Disquiet Junto Project 0583: Wall to Wall

Disquiet Junto
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These instructions popped up at disquiet.com/0583 (thank you, powers of automation) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on Thursday, March 2. (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 0583: Wall to Wall

The Assignment: Use a building as a filter.

Step 1: You’re going to use a wall in a building, perhaps your workplace or residence, as a filter. Consider these instructions carefully before selecting the appropriate wall. Some trial and error may be required.

Step 2: You’re going to record a track in which the rhythmic element is heard through a wall. That is: you’ll record the rhythm track, and then play it loud from another room (or outside), and record what it sounds like as separated by a wall. Choose a wall.

Step 3: Record the rhythm, track.

Step 4: Re-record the rhythm track from Step 3 by playing it on one side of a wall and recording from the other side of that wall.

Step 5: Record a piece of music using the recording from Step 4 as the foundational rhythm track.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0583” (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 “disquiet0583” (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-0583-wall-to-wall/

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, March 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 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 583rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Wall to Wall (The Assignment: The Assignment: Use a building as a filter), at: https://disquiet.com/0583/

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-0583-wall-to-wall/

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And the project is now live

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hello.

in case anyone else is in a living situation where doing this project exactly according to the instructions would be a problem (i live in an apartment building and i doubt my neighbours would appreciate me playing music loudly enough to be heard through a wall, even if it was only for a few minutes), i managed to find a few tutorials on how to accomplish a similar effect using audio processing: (1) (2) (3)

while this is obviously not following the instructions to the letter, i think it’s better than not being able to participate at all.

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Totally. Thanks for this!

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another workaround but by way of a 395 Euro expenditure, it is pretty awesome having every kind of wall, or speaker available on demand

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Although I sadly cannot participate, the prompt does remind me of a recent track by a drummer I really like which sounds like it uses a similar recording technique (‘different rooms’ by Valentina Magaletti): Spotify

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AO Smith 40 gallon propane water heater, cycling behind the basement wall. a second tack of the water heater cycling, and the plastic pipe ticking as the exhaust is leaving the basement. Playing back the recording, as per the instructions, then adding open-tuned 6 string guitar through a strymon nightsky pedal

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I recorded the kick drum and percussion from eurorack, then played it back over a speaker while recording from a nearby closed bathroom. This new recording was then layered with other samples and instruments, all played via Tele-touch. I enjoyed how this Junto’s objective brought a softened quality to the percussion. Audio compresson au naturel.

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I created nine looped tracks using the Boutique 808 sound on Garageband, then recorded my live mixing these from the next room on a Zoom recorder. I then recorded the playback of that, compressed and added noise reduction which made for some nice squeaky higher pitched sounds. I’ve mixed an extract of that here with all of the original drum loops used at various points, panned either side of the wall to wall to wall sound. With the (original drum patterns) back (in) again.

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My daughter decided to start teaching herself the banjo recently and listening to her pluck away through the walls is pretty great! Much nicer than what I put my parents through at her age when I was trying to do my best Sonic Youth impression…
I recorded some of her banjo sounds mixed with room noise and fiddled around in GarageBand.

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And the playlist is rolling:

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Oof I struggled with this one - maybe because I still had “waltz techno” in my head? Anyway, I looked up popular waltz tunes and found Shostakovich’s Second Waltz. Here’s what I did:

  1. Played along to a YouTube video of the Shostakovich piece with headphones on my hybrid piano for the “beat”
  2. Recorded my playing in midi and on my phone (just voice memo) in the kitchen, through a wall (that’s why you hear the fridge buzz in the beginning)
  3. Tried to make something of it all with the phone recording at the piece’s center

I mixed in a field recording from a restaurant from a few months back. I think I was trying to create a FOMO feel of a wallflower at a dance. Like I said, this one was hard! But at least I got the waltz out of me.

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It’s kinda hot at home this weekend and I’ve a lot of work to do, so I wasn’t sure I would have time to record.

Then I remembered an earlier Junto that involved recording from an adjacent room, as well as another that imagined a doorbell.

While I was looking for those, I found a couple of Juntos that involved another sort of muffled approach in wearing cotton gloves.

Anyway, it all sort of made sense at the time, so I made a remix from my tracks for Juntos 115, 174, 253 and 289.

This is my 360th Junto video.

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I started this project with the rough idea of a Rhythm & Sound track playing in another room. Then I already got carried away with the rhythmic track, which turned out much too dense. As I don’t like restarts, I went on with the track and recorded it through a wall, playing on a Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen. I then added several layers of Plaits and Lyra 8 and sort of finished the track.

Later while cleaning windows and listening (and singing) to music, I had the idea to add more tracks (like singing) to try and create the acoustics of a big house with many people going about their lives. So I did this.

Now it starts with the neighbors having a party while the kids are playing in the hallway. Then the parents have a short argument before another kid (me) starts to practice clarinet. It’s not music per se but there’s a lot going on.

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Hey All,
I actually built the wall I recorded on the other side from. It is insulated with sound absorbing batting. The batting does a good job of blocking most of the sound but the bass makes it through and vibrates everything in the kitchen. I have a very big subwoofer which really puts out low end. I know my mixes lose quit a bit going through my car speakers but in my studio the low end sounds so much better. I really don’t know how to mix something that is so low that it comes across on other speakers.

what was I talking about…

Oh yeah I recorded on my phone the recent drum track we did as a drum track for others in the Junto to add to from the next room. I then played that recording and recorded again on the other side of the wall. That was my understanding of what we were supposed to do. That basically was just a very muffled kick drum. You can hear it as a background in this track. You may not even hear it at all because it is very muffled low frequency.
I also added some synths and a recording of me going into the sauna. The door closing may give you a jump.
Hope all are well.

Peace, Hugh

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Sounds like the south of Italy!

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I found it quite hard to get loud enough to transmit enough detail through a wall. So, I stopped trying to and just recorded what I got.

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Sometimes, you hear a beat through the wall, then you imagine what tune accompanies it. Reality does not always match my imagination.
Here, I recorded a drum track, just kick and snare, through the wall. The mic in the other room picked up cicadas and a cat, outdoors, as well as the thumping beat. The track was then used to generate a series of recordings from my modular synth. I used a variety of approaches including envelope following, quantizers, wavefolders, filter and LPG pings, and passing some of the results through a filter bank. There are also a couple of tracks created with the KORG Monologue and Casio CZ-1000. All source sounds for this project were external.

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