Disquiet Junto Project 0585: F9

Disquiet Junto
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These instructions popped up at disquiet.com/0585 (powers of automation willing) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on Thursday, March 16. (I was asleep at the time, quite deeply.) 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, and began to do so 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.

Email: This Tinyletter webapp is become less usable as we get gain members. We’re nearing 2,000 subscribers. I will likely switch to Substack or to another (free) service at some point this year. Suggestions appreciated. No matter what service I end up using, subscription to this announcement list will, absolutely, always be free. (The main issue with Tinyletter is I now can’t send more than five emails a month without going over the limit of recipients, and that means I can’t send out occasional other important news, which I’d like to do sometimes.)

Profile: Earlier this week I posted the sixth in a weekly series of Junto Profiles, this one with longtime Junto member Jason Richardson (aka @bassling). I have a bunch all set to go, and more in the works. If you’re interested in being interviewed for the series, just let me know. I ask that you wait until you’ve been a regular participant for nine months. Much appreciated.

Collaborations: One of the most popular Junto projects each year has been, in fact, three or four projects — the sequence where we create trios asynchronously one week at a time. We haven’t done this yet in 2023, but we will in the near future. Also this year, I’m thinking about either doing it as a quartet, or doing both a trio sequence and a quartet sequence at different times during the year. In either case, one such sequence is coming up soon. Or soon-ish.

. . .

And now, on to this week’s project:

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Disquiet Junto Project 0585: F9

The Assignment: Fast forward an old track to make a new one.

Step 1: Many media playback apps for laptops (among other devices) include the option to fast forward through a track manually. Some apps have settings that allow you to adjust the length of the gap that will be jumped. Find a tool that can do this. VLC (videolan.org/vlc) is recommended. In VLC you can jump forward in set lengths of time by repeatedly pressing (not holding, but repeatedly pressing) the right arrow on your keyboard.

Step 2: Try this process with a few of your own recordings: hitting the right arrow at a steady pace (as quickly as every split second, as slowly as every two or three seconds).

Step 3: Locate a track of your own where doing what is described in Step 2 yields a result you find pleasing.

Step 4: Record what the result of Step 3 sounds like for one of your pre-existing tracks. (This may be old hat, if you have used Loopback or similar software. You could also just record the output from your laptop’s speaker.)

Step 5: Use the result of Step 4 as the foundation for a new piece of music. You can add as little or as much as you would like to it.

Notes: (1) You may find you can simulate this effect. (2) You can loop the result of Step 4 if what it yields is too short.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0585” (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 “disquiet0585” (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-0585-f9/

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. Just because it’s fast forwarded doesn’t mean it needs to be short.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, March 20, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 16, 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 585th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Generations (The Assignment: Fast forward an old track to make a new one), at: https://disquiet.com/0585/

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-0585-f9/

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Thought I’d start with a slow track, then ended up taking it from 10 to 90bpm.

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And the project is now live — with some additional broader Junto community updates.

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interesting idea for a project, and coincidentally i just found a bunch of my old tracks that i’ve never shared anywhere.

however, i’m mystified by the technical side. i’m on windows 10 and cannot seem to figure out either a way to record directly from vlc (as per the instructions), or to do the fast-forward effect in software (ideally with something i already have or something that’s free). anyone able to share some pointers?

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@Aethyr Ok windows 10 here too with VLC. Open your audio file with vlc. Click playback at the top left and jump forward is in the drop down menu. Hope that helps :slight_smile:

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Looks like @Glitcher has responded to the fast-forward question. Lemme know if that doesn’t help. As for recording, there are third-party tools to help record (like the Loopback one mentioned in the instructions). Or, per Step 3, you could just output from your laptop’s speaker and record with another device.

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i understood how to do the fast-forward in vlc, was just wondering if there was maybe a plugin or something that could do a similar effect.

looks like loopback is mac only, and i don’t currently have any speakers hooked up to my computer, so it’s a little tricky.

i’ve tried doing some searches for both parts but i’m not having much luck. i could be phrasing things wrongly though.

