This weekend was Knobcon and I was running top speed throughout the three days with my eyes and ears wide open. Synths and sounds EVERYWHERE. :-) And even more importantly, friends, old and new, also there sharing in the excitement. I got to meet fellow contributor Glenn Sogge in person and we talked at length about everything. It was soo cool to cement a friendship formed through the Disquiet Junto with shared time experienced together in the waking world. I thought about this prompt while I was there and found myself talking a lot about the Disquiet Junto with others. Some knew about it and responded favorably. Others who were unfamiliar expressed curiosity.
The song that immediately leapt into my mind for this is the great Raymond Scott composition "Powerhouse;" www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaC0vNLdLvY as it clearly describes the feel of industrialized activity through its motorik compulsion. Activity often implies rhythm to me. So of course I had very little sense of rhythm in my piece. The only nod to rhythm might be felt in the scalar leaps moving throughout the improvised scale. I felt very much like Terry Riley and could easily play/hear this piece looped for hours in a day, gently prodding me forward while providing a bed to rest in from time to time.
The only sound source in this is my trusty Oberheim Matrix-6 which I got when I was 15. One of the voices gave out years ago, and I took it in to be repaired. The person trying to fix it didn't know what they were doing and the store they worked at eventually went out of business. When I collected the synth back from them, I found it producing no sound at all. Finally, at last year's Knobcon, I took it and my friends Logan Erickson ( @low-gain )and Eric Wistrand put a plan into place to rehabilitate it for me. Eric donated another Matrix-6 which could be scavenged for parts and Logan set out to repair my board. This year it returned to me and it purrs like a kitten now. I was so eager to get my hands on it again and I sat down to create a patch from scratch and played for a few hours. This is a few minutes from those hours. :-)
More on this 245th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Write a piece of music for getting things done, suitable for playing on repeat” — at:
http://disquiet.com/0245/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/make-some-practical-music-disquiet-junto-project-0245/4445
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.