Disquiet Junto Project 0625: Noise Ceiling

disquiet · 2023-12-21T03:39:03.719Z

This post popped up at disquiet.com/0625 (thanks, powers of automation) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on Thursday, December 21. (I was asleep at the time — because we had a night without rain, which was a relief.) 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 at my Mastodon account, Bluesky, Threads, and Instagram, etc. And if you’re on a platform, like Mastodon or Instagram, that uses hashtags, please use the #DisquietJunto tag. Much appreciated.

. . .

Disquiet Junto Project 0625: Noise Ceiling
The Assignment: What does this room sound like?

Step 1: The “cover image” to this week’s project is a photograph. Here it is uncropped and without the text superimposed. Think about what this space sounds like:

625-full800×1067 60.9 KB

Step 2: Record a few minutes of the sound of this room, as you imagine it would sound. Engage with this effort, perhaps, less as a musical project and more as a broader sound design project.

Seven Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0625” (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 “disquiet0625” (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-0625-noise-ceiling/

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.

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. A minute or two should do. How long do you want to stay in this room?

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, December 25, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 21, 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 625th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Noise Ceiling (The Assignment: What does this room sound like?), at: https://disquiet.com/0625/

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-0625-noise-ceiling/

bassling · 2023-12-21T10:40:47.988Z

disquiet · 2023-12-21T16:55:16.185Z

The project is now live. Thanks, everyone. And there’s some important information about the weekly emails in this week’s issue.

DeVis · 2023-12-21T17:37:21.634Z

Hugh_Prat · 2023-12-21T22:59:35.224Z

Hey All,
I just got back today from taking my kids to NYC for 5 days so this prompt was great as I had been surrounded by all kinds of sounds. It was kind of sensory overload for me but it was a great change of pace for me.
My kids are into vintage clothes shopping so that it what I thought of for this. It looked like a light in a storage room in the back of a store.
I used about 6 different sounds including a room tone from freesound(credits in description). I used the room tone pitched down in a few tracks and the ambients sounds I really muffled so they sounded outside on the street. I also added reverb and some filtering.
I also made it 2:32 am as it would have been much louder during normal hours.
Speaking of sensory overload. I did not smell one cigarette while I was there but the smell of weed was everywhere outside. Come on North Carolina legalize it!
Hope all are well. Happy Holidays!

Peace, Hugh

Kitzmann · 2023-12-22T00:14:17.217Z

I imagine this room beneath many others and filled with the noise of what is above, which filters down in stutters to me as a I stare at the ceiling. But there are also noises from the anonymous machines that keep everything warm and flowing and I find myself drawn to them as they too are down below, hidden in this room. So I headed down to our basement with an old mini cassette dictaphone and recorded Lynch inspired mumblings while I paced the room. The hum and clicks you hear come from the furnace and dryer and dull roar from the low fi tape recording. Back in the studio I used the Torso T-1 to create some off kilter sequences with a couple of analog synths (which represent what is above the room), tossed in some effects, and connected the dictaphone to an EQ to tame the lonely machines somewhat. Happy Holidays everyone and thanks Marc for an inspiring year.

DeDe · 2023-12-22T09:37:49.879Z

Hi, I imagined a ball bouncing on that concrete room.
The room is huge.
the ball is hollow and metallic.

Used:
Hang (treated with a bouncing delay fx)
Synthesized field recording
Filtered and treated field recording.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS EVERYBODY.

See you in 2024.

disquiet · 2023-12-22T16:36:00.658Z

And the playlist is rolling:

Raincat · 2023-12-23T00:09:27.159Z

The room reminded me of an old job in a hospital. My job sometimes involved visits to the chemical storeroom. It was filled with extractor fans, equipment and generators all humming away. I enjoyed spending time there as I actually found the hum quite soothing.

To recreate the room I recorded as many humming machines as I could find in my studio. So several layers of laptop, hard drives, mixer, tv, lightbulb, and tumble drier. No effects but EQ’d a lot of the treble out of most layers.

lazenbeeindustries · 2023-12-23T00:19:20.810Z

Here’s what I made. I used BeepMap and put the photo into that, then added a couple of synth sounds and a messed up woodblock sound. Makes a kind of horror soundtrack.

tristan_louth_robins · 2023-12-23T01:27:09.699Z

I imagined one of those intermediary empty rooms that workers pass through, a bit like the platform in a stairwell, but all on the same level. I wanted to suggest that this space was located to adjacent rooms and spaces where other things were happening. I think part of the inspiration came from my recent trip to Singapore and transferring train lines through long subterranean thoroughfares of the MRT (Mass Rapid Transport) network.

