disquiet0025-skedsong, disquiet Kaboodle Sound
Unscheduled Stop [disquiet0025-skedsong]

Created for the Disquiet Junto.

[Warning: HEAVY BASS RUMBLE in this track]

Assignment:

"This week's project treats the previous week's (project 24) as its source material. The goal of project 25 is to construct a single track made from audio elements that were initially intended to serve as sonic alerts. The tracks contributed to project 24 included four distinct elements, one each to signify the arrival of an email, the arrival of an IM, the arrival of a phone call, and a calendar event. Please select one or two tracks from project 24 and make a new song by combining their individual parts. Please structure your new song in the form of a day: opening, for example, with an alarm clock, and ending at bedtime. You can add new sounds and you can transform the elements from the pre-existing tracks."

Method:

Well, I tried to do something nice and beat-driven with a selection of samples from last week's project (disquiet.com/2012/06/14/disqui...0024-alertsuite), but I couldn't get anywhere with producing anything I liked.

As I'm moving house next weekend, and have a LOT of other things to sort out, I couldn't spend as much time as I'd have liked to on this. In trying for a quick result, I ended up exclusively using Paulstretch (hypermammut.sourceforge.net/paulstretch) and Audacity.

There were a lot of great tracks to choose from last week. I eventually managed to narrow my choices down to four tracks that I thought I could work with.

I was going to use these, but I couldn't do them justice. Maybe another time:
soundcloud.com/thereflectors/c...op-disquiet0024
soundcloud.com/notl/tintinnabuli-tones

But I ended up using samples from these:
soundcloud.com/average-alien/d...0024-alertsuite
soundcloud.com/sighup/prompt

I chopped up all four tracks in Audacity, generating single hits and short samples.

I tried and failed to create some kind of bizarre hip-hop beat on the Korg Electribe ESX. My initial idea was to start with a kind of 'wake up' call and the gradually chill the track out, ending with Westy Reflector's sunny guitar loop. But the beats just weren't working. I should have added extra instruments, but I had wanted to keep this very basic.

Eventually, I became frustrated and irritable and was running out of time, so I decided to just abandon everything, and make something quick and relaxing. The most obvious thing to do was use Paulstretch for a 'quick result'.

For no apparent reason, I decided the track would be 4 minutes and 44 seconds long, so I stretched all of Average Alien and Sighup's samples to that length. The samples were all only a few seconds at most.

The idea is that I would structure the track as an antidote to a stressful, scheduled day. My intention was to build tension in the track and then release it towards the end, but it didn't work out like that. I kind of like the way the alert sounds have been stretched beyond breaking point to make them into something much slower-paced and non-urgent, but it seems like an obvious 'trick'.

I ran some samples backwards, some forwards, some pitched-shifted up or down, some shortened when Paulstretch made the track too long. I ended up mixing 11 different Paulstretch tracks in 6 different ways. I then mixed all 6 mixes with one of the stretched tracks to create the final track.

The irony is, I ended up spending even longer fiddling about with Paulstretch and getting the right sounds (about 2 hours or so) than it would have taken me to finish off the hip-hop style track. Oh well.

I'm sure most people won't find it all that relaxing, but it worked for me. I find listening to Diamanda Galas and Foetus therapeutic, so I guess I'm 'different'...

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Track image adapted from this image:

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...lderly_Shed.png

(The idea was 'Shed Yule'. Not hilarious, but it was all I had in me.)

[Note to our American 'cousins' - here in Britain, many of us pronouce 'schedule' "shed-yule", and not "sked-yule". It's mostly the 'old school' ('school' pronounced "skool") who say "shed-yule", and those WHO CAN SPEAK PROPER, LIKE.]

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More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
Disquiet Junto