Disquiet Junto Project 0595: Filter Progression

Disquiet Junto
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This is the second of three projects we’re doing this year with Musikfestival Bern (musikfestivalbern.ch). Thanks, @TobiasReber, for the invitation to collaborate.

This post popped up at disquiet.com/0595 (thanks, powers of automation) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on Thursday, May 25. (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’ll post 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 0595: Filter Progression
The Assignment: Make music by processing a static sound.

This project is the second of three that are being done in collaboration with the 2023 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 6 through 10. The topic this year is « √ » — as the organization explains: “the radical, or square root symbol and the power of its symbolism are central to the festival and these will be translated into music in multifarious ways.” All three projects will engage with the work of Éliane Radigue, who is the Composer-in-Residence for the 2023 festival.

We are working at the invitation of Tobias Reber, an early Junto participant, who is in charge of the educational activities of the festival. This is the fifth year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern.

Select recordings resulting from these three Disquiet Junto projects may be played and displayed throughout the festival.

Step 1: Choose a static sound, such as a field recording of a specific place, or a held tone, or a recording of noise.

Step 2: Experiment with animating the static sound selected from Step 1 by slowly, subtly, manually modulating it, using only filter frequency and resonance.

Step 3: Record a track resulting from the techniques you developed in Step 2.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0595” (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 “disquiet0595” (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-0595-filter-progression/

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. Sometimes longer is better.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, May 29, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 25, 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 595th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Filter Progression (The Assignment: Make music by processing a static sound), at: https://disquiet.com/0595/

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

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0595-filter-progression/

8 Likes
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The project is now live.

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Field recording of an electrical transformer at the University of Debrecen (Hungary) slowly transformed with GRM BandPass and GRM Reson.

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A patch with triple cap chaos into modulated feedback filter bank and stereo reverb. Most of the sound is coming from the filter bank self oscillating. The heavily attenuated triple cap is just providing something mostly for the 1k band. Filter bands are modulated by LFO’s and mute switches. That’s it :slight_smile:

12 Likes
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Kept it fairly simple this time. I took a resonating bass string, added some distortion then manipulated mostly the cutoff of a filter that I added on top, with just a tiny bit of resonance change (ok, a bit much at the end, just for kicks). To that I added some strings, some brass, both modulated, and a kind of a drum track from sound effects, which I did also apply a filter on (hey, why not?).

7 Likes
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the task came at the right time
i’ve been working on the moog matriarch for days
especially patches with different modulation sources and destinations
so:
matriarch in drone mode
sample & hold out modulated via attenuator filter cut of 1 & 2
wave out modulates stereo delay time in 1
then played around a bit with cut off, resonance and spacing

i love my matriarch

12 Likes
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For this project I used a short orchestral sample and stretched it x 1000 with PaulXStretch which resulted in a pretty constant hum. I then used three consecutive filters in AUM to shape the sound. As you (I) can only do so much (in a planned and coordinated way) with two hands and six knobs, I did several takes and chose one, that seemed closest to the task. I have to admit I probably failed the “slowly” and “subtly” parts of the task. The first because I manipulated the filters too fast, the second also because unexpected things happened.

Alas, the resulting track now consists of three parts of roughly one minute:
Part 1, truth, one filter (lp)
Part 2, good, an additional filter (2hp+lp)
Part 3, useful, an additional lpf.

9 Likes
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Hey All,
Real cool prompt this week. I foresee a vast droning coming.Not like in a futuristic war scenario but of ya know droooooones.I like how by the end the fire sound from freesound 501417__visionear__aachen_burning-fireplace-crackling-fire-sounds
sounds like ringing bells. In the end I had 8 tracks going with a lot of stereo field stuff happening and resonation gradually coming in. Hope all are well.

Peace, Hugh

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This project yielded some unexpected results. I began by following the instructions to the letter which is to say I used my Poly D, with all oscillators switch off and only the noise volume cranked up high. I added a bit of extra noise in the Ext in from my SOMA Ether. And then I manipulated the filter cut off and resonance. But then I deviated a bit, and started to adjust the ADS for both the filter and loudness contour, which resulted in the noise taking on tonal qualities. I noodled for a while and then sent various blips and bleeps into my Zoia, using the “Airport” patch, which is an Eno inspired 4 track phase looper which also fed into the Cosmos, set in granular mode for just a bit of extra madness. The high pitched tones that sound like feedback are, well feedback created by slowly turning up the Aux in on the mixer line for the Zoia. Then I dumped the whole bit into Logic, took out the most annoying bits and added a few effects, mainly to create a bit of space and panning. The track fades in and out very slowly by the way.

Again, not what I expected from what started off as just a bunch of noise. Thanks for inspiring my creativity!

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I really enjoyed this one. It gave me a chance to use two recent acquisitions: a bow for my bass guitar and my refurbished Akai reel to reel.

