I haven’t engaged with this forum for a year and a half but I do love getting the Junto newsletter 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.
As a matter of coincidence, last month I released an album of some of my existing music as a way to share my music with friends who primarily use streaming services for music: Twigs | Wrenharmonic
This includes a couple of Junto projects, alongside music I’ve made in many other online communities.
Track 3, On a Frozen Lake, is from disquiet0471 “Phase Transition”
Track 17, Beneath this, is from disquiet0434 “Beat Kit”
I’ve been thinking about remaking/revisiting a handful of the tracks that didn’t make it on to the release for various reasons, so I may soon have a track to share for this week as well.
I chose Star-spawn from a 2017 release, which means I may have made it 2016 or 2015. Here is the original:
Originally it was completely made with the compact DAW Caustic for Android.
This time I used only the MIDI data export and rearranged it in Reaper with u-he Repro and Arturia Mellotron. Here is the new version:
Main objective was to get closer to my perception of the spirit of Berlin School style sequenced electronica. I put a lot of efforts in it and it is definitely more sophisticated. Nonetheless I’m not sure wether I really like it more than the original in every aspect. Other than funny this bad Instagram animation.
This composition reinterprets a song released back in 2018. My original concept was to incorporate Steve Reich’s phasing technique by using several tracks of programmed wood blocks. The five programmed wood block sounds were assigned different pitches and durations and looped so the blocks would shift places throughout the composition. The loops only consisted of one or two delayed notes with the purpose of taking advantage of silence, although the end result was too empty for my liking.
With this new version, I switched from programmed wood blocks to jam blocks and only utilized three tracks instead of five. This time, each figure contained a couple measures of jam block rhythms as opposed to a single burst. The “lead jam block” changes in pitch throughout the song to provide more sonic variety.
For the ambiance, I booted up Samplebrain, a piece of software introduced to me through Disquiet Junto and loaded it up with cash register and typewriter samples from Freesounds. In addition to the programmed jam blocks, I also used my red and blue LP jam blocks for a couple of sections. Other sounds include a ratchet and coins.
I picked an earlier track, condensation. I couldn’t find the instrument that did the main theme, it was a Dexed patch called FM Growth, but I just used a different Dexed patch instead. While I still prefer the original, I like this one too.
i initially wasn’t going to participate this week as i’ve lost the files for most of my older tracks, and recreating them from memory (or old mp3’s) seemed like it’d be a tall order. however, i found a piece from 2015 that i’d never finished to my satisfaction, and decided i’d try and finish that off - strictly speaking, it’s not remaking an old piece, but completing one; i felt that was at least in the spirit of the prompt as i’m certainly revisiting old work.
i had the track structured in acid, and going back to that daw after becoming accustomed to bitwig was jarring - i don’t know how i used it for so many years when it just seems really clunky now. i don’t know where the samples came from, though judging by the file names, they were all from the same source. the shape of the track was there, but i’d added very little in the way of processing - whether this was old plugins i no longer have not loading, or if i’d just not got to that point, i can’t say.
i only made one small change to the structure and i kept the creative decisions i’d made originally, no matter how strange they seem to me now. (double tracked drums? sure. drum’n’bass break in a downtempo track? whatever. double tracked bass panned hard left and right? bit weird…) i added effects as appropriate, though i tried to have a relatively light touch and not make things drastically different. however i think i’ve got it sounding way better than it did purely from the arrangement of samples, so i’ll take that as a win. i tried to go for a lo-fi kind of vibe to it overall; i have no recollection of what i intended when i originally arranged it, so i had to make a best guess.
i don’t know where the rather poetic title came from, but i figured i’d keep it, even if it seems like it’d fit more to an ambient piece. i put that into nightcafe studio for the artwork.
i’ve enjoyed quite a lot of the pieces that others have submitted this week. hopefully some among you will enjoy mine, it’s certainly satisfying to have a more-or-less finished version of something that’s been hanging around for so long.
