Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, January 28, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, January 24, 2019.
Tracks will be added to the playlist for the duration of the project.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0369: Final Solo The Assignment: Record the final third of a trio, adding to a pre-existing track, based itself on a prior pre-existing track.
Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project is the third in a sequence that explores and encourages asynchronous collaboration. This week you will be adding music to a pre-existing track, which you will source from the previous week’s Junto project (disquiet.com/0368). Note that you are finishing a trio: you’re creating the third part of what two previous musicians created. Keep this in mind.
Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice, as a complement to a pre-existing track. First, however, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are more than 50 tracks in all to choose from, most as part of this SoundCloud playlist:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0368
And then at least one non-SoundCloud track is in last week’s discussion:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0368-engage-duo/
To select a track, you can listen through all that and choose one, or you can use a random number generator. (Note: it’s perfectly fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece.)
Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly the length of the piece of music you selected in Step 2. The source track should have one musical line running in the left channel and another in the right. You should pan your addition, the final third of this trio, in the center. When composing and recording your part, do not alter the original pieces of music at all. To be clear: the track you upload won’t be your piece of music alone; it will be a combination of the track from Step 2 and yours.
Step 4: Also be sure, when done, to make the finished track downloadable, because it may be used by someone else in a subsequent Junto project.
Background: One concept behind this project is “triadic awareness,” which comes from an idea I learned about when I was reading a book by Frans de Waal, the primate scientist. The concept correlates nicely with such ideas as “ambient awareness” and “parallel productivity” that have long been underlying concepts in the Disquiet Junto projects. Writing with Molly Embree, de Waal has defined “triadic awareness” as “the ability to understand relationships of others independently of one’s own involvement.”
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0369” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0369” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0369-final-solo/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #disquietjunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Additional Details:
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, January 28, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, January 24, 2019.
Length: Your finished track will be roughly the length of the track you chose to add to.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0369” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and be sure to 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. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: Please for this project be sure to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 369th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Final Solo / The Assignment: Record the final third of a trio, adding to a pre-existing track, based itself on a prior pre-existing track) at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0369-final-solo/
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this project is adapted (edited, color altered, text added) from a photo by Anna J and is used via Flickr thanks to a Creative Commons license:
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