Disquiet Junto Project 0592: Better Than One

Project-Specific Note: You may contribute more than one track this week. Usually Junto projects have a one-track-per-participant limit. This week you can do a second one. Please see additional details in Step 5 below.

Answer to Frequent Question: You don’t need to have uploaded a solo in last week’s project to participate in this week’s second phase of the trio sequence.

This post popped up at disquiet.com/0592 (thanks, automation) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on Thursday, May 4. (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 a platform, like Mastodon or Instagram, that uses hashtags, please use the #DisquietJunto tag. Much appreciated.

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Disquiet Junto Project 0592: Better Than One
The Assignment: Record the second third of an asynchronous trio.

Please note: While this is the second part of a three-part project, you can participate in one, two, or all three of the parts, which will occur over the course of three consecutive weeks.

Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project is the second in a sequence intended to encourage and reward asynchronous collaboration. This week you’ll be adding music to a pre-existing track, which you will source from the previous week’s Junto project (disquiet.com/0592). Note that you aren’t creating a duet — you’re creating the second third of what will eventually be a trio. Important: Leave space for what is yet to come.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice, as a complement to a pre-existing track. First, however, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are tracks by numerous musicians to choose from. The majority are in this playlist:

https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0591

Any additional non-SoundCloud entries appear in the discussion:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0591-the-loneliest-number/

(Note that it’s possible another track or two will pop up in or disappear from that playlist and discussion. Things are fluid on the internet.)

To select a track, you can listen through all those and choose one, or simply look around and select, or you can come up with a random approach to sifting through them.

Note: It’s fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece.

It is strongly encouraged that you look through the above discussion on the Lines forum, because many tracks include additional contextual information there.

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly the length of the piece of music you selected in Step 2. Your track should complement the piece from Step 2, and leave room for an eventual third piece of music. When composing and recording your part, don’t alter the original piece of music at all, except to pan the original fully to the left if it hasn’t been panned left already. In your finished audio track, your new part should be panned fully to the right.

To be clear: the track you upload won’t be your piece of music alone; it will be a combination of the track from Step 2 and yours.

Step 4: Also be sure, when done, to make the finished track downloadable, because it will be used by someone else in a subsequent Junto project.

Step 5: You can contribute more than one track this week. Usually Junto projects have a one-track-per-participant limit. You can do up to two total. For the second, it’s appreciated if you try to work with a solo that no one else has used yet ( look at the project’s post on Lines, linked to in these instructions, or to the project playlist, which will be posted here once tracks start coming in). The goal is for many as people as possible to benefit from the experience of being part of an asynchronous collaboration. After a lot of detailed instruction, that is the spirit of this project.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0592” (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 “disquiet0592” (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-0592-better-than-one/

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 no more than two tracks for this particular weekly Junto project. Usually projects are limited to one track per participant. If you choose to post more than two, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which two you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. Stick to close the length of the track yours adds to.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, May 8, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 4, 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 592nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Better Than One (The Assignment: Record the second third of an asynchronous trio), at: https://disquiet.com/0592/

About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0592-better-than-one/

7 Likes

And the project is now live. Thanks, everyone.

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I chose “Frugality” after a long listen. big thanks to encym for inspiring guitar track!!!

Encym – The-loneliest-number-disquiet0591

then played as freely as I could on my Soma’s Enner

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I chose basslings. Since I’m going away over the weekend (Friday to late Monday), I was a little prepared. I like the ending :smiley:
Try working with D, E, F#, G, G#…

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OK, so it was difficult to choose - so many excellent tracks! But in the end I went with @krakenkraft 'sThe Patient Earthworm, which reminded me of Cluster and Eno. I added in a Dexed synth and LABS piano, run through Augustus Loops, among other things. (I just noticed he saidit was in Dmin to Gm, which I don’t think I did - so it probably sounds weird! Oops).

13 Likes

Lots of great tracks to choose from. The track Dronley Bells by @mikey_a seemed like a challenge as it is pretty dense in arrangement and space. I wanted to imitate and compliment with a guitar and effects. These are both very stereo, and totally collapsed when panned completely left and right… so i panned the left part in a 40 degree arc from 60 to 100, and did the same arc for the right. The final third has the middle. Fun Challenge.