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I am revisiting a track from my project Illusion Of Safety, recorded in 2010 and finally just released on the new album Organ Choir Drone. It has been a struggle for me to keep this project purely experimental and challenging in line with my original intent. I want to make many kinds of music that I love and am interested in the form(s)of music and want to explore making them, so its apparent that i need to pursue that in other projects. I am grateful for the challenge and assignments of the Disquiet Junto in helping that along. I keep going cinematic in many musical attempts, probably thanks to 2001 A Space Odyssey’s influence on my 9 year old mind, and maybe my moms love of Burt Bacharach have played a part in my nebulous musical desires that tend to go cinematic/dramatic/orchestral. Today I took the track Waste of Civilization and edited it to a shorter version, added melodic elements: multiple piano, woodwinds, + a max4live DX-7 emulation and built it up using no grid or quantization. Another goal has been to get to the point of making more music with real instruments in real time. No Grid, I have a ways to go before that is successful, so please forgive the imperfections. Plus it still sounds like IOS:(
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The album is the first of 4 planned releases for the 40th anniversary of the project and is released by No Part Of It, available as cassette, CD-r, & digital:
here are some codes for those who might like to have the record.
to redeem their codes: Illusion of Safety
7eyb-6j5p
l7u5-yk22
qmw9-7kxh
frjk-e9m5
wxbu-ut9r
eqad-jn6l
brfp-ke9j
dxdb-g7gk
Hey all.
Re-do of my first soundcloud track. I did a remix last year, so seemed apt to do a remodel this year.
Hope you all well.
J
Here is the original.
I decided to rerecord a track I made in 2009. I have always really liked it and revisited it before - by myself and in a live band. I even mastered and released it back in 2017 without changing any of the underlying production. I will post that version on my SoundCloud page for reference and omit the link here to avoid any confusion.
I thought this would be an easier project since rerecording would only require exporting the MIDI files from Logic and choosing different instruments in Ableton. I ended up spending a lot more time working on the new sounds than I anticipated, but I feel like it was time well spent learning my way around new instruments and effects. I was also challenged with simply finishing the track. I had to come to terms with the fact that the prompt is just to “rerecord” not “rerecord so it is perfect” or even “rerecord so it is better than the first version.” I came to accept that, so now I am happy with this special version I made for this project.
What would it sound like if a funk band covered one of our songs? This is the posthumous question explaining this loose approximation of the Creatures Once song Only (Creatures Once - Only (Official Video 1) - YouTube). The song is one of the first we made, and one my favorites. The original drums were step sequenced when I was first learning Ableton and the Push. A little too on the grid rigid maybe. So as the drummer in my imaginary funk band, I have always wanted to play live drums along with this song to get a looser groove going. So that’s how I started. After playing some busy live drums (I was excited), the imaginary funk band’s bass player and dual keyboardists decided to try and recreate the bassline, and some of the melodic parts. I (they) did this by looking at the steps lighting up on the Push pads, listening to the guitar, then trying to play them from memory. So it came close (not really) but much looser and not exactly the same, which is fun. Something the imaginary funk band would do if you played them a song once and said, “ok, go play it!” I kept jus a few snippets from the original in here for flavor.
I have always wanted to try and re-learn and recreate a previously recorded song (maybe try and play something live). Now I know it will be as hard as I imagined, but fun. Also a good way to create something brand new.
The bass progression that opens this was an idea a while ago but couldn’t really execute – I was worse at bass and didn’t have a mic to record anything properly. Decided I would use this chance to revisit the idea and a poem and a piano part sort of blossomed out from that original idea!
This track was my first time really trying to record and balance live instruments and vocals. Feel like I learned loads on this one
I don’t have the same kind of free time as I had in 1993, and then I lost a lot of time after accidentally dragging my tracks in Reaper onto the drum channel and then spending wayyyy more time than i should have trying to figure out why the audio was all distorted, the bassline was cutting out, etc… So it’s quite abridged and doesn’t quite hang together. Still, it was fun and I guess I might continue with the remake at some point - but I’ll probably diverge further from the original if I do.
A bit late, but better than never. I’m continuing my New Years resolution on using Max/Msp to compose music. For this week, I found a old MIDI file with a melody, I created some time ago. I have never worked with MIDI files in Max and the process was quite illuminating - there is a lot of possibilities in working with and manipulating MIDI files!
The melody is played by a simple triangle based synthesizer run through a reverb made in Max, whose parameters are being manipulated via a couple of random generators and controlled by the MIDI file to create all of the pops, clicks and weird artifacts that happens when changing a reverbs parameters.[Disquiet0579] Memory Serves, Etude