I recorded one back-and-forth bowing of the bass, slowed it to 1/10 speed in Reaper, recorded it onto my reel to reel @ 7 1/2 ips, slowed it to 3 3/4 and fed it into my Erica dual black VCF. Tweaked the cutoff and resonance by hand, and also fed some in from an Ornament-8.

7 Likes
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Used a field recording from a few months ago of moderate rain falling outside our garage side door. Captured the sample with a Tascam DR-100MK3 and built-in mics. Along with the rain, there are occasional bird calls, vehicle noise from a road nearby, and other random outdoor sounds from the neighborhood.

Animated the recording by slowly modulating Auto Filter and Resonators in Ableton Live. Also used a bit of Convolution Reverb Pro to give the track some depth.

6 Likes
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I was preparing dinner and liked the monotonous sound of the rice moving in water while cleaning it. So I made a rough two minute recording of it, duplicated it once and started sending it trough a SEM filter and different resonators.
As it happens I’m a fan of Éliane Radique, so I set things up as if I was working with 3 tape recorders, running in parallel and just started exploring in the same spirit.

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wow that’s awesome. the resonant bells by the end are otherworldly.

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A recording of Masai Mara (wink to Chris Watson’s), downloaded from Freesound (thanks to August Sandberg), is used as a “constant”. Different filter and resonance configurations and tools (soundtoys’ FilterFreaks, Phase Mistress; Lexicon PianoChords, FabFilter and Izotope EQs), with some time envelope graphical programming and LFOs, plus some massive reverbs, are applied on the ambiance, in order to create movement and sensations of unreality.

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A simple sine wave of 130 hz undergoes a series of resonant effects.

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This was a very inspiring project, with a task I tried to follow, although this was well outside of my musical comfort-zone.

For the fieldrecording I recorded the ventilation in our toilet - it is no ventilator but the air is sucked by a pump under the roof. It used my second-hand mono dictaphone (mini-cassettes). The recording has many exaggerated high noises, but gives interesting material. It can be heard right in the first few seconds (stereolized).

I created four tracks applying different filters to the audio:

  • an EQ concentrating more on the higher sounds, with moving frequencies and Q
  • a Cubase MorphFilter working more on the middle frequencies, with moving frequencies, morphing and resonance
  • a Cubase DualFilter accentuating the lows, with moving position and resonance
  • Cubase Retrologue used as effect, with the filter (frequency, resonance, distortion) automated and a resonator controlled by LFOs acting randomly.

Reverbs and Tape saturation were added to some of the tracks.

All mentioned parameters were automated recording them “live” track by track, then editing and mixing between them.

The resonator doesn’t really comply to the project (since it changes fast), but introduces these nice sound bits, so I couldn’t resist. I decided to leave it as it is now and refrain from any “improvements” or additions to move more in direction comfort-zone…

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I offer two summaries of this week’s track. Choose one or both.

I used a field recording of a ferry engine sound. Then I set up 8 different filter chains for various effects (h/t Jakub Ciupinski) and configured them as send effects (the only module in each chain is the stock VCF from VCV). All I did during recording was twiddle the blend knobs to allow varying amounts of the filtered signal through.

I started with a teetergram of Moses’ footsteps as he walked through the parted Red Sea. I fed it through 8-Way Santa, with the ghostings spooled at 32,000 RPS. I opened the candy gate all the way and fed it back into Lapsang Souchong, with the mods from Irreverent Pustule. I cleaned up with a nice creme finish and a dash of anise.

4 Likes
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I’m recycling a couple of previous Juntos here.

Earlier today I was walking past the Ricegrowers facility that seems to make dog food and remembered recording it for the Junto proposed by Australian Kate Carr, number 0218.

And earlier his week I was remembering Junto 0186, which used Morse code.

For that I recall spelling my name using a kick drum and I went for a similar idea here, but it’s more of a high-hat part.

And I was remembering Morse code this week as it was a topic being presented to a school group visiting the Museum where I work.

That was a Groundhog-like day, as seven classes of 25 children rotated through different activities – but I skipped the telegraph display and led them to jail instead!

3 Likes
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I saw organist Frédéric Blondy play Éliane Radigue’s first work for organ, ‘Occam Ocean XXV’ at the Union Chapel, Islington in 2018, it was an incredible piece to hear played live. That performance and piece inspired me for an earlier Disquiet Junto (Stream Kept An Octave Apart (disquiet0564) by Leon Clowes | Listen online for free on SoundCloud) and this one too (Stream Disquiet0554 by Leon Clowes | Listen online for free on SoundCloud).

So it was a delight to strip this back even further this week. Playing just the note F I recorded and panned this same note five times using the cinematic preset Still Moment on Logic Pro X, slowly manually adjusting the filter, filter gate, panner and harmonics for 111 bars at a 120 tempo. While it’s all about the magic numbers (111) for me, I heard a glitch at just under 30 seconds in when I saved the track as a WAV file and opened it up on Audacity to add in a fade in and fade out (I don’t know how to do that yet on Logic… tiny steps self training…)

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The playlist is now rolling.

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