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@ray_cobley 's Bass Base was an excellent drone that I could do anything on top of, so I chose to…make another drone, leaving it to part III to break out of the drone mold…or not.

I used a violin and some resonators and delay.

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There are so many fantastic tracks to choose from!

I wanted to use the Volcas that were plugged in on my desk, so I have started with @lazenbeeindustries’ ‘five days a week’ for the win.

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So many inspiring submissions last week! Ended up choosing two:

  1. On the track from @krakenkraft I’ve added a driving bass line that is varying in timbre over the course of the duration, with a bit of phase bi-tron:
    Stream [disquiet0592] 1. Six - Four by Fake Genius | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

  2. A slightly different approach on the track from @Kitzmann where I added harmonies with Arturia’s Augmented Brass plug-in, automating some sound characteristics:
    Stream [disquiet0592] 2. C - Saw by Fake Genius | Listen online for free on SoundCloud

9 Likes

Last year I was working on an Acousmatic track that I put aside after not being totally happy with where it was going - or not going… After hearing OhWell’s track from last week I couldn’t help but think they’d work really well together.

Apologies for any mixing discrepancies, I am away from my speakers for a few days, and still trying to get over a mild-ish flu-like thing that’s blocked my ears :frowning:

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The playlist is now rolling:

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Using “The Euclidean Chromaticon | The Loneliest Number” by x i i i x x i @xiiixxi as a source for miscellaneous processing on the right channel involving resonance, harmonization, gate sequencing and spectral blurring.

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I very much liked Michele Isoni ‘s track, it is intense, visceral. Immediately after hearing it, I had to listen to Hendrix Star spangled banner.

First take on it I used synthesizer, but finally decided the guitar sounds more direct, so uploaded this one.

The image is the waveform of her piece printed for the score, but the printer was running out of ink…

11 Likes

Love it :grin:

A really complimentary addition which adds to the character very well.

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Inspired by @Alyce_Santoro composition “Abstraction Cactus Flower” I decided to continue exploring Georgia O’Keeffe’s Radical Abstraction.
I was inspired by the painting “The Beyond” (1972) and a quote (from this lecture):

The color […] had little to do with what I’d seen. The color grew as I painted.

I tried to apply the same concept to time, playing and painting bigger spaces every time, tracing a line between my previous submission and this one. After the accident I have to rebuild a new relationship with my body: this time I worked with breathing and feeling space-time oscillations in my legs, my ankles, my shoulders and let the flow be my metronome. It was fun dancing with my double bass again, after a long time, it felt like meditation or one of the delicate and at the same time intense paintings of O’Keeffe.

Fill a space in a beautiful way. - Georgia O’Keeffe

Tech specs

At bar 6 I start playing an ascending phrase with the notes F#, C#, F, D#, length 1 bar 50bpm. I then leave a full bar of silence and there starts the growing process, stretching spaces by adding eight note silences after every repetition of the musical fragment.
I doubled on fretless bass with a bit of chorus and then sprinkled both basses in a bit of convolution reverb. It was very interesting to observe the discrepancies and similarities of time and body-feeling with the two instruments, as well as phasing and subtle time differences that this process creates.

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Aw, snap!

I also wanted to play with Michele Isoni and thought I’d use the Volcas again before I packed them away

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I chose encym´s track Frugality from the disquiet0591 and added a melody line I played on my synthesizer with tons of delay

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Using Stream Disquiet - TidePowerPods - Fpo - Wclick by Gahlord Dewald, bassist | Listen online for free on SoundCloud by @gahlord I added three layers of improvised electronic drum kit percussion tracks on Logic Pro in response to the bass, quantized them to 1/8 and added reverb, phaser and delay to give it a dub echo kind of response. Was really handy to have the tempo available in doing this.

Taking the @user5032541 piece User5032541 – Disquiet0591-swellchords I created an answer to the Swell Chords call using Arctic Breeze to respond.

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Lots of great submissions in the first round. I selected “Possibilities in an empty corner” by @undermulden for part two of this project. I liked the simplicity, tempo and the key it was in. Used Slate+Ash Choreographs in Ableton Live to create my part.
NOTE: Wasn’t happy with how the original audio file sounded the next day, so I made some revisions to my track and replaced the original audio file.

This is in F Major at 84 BPM (same as the original).

10 Likes