Disquiet Junto Project 0681: Drama Course

[disquiet]

This post popped up at disquiet.com/0681 (thanks to the powers of automation) shortly after 12:10am Pacific Time on Thursday, January 16. (I was asleep at the time.) The email containing those instructions went out around the same time, also automatically, via juntoletter.disquiet.com. Come morning, after I woke up, I posted the instructions here, and at my Mastodon account, plus 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 0681: Drama Course
The Assignment: Record a piece of music to transform a walk or a run into something theatrical.

Step 1: Choose a length of time for a proper walk (or run), maybe 10 to 30 minutes.

Step 2: Think of how that walk might be experienced by someone if that person were made to feel as if they were in a thriller. As the composer, you can set the pace with a steady beat, and add music, and sound effects, maybe even bits of dialog. The idea is someone listening to your track while walking will have a much more dramatic experience.

Step 3: Record the piece of music you imagined in Step 2.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0681” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0681-drama-course/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How long is the walk?

Deadline: Monday, January 20, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 681st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Drama Course — The Assignment: Record a piece of music to transform a walk or a run into something theatrical — at https://disquiet.com/0681/

[disquiet]

And the project is now live. Thanks, folks. Oh, and there was an error in the email newsletter, where the title of the project was wrong, so the link to this post was wrong, but since you’re reading this you ended up in the right place.

[blisterpop]

Mars In The Nondeterministic House (disquiet0681)

Recorded, mixed & mastered on 16 Jan 2025 by Jim Lemanowicz at Blissville Electro-Magnetic Laboratories of Massapequa.

Using an AI-generated drum generator I had put together this week, I generated some midi, used some for bass and some for drums. I won’t get into too many details but the sustained sound is a bassoon or sample or something. It reminded me a little of Cale’s viola on the first VU.

For this I thought of some innocent with headphones on…in some 80s shock suspense horror film out for a walk after an argument with the parents unaware that they were being followed by some evil thing. Kind of lulled away from intense emotion and zoning out to something not too engaging but not without movement. Maybe the result of the Walkman’s radio dial getting stuck after the device was thrown.

This might sound contrived but as I was coming up with this I was thinking of David Lynch’s Wild At Heart and the loop of Wicked Game in the car crash scene. This was about 45 min before I knew he had died. I am sad beyond belief.

Artwork/Photography - Jim Lemanowicz, Massapequa, NY, USA - 11 Sep 2016

©2025 Jim Lemanowicz

[xiiixxi]

Decided to go with the running/jogging scenario so kept a steady beat but warped just about everything else into some sort of kaleidoscopic horror-scape ( I wasn’t sure if this week’s graphic was a footprint or a skull … ).

Maybe running across that misty parkland isn’t such a wise move on these dark, cold January mornings …

[ray_cobley]

[euclidian]

[disquiet]

And the playlist is rolling. Thanks, folks.

[CoralineAda]

Disquiet Junto 0681 directed us to compose a sonic scene from a thriller, a walk or run to remember. If you’re familiar with my work you know that I love a good narrative piece, and recently the Junto has encouraged a bit of sound design, so I felt well-prepared.

I wanted to avoid the trope of a woman being followed late at night, and instead went with the trope of the hitchhiker who may not be all that she seems to be. I spent a lot of time on stereo orchestration so please use headphones when listening.

Instrumentation was simple: a custom pad called “Shipwreck Organ” provided the pedal tone, with a lonely live guitar following along with minimal and mournful notes.

There were a lot of samples used in this piece. The cars passing along the highway were hidden deep in Apple’s Final Cut Pro library folder. The sound of single car approaching, idling, car door slamming, and pulling away is a composite of samples from Pixabay and field recordings. The BBC archive provided the car crash sample. The night sounds were from a field recording made in rural Virginia. The crunch of gravel underfoot took a bit of foley work: a recording of a potato mashing into a bowl of granola and manipulated a bit in Logic. The under-the-breath singing and humming of the hitchhiker was a live vocal performance recorded in studio and processed. I tried and failed to track down a license for the music sample— hopefully fair use covers this.

