Disquiet Junto Project 0600: Reaching Out

Aethyr · 2023-07-03T21:41:40.727Z

hello.

i was interested in this project when the brief came through on thursday, but i kept putting it off in favour of other things. i finally got around to doing it on sunday night, but felt too tired to listen to the final thing, upload to soundcloud, and write about it. so here i am, only a couple of hours before the deadline, trying to squeeze in.

anyway, i possibly misinterpreted the prompt; the way i read it was to use the provided samples and only those samples, but seeing as others have added further elements, i suppose i must have got it wrong. this was, however, the way i approached my piece.

with the requirement to have at least 2 seconds of the samples unadulterated at the beginning and end of the piece, i decided to start (in bitwig studio, which i recently upgraded to version 5) with a track that would be completely free of any processing. i initiated the piece with the “hands held” sample, though i did add a fade-in to make the start less abrupt. (similarly, it ends with “walking”, which is faded out to avoid a sudden stop.) i actually tried to take the instruction extremely literally and have the uneffected track even bypass the master channel, but that just made it go silent, and i felt like i didn’t have the time to look into if there was a way to fix that.

i then proceeded to add the different samples on their own tracks at regular intervals until all the samples were playing. because some of them were quite short, a couple play twice.

next was adding effects to the samples. this was done with a variety of plugins; i favoured using granular effects, reverbs, and delays, as it felt like the piece should generally be quite ambient. i also made use of devious machines’ infiltrator2, which is fast becoming something i use on almost every track. i didn’t use huge chains of plugins for each track as i felt the original material was already good; most have only two or three plugins in operation, and one track only has a single plugin affecting it.

i had only listened to each effected sample in isolation, but whether through good luck or design, when i listened to them all together, they formed a rather pleasing piece. the final step was to add a fairly standard mastering chain (including my newly-acquired ozone 10) and render it out.

i’m pretty pleased with the end result, especially as i had to work more quickly than i would have liked (entirely through my own procrastination). the title is part of a quote i’ve always liked from hamlet - “i could be bounded in a nutshell, and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams”.

the artwork is produced with nightcafe studio, as usual, which i feel came up with a rather pleasing result.

congratulations on this thing running for 600 weeks. personally i’ve been around from the start (though my participation has been very sporadic - there was a period of two or three years where, due to a bad living situation, i didn’t work on any music at all) and look forward to sticking with it for as long as it may go on.

Oweeen · 2023-07-03T21:56:04.851Z

Was so excited to see these samples and the nature of the project! I was going to be visiting with family this week on Lake Michigan. Unfortunately, my partner fell ill and I was unable to go. All this to say, I changed the nature of my project drastically in the last few days. I was missing the soundscape of the lake so I turned two of the samples into waves (ahh) and then layered a few other samples on top as melodies. I then blended in a field recording taken today on a hike near my home, bridging the gap between these two environments through the unedited samples. All done with stock effects in Ableton except for the melodic drone towards the end, made from sending “Hands Held” through a max patch I have been working on recently.

Forelight · 2023-07-03T22:47:02.145Z

I went through so many iterations of this one! Pretty much through all my effects at this one to see what would stick, and then struggled for hours to make sense of it all.

Many thanks to Marcus Fisher for the wonderful noises he provided and congrats to Marc at Disquiet for reaching this milestone

GlennSogge · 2023-07-03T23:13:28.565Z

My piece (after a long hiatus from Junto participation) is here:

I discovered upon loading into my DAW what a wonderful texture the 7 tracks made when combined. As the tracks are different length, looping them all provides a subtly changing soundscape. One of the fragments also became the source for an additional improvised part using the Kilohearts Phase Plant new granular engine. Varying speeds of autopanning (Melda) were applied to all parts before feeding the result into Arturia’s _efx Fragments. Various EQ and sweetening (PreSonus ProEq and Neutron) on the way out to the master as a 24-bit FLAC. Many thanks to @marcus_fischer and looking forward to catching up somewhere around town.

