**Production Notes**
I found a sample I recorded in the „Klanggarten“ near Grünwald / Straßlach several years ago. You go through a curtain of wooden poles which then collide and make some sounds - quite nice ones, actually. Normally I’d try to shift the transients to archieve a rhythmic pattern, but this time - according to the assignment - I didn’t.
Next I extracted the melody of the pattern with Ableton and added a hand-made patch from Iris. After some piano chords and a simple bass note there still was something missing. It came to me in form of a recording in a church somewhere in Spain.
The result is a absolute rhythmic disaster. I feed the desperate need to give it some sort of rhythmic structure, but the assignment holds me back… so that‘s an itch I won’t scratch this time.
Oh, and btw: I love the book! Recommended read (and not only for Ableton users)
* * *
** Disquiet Junto Project 0220: Rhythmic Arrhythmic**
The Assignment: Make overtly rhythmic music from short loops of overtly arrhythmic source audio, following instructions from Dennis DeSantis.
Dennis DeSantis adapted this week’s project from the chapter “Implied Rhythm in Short Loops” from his excellent book Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers. The project explores how rhythm emerges from almost any audio material if short fragments of it are repeated incessantly enough.
Step 1: Find or make an audio recording of the arrhythmic material of your choice and gradually reduce its loop length until rhythmic patterns begin to emerge.
Tip: This usually works well with loops that are no longer than about two seconds.
Tip: Good sources include: existing music, field recordings, and recordings of speech.
Tip: “Bad” or uneven loops can often yield the most interesting results. Don’t necessarily aim for loops with clean boundaries or that are aligned to zero-crossings.
Step 2: Use the inherent rhythm in these short loops as the basis for a piece of new music in which the “discovered” rhythm is clearly audible.
Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, March 17, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 21, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, though between two and four minutes seems about right.
(…)
More on this 220th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Make overtly rhythmic music from short loops of overtly arrhythmic source audio, following instructions from Dennis DeSantis”) at:
http://disquiet.com/0220/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://disquiet.com/junto/
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
http://disquiet.com/forums/
The photo associated with this project is by Junto member Will Benton (web.willbenton.com), a computer scientist based in Madison, Wisconsin.