RIP David Lynch.

[XHG]

I am in the fortunate situation that I can walk to work. So I recorded this short walk of about 8 minutes. Most of it is along a small river, a bit away from traffic (see cover image). About half way, I cross the river over a small waterfall and later recross it over a wooden bridge. The walk ends with a beep of the badge reader.

There is some natural drama on this walk with birds and sounds of the river. What would make it more dramatical would be a lot more people (instead of the two dog walkers I say hello to). So I took this as an excuse to go crazy with speech synthesis, which I probably use far too often. I have a very soft spot for Plaits “Alpha Tango Foxtrot”. It’s all a bit “la la la” of course.

So there you have it: added drama. Lovely walks to everyone!

[Hugh_Prat]

Hey All, I used sounds from freesound. I had originally had a synth and drums part but I thought the pants were enough of a rhythm track. I panned to different places in the stereo field. I also had the tempo gradually increasing and falling abruptly toward the end. I thought when listening to the playback of a pack of wolves on the prowl. Hope all are well.
Cheers to David Lynch.

Peace, Hugh

[tristan_louth_robins]

Background

This is one of those submissions that I feel a bit guilty about. On the one hand it was enormous fun to put together this afternoon, but on the other hand I feel like it’s inexplicable from a compositional perspective since from beginning to end it was one kitchen sink stacked on another. At several points I thought to myself, “This is ridiculous and I have no idea where this is going at all.”

It all started out with very John Carpenter intentions, and then, well…

It probably didn’t help my focus given that over the summer break I’d been reacquainting myself with silly action movies, which I often indulge in when I’ve got an extended patch of staycation time. Over the past three weeks, we’ve had a host of James Bond, Johnny Mnemomic, The Running Man and Double Team (oh boy, Double Team…) I suppose running amongst high stakes is a fixture of dumb films like this. Especially in the case of the Double Team climax, where after evading a couple of tigers trained by Mickey Rourke in Rome’s Colosseum, JCVD and Dennis Rodman outrun an explosion, where about a dozen flaming Coke machines tumble after them. Is it ‘thrilling’? Certainly in a suspended disbelief kind of way

The end scene of Double Team (1997)

Studio approach

From the beginning this track was a nice excuse to fire up a couple of modular synth modules and attempt to sync an external sequencer from a drum pattern in Logic. Given I couldn’t do this with my sequencer, I suspect this is where things sped playfully off the rails. In its place came a gnarly oscillator warble which opens the track and beneath this a bitcrushed ML-trained drum pattern.

Then I added some metal riffs and a luminous bridge section. Next came a strange Logic guitar effect which treats the guitar signal through a rapid clock-tapped filter which I like the sound of. Then came the Acid House bass synths to accentuate the punch of the drums and chunky riffs.

If that wasn’t enough, I felt like this needed to go harder, so I edited the drum pattern sequences to emulate some over-zealous double kickdrum figures. I then tweaked the levels a bit, exported this, listened back and wondered where the last three hours had gone.

Is this music for running away from flaming Coke machines or - more conventionally - being pursued by an axe-wielding maniac? It could be both. I’m really not so sure anymore.

Great fun though.

[Kitzmann]

I imagined a walk in the woods, which starts out blissfully enough and then ends in darkness and a tangle of aggressive branches and unseen monsters. Hence the cheery sequence, all in C major, that starts off the track which then begins to break down, first with a bit of dissonance before being completely taken over by a low drone that takes the hapless walker into the Black Lodge of their dreams. All this was done in Logic, using Arturia’s “mallets” plug in and granular effects.

[krakenkraft]

I started with a bassline and had a kind of wet step drum. I wanted the bass and drums to swell on and off, two people chasing each other and stopping to look around.

The main motif that builds up depicts the chaser getting closer and closer. All but the mastering is done in my old trusted caustic app.