PmM · 2023-07-04T00:05:06.440Z

I am so happy that I had time to participate this week. I knew I had to be fast, so I dove right in. I decided not to budget time for creating interesting sample instruments and doing a lot of processing/mangling. I felt there was more than enough useful material extant in the samples Marcus Fischer provided as is. I also knew it would save a lot of time to avoid the game of making the source samples all unrecognizable save the first and last two seconds. (that game would have been fun!) Also, I avoided the temptation of listening to any of your already posted pieces before I finished mine. ( I look forward to listening to them now!) I started putting bits and pieces of the samples onto the timeline in Ableton and followed my intuition. I let myself go and tried to remain un-conflicted about my rapid choice making. I only used the samples that Marcus Fischer provided. I used some of his Major chords to celebrate, with fanfare, the 600th Disquiet Junto. I used eight stereo tracks and basically made a collage piece in ternary(ish) form. Plug-ins used: UAD apex ATR-102 tape, Waves True-Verb, SoundToys Devil-Loc, Ozone 10 classical mastering preset to finalize it all.

Hugh_Prat · 2023-07-04T00:45:52.876Z

Hey All,
HAPPY 600 DISQUIET JUNTO!
I started with the samples getting loops going. It was way to fast and complicated so I slowed it down to 100 bpm and crossfaded two parts. I then got the Bjork sample and it went so well with the two parts. I faded in some raw samples at the beginning and the end.
Some much fun. Cheers to Marcus Fischer for the really nice samples.
Hope all are well.

Peace, Hugh

spacelordmother · 2023-07-04T02:20:24.643Z

Like many others here, it’s been awhile since I participated. Told myself last week that I would complete the next assignment hell or high water. I made it!

Process:

Loaded everything into a sampler and started playing around with slices and layers until things started to form. Set everything up so I could mix and tweak everything live and then hit record. I ended up using the following samples in the final track: worn_path, psu_stairs, walking, and nacre_voit, No other sound sources added. Recorded directly to a stereo file with no post processing.

Many thanks to @disquiet and @marcus_fischer for the sounds and inspiration.

FunkGalaxy · 2023-07-04T02:21:52.266Z

I haven’t had the chance to participate in the junto for a while. These samples were very nice to work with! I look forward to hearing everyone’s takes. I used a series of effects and resampling to create some rhythmic variations. Thanks for listening

Soundoferror · 2023-07-04T02:36:05.102Z

Thank you Marcus Fischer for providing the stellar audio material to work with!
used most of the raw materials provided by Marcus, built the piece around the raw samples with minimal processing, just architecture and a bit of reverb… Then processed some with the fabulously fun Granulator II instrument by Robert Henke in Ableton.

JosueArias · 2023-07-04T02:59:50.076Z

Wanted to make something special for this 600 edition: The composition is called “In distance”.
I loaded 3 of the Marcus soundfiles in norns, switched on the excellent Graintopia script by @infinitedigits, programmed the 16n controller for playing with the script and improvised with the upright piano on top. beautifull and evocative textures.
Liked very much using sounds from other sources than myself, openen new workflows

Thanks to Marcus for sharing his sounds
Congrats for the 600th weeks of music and creativity

ps. Just in time at 23:58 from a stormy night with continuous internet shortages in the woods from Patagonia!

thgirwnhoj · 2023-07-04T03:11:39.230Z

First, I dragged each sample on to a track in Ableton’s arrangement view. Seeing the waveforms and comparing the lengths of each sample helped me better understand what I was working with.

I started with “walking” and it seemed to me like it would sound cool if I reversed it, so I did and I liked what I heard. The resulting recording neatly created what I considered to be three different parts, which I then built an A, B and C part off of for my track.

I then used “worn path” as my bass track and kept it pretty simple with a single bass note for each part.

Then I messed around with “PSU Stairs” to create random percussion sounds. I dragged the sample into an Ableton Simpler device and just assigned random MIDI notes until I liked what I heard.