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I found ‘virtual audio cable’
I vaguely remember getting a bit frustrated with it. (Apologies audio hijack is for Mac)

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I used the track Slow Eruption from 2019 (the original is here: https://on.soundcloud.com/eAp5N
After the fast forward treatment I duplicated the resulting track and unsynchronized the two tracks by about 5 seconds. Additionally I played the track freezing small samples of it with the GRM Freeze tool to get a third track. The piece is a mix of these three tracks filtered through GRM Comb Filter.

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Hi, @Aethyr. This one, Jack, is for Windows. Maybe it’ll do the trick:

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https://soundcloud.com/user-507251108/effenove-disquiet0585

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This was fun. Took a long track, jumped forward every three seconds by ten second steps. Used Audacity in WASAPI mode to capture the audio, nice and simple method for Windows users. Then used some MIDI conversion magic to create a backing voice. FX et voila

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I really enjoyed doing this one! Here’s what I came up with.

The part that comes in at the beginning is jumping forward by the same amount at regular intervals and plays through the entire track. As more elements are added, things get more complicated but I continued to use the same source recording and tried to use methods that I thought were keeping with the spirit of the project.

Here’s a video someone made with the source audio. I never officially released this track but I’ve always liked it.

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I tried various ways of doing this - manually, using a sampler etc. but didn’t really like the result - I wanted to keep the integrity of the track I picked rather than mangle it so used Sugar Bytes Looperator - its paid for and I already have it but there must be other free loop edit/re-order software out there.

I used two copies of the track in parallel and alternated between two jumping patterns via gates - both set on chopping the track into 1/8th beats. One skips every second 1/8th and the other plays the missing 1/8th in reverse order - not exactly what was required I know but a ‘development’ of the idea to suit the track I wanted to use :smile:

I am very happy with the track and will certainly use this idea again for remixing and experimenting.

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Hey All,
I did some spring cleaning yesterday and decided to look through an old hard drive. This hard drive had back ups of hard drives from long ago that are no longer with us. Tracks from long ago when I first started using ableton to make music. There was one called “Upright Man” and decided to use that.

I followed the prompt using the start marker and the arrow key. I then used that to chop track and to play the chops. I then added drums and a track where the pitch goes up as the speed increases.

I think I use kind of a similar effect by chopping things up. It is like skipping through a song and using little loops made up of chops.

Hope all are well.

Peace, Hugh

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Thank you very much for this wonderful prompt - it was the most musical fun I’ve had in a while.

Five layers of guitar scrambled using Ableton Live’s Granulator II fed into various return tracks. Resulting track skipped back and forth in time to a simple beat using VLC Media Player and recorded in Audacity. Audacity recording layered back on top of the simple beat. A couple more glitches and EQ and filter moves added.

Best, hecuba rising

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I used VLC and BlackHole, it worked mostly fine. After a handful of tracks I took “On Spiritual Mission” and ffwded it. I cut out a loop and looped it warped in Live. For me it still sounded like the original, but very disquiet. So I mixed parts of the original into.

I liked that it now had some kind of fractal self-similarity. The title plays on the fact that you need some time to get into the groove of the loop and I think after the lenght of the track one could get into it.

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The playlist is now rolling. So much cool music. Thanks, everyone!

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Hello everyone,
I used VLC Media Player to skip through a 14 minute guitar drone in C#m9. I recorded the live output with Audacity and used Acon Digital DeClick 2 to remove most of the annoying clicks I could hear. I was shocked at how bad my sense of timing was, so I pummeled my final track into shape by overlaying a very repetitive drumbeat.
All the best, how the night came

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I chose an old electronic piece of mine, used the VCL player as recommanded and recorded my forwarding through the loudspeakers. I then created an ambient version of my track, and added sections of what I had recorded to it, finishing off the track with a short section of the original track

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