bit with the parts overlapping a lot less … I stuck to the ‘script’ this time!

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There was a track that I started on last year, but never fully fleshed out actually, but I did like some parts of the sounds. In Ableton I turned the bits and pieces into scenes, added some performance racks and played through, while recording automation parameters and clips being played.

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I quickly decided to create a new version of my Junto duet Hoffnung erfreut den traurigen Sinn from one year ago - my wife’s absolute favourite among my tracks.
For “rerecording” the guitar I searched on looperman and found great loops to replace the wonderful track by @Fnubi. Then I exchanged some instruments (a new harmonium from pianobook, etc.).
I adapted the melodies to fit the new chords introduced by the guitar, and made some other small changes.
With the new instruments the importance of the different sounds changed, so the focus between the different musical elements shifted.
Then I added three additional instruments: A acoustic guitar to play along the short strings, a cello and an additional violin playing improvised melody lines.

I am very happy with the result: Although retaining many of the original elements a track with a new character has emerged - much more then a rerecording.

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