“Street poet” just served as a background, percussive pad type of sound. I did not do much to it except take a different part of the sample for each of the parts of my song. I did a similar thing for “no input” except I used EQ to take out the entire high end because of that high-pitched noise.

Finally, I played around with “nacre voit” and “hands held” as my pads, just trying to layer parts that I liked from those samples in the parts of the song I had developed so far.

I wasn’t satisfied with what I had for a song at this point, so I decided to create some drums from the PSU Stairs sample. I considered playing live drums or using new samples, but decided to try my hand at some sound design. I pitched one of the percussive elements down to create a kick and then captured what sounds like keys jingling to create a tambourine sound. I did similar things for the crash, adding a wash effect, a “snare” and a “shaker” sound.

For mixing, I recently logged into a Focusrite webinar where attendees were given a code to download the FAST plugin bundle. So, I skipped a few steps in mixing this track and left the EQ and reverb to the algorithms.

This was a super fun project and I really am glad to have had the opportunity to participate. I am looking forward to listening to the other submissions and hearing how we all used similar elements.

Edit to add a Bandcamp link: Fireworks Disquiet0600 | John Wright

I have only posted my submissions to SoundCloud so far, but I was thinking of posting them to Bandcamp as well. I like the idea of using BNDCMPR mentioned above.

ymeynard · 2023-07-04T03:33:19.122Z

I finished this early, then hesitated to post it. But how could I miss #600?

gnapier · 2023-07-04T04:22:18.059Z

Wow. Hi Marc! It’s been a little while. I had to participate…I remember Project 0004 which was the very first one to feature material from Marcus Fischer!

Thank you so much for keeping this alive.

Creatures_Once · 2023-07-04T06:09:14.407Z

Reach for 600! Congrats @disquiet . Every week is inspiring. These samples were wonderful.
Quick process this week, but a process that’s alway fun for me. Sliced the samples various ways in Ableton Live’s Simplr and played some new parts on the Push. Reached for a quick arrangement and a mix.

Marco_Marongiu · 2023-07-04T16:32:36.815Z

Deeply sorry, i have lost track of the time. This is my track;

SinnySounds · 2023-07-04T17:14:36.648Z

This was a very fun project. The original demo I had prepared on Thursday was far more dense and utilized all of Marcus Fischer’s samples. As the week progressed, I began peeling away some of the layers to expose some of the rawness of the recordings. The three samples I particularly gravitated towards were the ones titled “nacre_voit”, “no_input_matrix_mixer”, and “street_poet_typing”. With the exception of the “PSU_stairs” recording, all of Fischer’s samples were used in at least some capacity.

orbit_f · 2023-07-04T17:39:47.593Z

Hey y’all soundcloud embed problem seems to be solved. If you feel like editing your posts now it should work properly

Ysbryd · 2023-07-05T06:28:52.283Z

Hey all! I’m grateful to join in this amazing group and project. Congrats to Marc and everyone on reaching 600 weeks! I look forward to hopefully being a regular with you all.

I used all but one of the wonderful samples by Marcus Fischer (thank you, Marcus), adding field recordings (a bird’s nest fern being watered, the sounds of the Aurora Borealis), a bit of synthesis with Playbox and other VST goodies in Logic Pro, and a bit of a sample from the wild samplebrain, which I am still trying to get my head around.

dequalsrxt · 2023-07-05T14:16:25.560Z

Ysbryd:

samplebrain, which I am still trying to get my head around.

Has anyone gotten their head around samplebrain? Is it even something around which heads can get? Not my head anyways.

thgirwnhoj · 2023-07-05T20:45:10.829Z

I am glad someone mentioned samplebrain! I had heard of it, but had not used it and thought it might work for this project. I started to wrap my mind around it, but quit because I was spending too much time trying to get it to make sounds and not enough time working on my track. I think my fatal error was trying to use the full version of the sample files, where I read that samplebrain works better with shorter samples. I say all this because, even though I didn’t use it for this project, I still appreciate that the prompt caused me to try it and now I’m more likely to try again in the future.