A quick lunchtime office-ambience experiment, taking Buddha Machines by the duo FM3 and making new background music loops from them. Two Buddha Machines (the blue device is generation one, the uncertain color generation two), each going into separate channels, the input gain adjusted according to the selected loops. The gen-one device is split, half right to the voltage-controlled mixer, and half into Smog (a remix of the Mutable Instruments module Clouds). The Smog route provides some haze in the background. Both the gen-one and gen-two lines are then being operated on (their amplification adjusted by voltage control) thanks to dual pairs of rapid, unsynced LFOs (originating from the Batumi, those combined levels then adjusted by the SPO). And a much slower LFO from the neighboring Dixie II module is occasionally introducing a higher frequency range, which adds another layer. This experiment started off somewhere else entirely (that somewhere involving envelopes), and then was employing very slow LFOs throughout. But then the sound of the rapid LFOs worked even better. A very fast LFO can, in a manner of speaking, serve a slow LFO as well. The title, “Glass Horizon,” is a joke about how down the road there would be a Philip Glass collaboration on a Buddha Machine, but for now these automated arpeggios will have to suffice.
Current Activities
Upcoming
• December 13, 2021: This day marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• December 28, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the Instagr/am/bient compilation.
• January 6, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Recent
• July 28, 2021: This day marked the 500th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto music community.
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the book The Music Production Cookbook: Ready-made Recipes for the Classroom (Oxford University Press), edited by Adam Patrick Bell. Ethan Hein wrote one, and I did, too.
• A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the book The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning (Oxford University Press), edited by Stephanie Horsley, Janice Waldron, and Kari Veblen. (Details at oup.com.)Ongoing
• The Disquiet Junto series of weekly communal music projects explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity. There is a new project each Thursday afternoon (California time), and it is due the following Monday at 11:59pm: disquiet.com/junto.
• My book on Aphex Twin's landmark 1994 album, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, was published as part of the 33 1/3 series, an imprint of Bloomsbury. It has been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018).
disquiet junto
Background
Since January 2012, the Disquiet Junto has been an ongoing weekly collaborative music-making community that employs creative constraints as a springboard for creativity. Subscribe to the announcement list (each Thursday), listen to tracks by participants from around the world, read the FAQ, and join in.Recent Projects
• 0507 / In DD’s Key of C / The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key.
• 0506 / Wipe Out / The Assignment: Take something whole and erase half of it.
• 0505 / Line Out / The Assignment: Share a track, get feedback, and give feedback.
• 0504 / Transform Formula / The Assignment: Take a sound, change it, and contrast that with the original.
• 0503 / Sing Song / The Assignment: Record a song using only your voice transformed beyond recognition.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 507 consecutive weeks to date.