Disquiet Junto Project 0602: Choice Words

orbit_f · 2023-07-16T21:14:01.749Z

“Chiaroscuro”, italian for “light-dark” […] is the use of strong contrasts between light and dark, usually bold contrasts affecting a whole composition.

I chose the word chiaroscuro as I find this contrast appropriate to my mood of this period of my life.

For this patch I recorded bass into Morphagene and then effected it with a bit of Mimeophon. Then I added a lead line made with ARP2600 clone into Norns Pedalboard with Phaser and Resonator, then plugged into a preamp and then to QPAS for further effects.
The bass plays harmonics A-D-A (7-7-5 frets) and G-D-G (5-5-3 frets).
I used G double harmonic scale (G-Ab-B-C-D-Eb-F#) for the lead voice.

A simple patch

Morphagene → Mimeophon → Out 2
Wogglebug Int Clock out → Mimeophon Clock In
Maths Ch. 4 (Cycle) → Morphagene R in (Pmin option on)

Arp out (osc1 and osc2 square out +filter+ar) → Norns Pedalboard (Phaser + Resonator) → preamp → QPAS smile out → Out 1
Preamp → mult → QPAS, Maths Ch. 1 In
Maths Ch. 1 out → QPAS Freq 1 in
Maths Inv out → QPAS Q In

blisterpop · 2023-07-16T22:22:24.536Z

I really liked that lead sound @orbit_f !

Jazzaria · 2023-07-16T23:20:18.018Z

Wriggle, squiggle - perhaps giggle. Wiggle, jiggle - down a big hill. Many a worm has many times squirmed, a term to confirms a firm worm that affirms.

Featuring bodhran, Irish flute and whistle, bouzouki, concertina, harp, fiddle, bagpipes, and acoustic guitar.

Process - I went to a random word website and hit refresh until one resonated a bit. That one was “wriggle”, which summoned a 3/4 meandering chromatic motif.

For instrumentation I went entirely with (sampled/virtual) Irish/celtic, resulting in a sort of wriggly jig feel I think.

SamPlair · 2023-07-17T01:44:33.320Z

Long story short my word was ‘unsettling’.

I’ve been listening to Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s work lately. The opening title track for White Lotus first caught my attention with his crazy use of voice, chopped up and pitch shifted, not burying it under effects, trying to pass, instead leaning into the imperfection of granular Also reminded me of hours spent with the Casio SK1 and its sample button. I’m a big fan of horror and his soundtrack for The Smile took those concept in a frightening direction. Highly recommended.

I was thinking about how important a soundtrack is in supporting a mood particularly in tension and tried to recreate that feeling incorporating a last breath.

I’m pretty happy with the jump scare about a minute in and hope the breathing doesn’t come across like a bad telephone call your babysitter got on halloween.

The process here patch wise was to use the Music Thing for atmospheric surprises (like the Maritime church bell, I think), and a bunch of breathing files from yours truly. I used The O_c Calculate for random CV into the Carpeggio with a Brains Super Saw algo into Black Hole. The O_c was also tracking Parameter 1 and 2 of the Black Hole. Rings was in there somewhere but couldn’t ever get it to sound creepy….too nice. Morphagene mutated the breathing, still trying to figure out that beast and modulated all over the place thanks to pachinko.

Minimal processing with Ableton, just compression and lots of edits.

See attached.

0602patch1920×1440 340 KB

unsettleton1920×849 167 KB

orbit_f · 2023-07-17T06:27:56.807Z

@blisterpop thanks a lot! It’s a really simple patch, it’s just two square OSC into a LP filter and a VCA controlled by AR envelope and midi keyboard, sent into a resonator and phaser and QPAS smile filter. It had some nasty sweet spots that were even distorted, but I opted to edit them out of the final track.

vgmrmojo · 2023-07-17T11:50:45.067Z

disquiet0602
Preferred Words
• Key: F# minor BPM: 95 Time signature: 4/4 DAW: Reaper
• Instruments: Synths, Guitar, Bass
• Plug-ins: Playbox, Kontour, Massive
• IDEA: Make a piece of music that strives to express a specific word.
• PROCESS: Chose the word linear with a random word generator. Played the F# minor scale one note at a time in order going up the scale from i to VII.
• RESULT: A linear progression up the F# minor scale one note at a time ( all notes the same length) with 4 different sounds

doodledigital · 2023-07-17T12:15:35.819Z

this has really soothed me, what a wonderful distillation of the word you chose

spacelordmother · 2023-07-17T12:22:55.822Z

Thank you, I am so glad!

SamPlair · 2023-07-17T12:34:08.631Z

@Jazzaria - are these all virtual instruments? You recorded this in a couple of days? Madman. Impressive to say the least.

@orbit_f - do you mean an Arp 2600? Can’t place that lead sound at all. I guess you completely transformed it, nice work. Sounds like some kind of moroccan distortion jazz. Cool.

@kterauch - Wow this one unexpectedly picked up in such a great way! I love the word choice and was just getting lulled into the dusk when I found myself in the middle of downtown with a second wind. Over too soon but that’s what kept me coming back for multiple listens. Those chord changes….just once!???!

@Jostijn - what a process. Very unsettling sounding to me, have to remember this approach to scoring. The plug in sounds incredible, wish I could have heard you take a crack at playing it live. I’m all for those amazing failures which can be so great sometimes.