[he_nu_ri]

I imagined this soundscape depicting a walk through a dark foreboding forest. Main melody was created from an upbeat Muzak sample that was slowed way down using PaulXStretch. It was interesting to hear how unsettling the tune became as result of the change. While creating this, I had the passing of David Lynch on my mind. Hopefully, this piece conveys at least a touch of his creative spirit and inspiration.

Used Audiomodern Playbeat for drums and percussion. Added additional tracks in Ableton Live using Madrona Labs Sumu, Slate+Ash Spectres and field recording samples. Cableguys ShaperBox 3, Eventide Blackhole, Madrona Labs Aalto, Phonolyth Cascade, and Ableton 12 Roar were the effects used.

[ses]

Untitled Walk 20.1.2025

This is a 9 minute rendition, but the notation for the five voices is deterministic, and can be arranged for longer renditions for longer walks. My initial intention was to present a folder of short “musical objects” to be played in shuffle, but could not complete it due to the time constraint.

[Aethyr]

hello.

so like many others here, my mind immediately went to “horror movie soundtrack” when i saw the prompt.

however, i think my approach might be slightly different: i suffer from severe anxiety and agoraphobia, so any walk outside is already rather tense for me, and i tried to convey some of that feeling in the music.

i dug through my aiva songs (‘ai’ music thing that can generate midi files, really it’s just algorithmic generation) and found one with the generation profile ‘mysterious piano & moody melody’ which seemed to fit the horror soundtrack vibe.

i took the midi into bitwig and fiddled around with instruments and effects. bearing in mind i didn’t even get to start this until sunday night because i’ve had a blocked ear which makes working on music rather fruitless, i was aware that i only had a few hours at most to finish it by the deadline, so i didn’t do anything too elaborate or crazy this time. maybe if i’d had more time, it could have had more depth and complexity, but it is what it is.

i feel like i’ve come up with something reasonably decent even though i had to rush, and there’s almost a ‘heartbeat’ sound in my piece, which fits the concept. i also like the way the ending/outro has come out somewhat unresolved, which again is in line with the idea.

i’m slightly disappointed with the image i generated for this; as usual i used nightcafe, but frustratingly they were having technical problems which meant very few models would actually generate anything. still, i guess it works as a sort of ‘comic panel’ look.

hope people like.

[RabMusicLab]

I hadn’t originally planned to participate in this project, as it seemed rather complex and I didn’t have the time. But today in the late afternoon I was tempted to join, because the sad death of David Lynch needed to be reflected somehow…
My only field recording of a walk was a walk through Heidelberg main station (recorded last year in November). So I started with that. At the end of the recording I mixed it with a version treated with the granular effect Silo and added pitched slices of a small part of the recording played randomly.
The idea is that when you reach the track, you enter a mystical place…

I improvised the piano melody in one take (with some midi editing of course). Then I added a Hainbach Landfill Totem and a choir sound (with heavy effects).

[lazenbeeindustries]

I took the dog out for a walk and recorded some audio. I then ran it through a bunch of reverb, loops etc, added a little bass, guitar and piano and this is what I got.

[alanholding]

Hello. Here’s my contribution. Apologies it’s late, again, as I didn’t have time to upload it yesterday.

This was mostly done with Bitwig Studio sequencing some synth plugins and raiding my folder of Audio Hijack recorded doodlings from my small Eurorack for the creepy noises. I used Valhalla Plate for the reverbs and u-he Presswerk to “master” it (which I’m rubbish at, sorry mastering experts!).

The story behind the track is that when I was a nipper I used to walk to school. Part of my route took me through a very (very!) long subway tunnel underneath the M56 motorway in Manchester. It always freaked me out, either because of the noise of the traffic above, the faulty lighting, the horrible “ambience” and the worry that some scary beastie (vampire, werewolf, rabid pigeon, choose your own adventure here) would get me in its claws and have me for tea. I suppose the “chorus” (if you can call it that) is me just trying to pretend that everything is OK, ignore the paranoia and just get to the exit as quickly as possible!

Thanks.

[disquiet]

It may be late where you are, @alanholding, but it’s fine here in California, where it’s still January 20th.