Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate.
This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, August 8, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, August 12, 2013, as the deadline.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0084: Quotidian Thread
This week’s project involves field recordings. It entails the process of connecting two brief recordings of everyday sound. The connection is made by locating an element within each of the two recordings, and then creating a transition from one to the next. The finished track should be a maximum of 60 seconds long. As always, it is greatly appreciated if you can describe your decision-making in the text that accompanies your uploaded track.
The steps are as follows:
Step 1: Record two brief field recordings. One should be fairly noisy and the other relatively quiet.
Step 2: Listen closely to both recordings and locate a useful 10-second segment in each. Trim the two 10-second segments.
Step 3: Listen closely to the fairly noisy 10-second segment, and in it locate a single sound that is prominent enough to be isolated.
Step 4: Listen closely to the relatively quiet 10-second segment, and in it locate a single sound that is prominent enough to be isolated.
Step 5: Develop an original composition that is structured as follows: The first 10 seconds are of the noisy field recording. During the final second, the noisy field recording should slowly fade out. As it fades, the one sound you have elected to isolate in Step 3 should continue playing. After the rest of the recording has faded away entirely, that one isolated sound from Step 3 should slowly transform into the sound that you elected to isolate in step 4. Once the transition from the Step 3 isolate to the Step 4 isolate is complete, you should fade in the 10-segment of the relatively quiet field recording.
Step 6: You are now done.
Deadline: Monday, August 11, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your track should have a duration of between 30 and 60 seconds.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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.
Title/Tag: Include the term “disquiet0084-quotidianthread”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: Please consider employing a license that allows for attributed, commerce-free remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
More on this 84th Disquiet Junto project, in which two distinct field recordings are connected through a transition between isolated elements, at:
Disquiet Junto Project 0084: Quotidian ThreadMore details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/