@Hugh_Prat - ha I’ll never get over that name. Fantastic wobbly beat for summertime California, get me some hydraulics. Feels like it was just getting started - a la Dilla.

@Anatol - I like how this progressively picks up and even sounds like an alarm going off towards the end. It got me out of bed and had some coffee ready.

@Noimspartacus - great wobbly track that sounds like a moist dub, I’m getting a contact high.

@Glitcher - you’re making me rethink the bit crush just when I wrote it off as too recognizable. I need more stereo like this in my mixes.

I really look forward to these projects every week, thanks for the inspiration and community.

orbit_f · 2023-07-17T14:09:20.307Z

It’s a Behringer Blue Marvin.
You can see the patch as it was when I recorded the lead

IMG_20230717_1604301920×1440 275 KB

Aethyr · 2023-07-17T16:20:18.026Z

hello.

this was a frustrating one. i had some vague ideas but nothing substantial enough to put into action. eventually i settled on using some of the composition aid plugins i have; initially i wanted to use mixed in key’s captain plugins epic, which had recently updated, but there’s some issue with the authorisation and i can’t get it to work.

i ended up using another suite of plugins from the same creator, pilot, to generate a melody, bass, and arp. i started with the melody, had the bass come in after 8 bars, and the arp come in after another 8.

in terms of instruments, i wanted to use uvi’s augmented piano which i had bought recently. i used this for the melody but abandoned my original idea of using it for all the parts. for the bass i had a really hard time settling on something, i knew i wanted to use arturia’s analog lab v but choosing what to use was harder than it should have been, however i eventually settled on something that fit.

the arp was using another instance of uvi’s falcon (which i’d also used for the augmented piano), and i ended up going through a bunch of different settings before i settled on one. i had to do this quickly as i hadn’t even started until monday afternoon.

i added some randomness to each part using bitwig’s note effects, and added some processing to each as well. i ran the whole thing through my standard mastering chain.

i eventually got captain plugins to work (well, sort of; i found the correct registration code but the plugin kept locking up) but i was already exasperated and fed up so i decided not to add any more elements, even though a drum part might have been good.

overall i’m quite pleased with it, certainly happier than i was with last week’s project. there are still a few elements that are a bit harsh or discordant but i’ve had enough of working on it so they’re just going to have to remain.

my word is ‘experiment’ because that’s how i approached making this piece. art, as usual, from nightcafe studio.

XHG · 2023-07-17T19:17:24.743Z

My word for this week‘s Junto is “Fätzä“ which is Swiss German and can mean

a scrap of paper or a rag
a fat man (in a positive way); sometimes it is used as a nickname in that sense
doing something in a very energetic way like dancing or making music.

So you hear the word with some live effects in Koala, accompanied by two beats. The more obvious one was provided by my good fried New Age and mangled by me. The drawing is based on the first image search result for the word.

doodledigital · 2023-07-17T20:35:09.815Z

I cannot stop looking at this drawing, it is so good! Thanks for introducing me to this word, it’s an intriguing one.

Marco_Marongiu · 2023-07-17T21:01:45.674Z

Nothingness

A state where nothing is present, or where nothing exists that is important or gives meaning to life.

OhWell · 2023-07-18T00:53:09.780Z

I love @Rodrigo 's use of the word “tickly” as applied to sounds and processes in this conversation. I was curious to explore this theme on Hikari Duos.

Live improvisation on Hikari Duos. Light reverb was applied in post.

jzed · 2023-07-18T02:37:54.265Z

Twenty four permutations of four syllables and four sounds (percussion + sound effects).

This one was kind of obvious once I thought of it. The percussion sounds are samples from the Ableton library. The sound effects are from pro sound effects. I just grabbed the first four sounds that caught my attention; a camel, an alligator, a metal door, and rain on a metal roof. I made it much more complicated at first and eventually scaled the whole thing back. The one happy accident in the piece occurred when I hit the legato button in Ableton’s piano roll. The last note of each permutation extended to play under the voice of each subsequent permutation. This move accidentally created four distinct sections.

Soundoferror · 2023-07-18T03:37:01.565Z

The Word Was: Reverence
Synthesizer & keys in some melodic choral mode sustaining and modulating, with an intro of granular sampling in adoration of the complexity, simplicity and wonders of this life all are given.

blisterpop · 2023-07-19T02:02:25.728Z

I love what the sustain/verb brings to this.

kterauch · 2023-07-20T02:16:20.599Z

Awe, slow excitement and a little fear? I enjoyed reflecting on the word “reverence.”

Jazzaria · 2023-07-23T22:23:23.252Z

@Jazzaria - are these all virtual instruments? You recorded this in a couple of days? Madman. Impressive to say the least.

@SamPlair yeah all virtual instruments - a heavy dose of UVI World Suite 2 (UVI World Suite 2 - Instruments from around the globe) but with the “Modern Bodhrán” from Libre Wave - https://librewave.com/product/modern-bodhran/

I particularly like Libre Wave as they really embrace open source (a rarity in the sampling world), but UVI products are generally solid and a bit more disk-efficient than a lot of their competitors IMO.

And thanks! Yup I do a track a week (whether or not it’s a Disquiet Junto participant ), which realistically often means I’m doing most of the work a day or two ahead of releasing. I try to have a buffer / some tracks that bake for longer, but also treat the whole thing as a sort of long term music journaling project (with a heavy dose of improvisation).