The bed of the track is a quick modular synth patch of heavily modulated and filtered oscillators and transient pulses of noise. I then mixed in a couple of field recordings which consisted of rough, grey industrial textures suggesting heaviness and slight degrees of movement. Finally, I mixed in a brief phone recording of a multi-lingual PA announcement from one of the Singapore MRT thoroughfares.

I really enjoyed the challenge of achieving an equilibrium in the mix here, suggesting an authentic, but interesting ambience.

For the record - after a minute of curious listening - I’d probably last about four minutes in this space.

CoralineAda · 2023-12-23T03:33:20.808Z

The picture looked like a basement closet to me. So I took my stereo field recorder to the utility closet in my own basement, recorded a CLAP, converted it to an impulse response file, and then turned that into a convolution reverb patch. Essentially, I created an aural simulation of that space, which let me place any sound within that space.

The rhythmic breathing and kick drum are placed fully in that simulated closet space, to create a sensation of “close air”. The background pads also migrate from a very spacious tone to the constricted space of the closet.

he_nu_ri · 2023-12-23T09:21:48.618Z

“Waiting on the sofa on a hot and humid afternoon, in a small dark room, staring up at the ceiling while listening to the sounds of the city drifting in from an open window. It begins to rain.”

Ambient track was created in Ableton live using K-Devices TATAT sequencer with Slate+Ash Spectres plugin. Field recordings of rain and city sounds downloaded from freesound.org were added to the mix.

ossimuratore · 2023-12-23T17:12:38.507Z

Stacked fifth and light bulb noise blend to a C minor chord. An chromatic arpeggiated motive emerges and slowly dissolves into the bulb noise.

Made with NI Maschine+ and ASM Hydrasynth Deluxe.

derangement · 2023-12-23T18:04:18.845Z

love the assignment this week!

recorded various noisy ambiences on my tascam, combined in ableton live - filtering, some panning, touch of reverb

RabMusicLab · 2023-12-23T18:50:05.028Z

For me the photograph looks menacing, and I wonder what is going on below that ceiling.

I started off with slightly unsettling sounds, but then got carried away (as happens from time to time when working on a project ) and made the track happier with every layer added… So I finished that track and discarded it for this project. You can listen to it here: The Room.

I started again and decided to express the uneasiness more drone-like. The track consists of two Hainbach Landfill Totem noise-sounds, one high pitched granular synth sound and a Spitfire Epic Choir. All four sounds have effects added that were automated “live” with the knobs of the Midi-keyboard.

martincee · 2023-12-23T23:42:10.830Z

Disquiet 0625

the lamp without a shade is brash but ineffective,

its metal fitting is dull and suits the dreary grays of the ceiling

although there is water – water pipes on the ceiling and the power line to the lamp even resembles shower tubing, it’s certainly not a room I’d want to spend much time in.

soundscape made by manipulating the sound of a finger fanning the pages of a book and, for the light, the clicking sound of putting the top back onto a felt tip.

Probably too much going on when compared to the image,

happy holidays everybody !

blisterpop · 2023-12-24T02:01:25.008Z

“The Lady With The Watermelon Hugs” by Wishbook (disquiet0625)

Recorded, mixed & mastered 23 Dec 2023 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

Process notes

Over the course of a few hours, I recorded alto saxophone in my bathroom six times using my iPhone in various places in the room - in the shower, by the dripping sink, near the running toilet. Any incidental noises in the room - water, movement - have been left in these recordings. The room I used was an important part of my recording.

A bit later in the day, I imported all six recordings into Ableton Live and divided them evenly into as many tracks and into three groupings. Each group was given one instance of Baby Audio’s Transit. The last group was further subdivided into four tracks total. Each grouping’s individual tracks was also given one effect. I used Live native devices throughout as well as Arturia EFx Refract and SynthesizerWriter AUD HexFrequencyShifter.

After getting a good mix, I mastered using iZotope Ozone 9.

Artwork: Jim Lemanowicz, 27 Feb 2010

lazenbeeindustries · 2023-12-24T10:46:29.213Z

Love this! Creates a very compelling soundscape. Love the horns as well!

henklass · 2023-12-24T19:40:42.636Z

Some 52 years ago there was this very famous psychedelic rockband that had this song about someone having breakfast. The slow echo on his voice made for a fine psychedelic atmosphere. And now there is the Disquiet Junto 0625 that asks:What does this room sound like? It is a not too large room with bare concrete walls, so there will be a strong fast echo that will make for a fine neurotic atmosphere. So I recorded myself having lunch, added a fast echo and filled the silent passages with music. I had just begun experimenting with duplicating a sequence and sending the clock signal through a Bernoulli Gate at 50%. I added a delay, panned the dry signals hard left and right and the delayed signals hard right and left. It adds nicely to the neuroticism.

There is a snippet available at SoundCloud, because, well, SoundCloud: