Thank you to @autumn-drones for being a gracious host, a fine collaborator, and an amazing caretaker of synthetic technologies that would make your head spin. Check out his releases:
https://autumndrones.bandcamp.com/
So this week's Junto asks us to share a trick or technique that we utilize with a particular piece of hard/software. My response might be perceived as a willful disregarding of the spirit of this task, but I'm completely serious in my desire to share one of the most important aspects of music creation for me; namely face-to-face collaborations for real-time improvisations. I get such a boost of creative energy by working with other individuals who are consciously creating and responding to our shared space. The improvisational nature makes for an invigorating propulsion, and having another person helping to keep the figurative balls up in the air whilst juggling our way through means one can take more and more risks in development. Are their bumps and blemishes? Of course. But there are also moments approaching the sublime.
Find someone to create with live. Have them come to your place. Go to their place. Take a few pieces of gear. Don't overthink it. Jump in and let it all hang out. Even if the results aren't up to your normal standards, I guarantee you'll learn something new about how you create. If you're fortunate enough to have access to a person like Timothy Stoneberg (aka autumn drones) all the better for you because you'll have even more opportunity to learn through explorations.
This piece is the first one that we knocked out and we started it within minutes of sorting out our audio/control routings. Timothy's Cirklon was his co-brain in this, and they fed MIDI to my Two-Voice Pro. This made my instrument behave in a way that I'd not encountered before. There were certain things that I couldn't do that I normally can ... like octave shift the voices up and down with the press of a button. This meant I would be locked into a relatively narrow pitch range which was an unexpected limitation. So I had to work to change things that I could control, like timbres. I also stepped out and did more raw oscillator tunings that I would normally do, sweeping the dials up and down to at least partially change the pitched zone.
As the song proceeded, I found myself fatiguing of some of the repetitions, and I was keen to try introduce rhythmic variations. I began opening and closing the envelope stages more aggressively, and using the knobs more like I used to approach DJing with a mixer's crossfader while cutting and scratching. This opened up a whole other area for exploration. Finally, being synced to a shared global clock, I discovered I could still adjust my sequence's length anywhere from 1-16 steps, and uneven numbers would create interesting results when played against Timothy's chords, drums, and lead lines.
I know this is ridiculously long contribution, but it really pushed us both to keep things developing, morphing, and changing as the nearly 40 minutes passed.
This was the first time that we worked together and it won't be the last. Production, especially electronic production, can be really an isolated experience. I think that's why so many of us reach out and participate in groups like this. To feel a sense of camaraderie, and to share inspiration with each other. If you enjoy it online, you GOTTA' try it in the flesh.
More on this 242nd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make (and annotate) a track that provides an example of a trick/skill/tip you want to share about a piece of musical software or hardware” — at:
http://disquiet.com/0242/
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:
http://llllllll.co/t/share-yer-knowledge-disquiet-junto-project-0242/4218