disquiet0021-4seasons, disquiet Kaboodle Sound
Unseasoned [disquiet0021-4seasons]

A track created for the Disquiet Junto.

Assignment:

"For this project you will employ four distinct samples. Each sample will individually represent one of the four seasons: spring, summer,autumn, winter. You will either construct your own field recordings to represent these seasons, [... or use] provided samples.

"Once you have collected your four samples, you will construct one single track from them. The track will be between two and four minutes in length. Each of the four seasonal samples will be highlighted insequence for one quarter the length of your track, and there should be discernible transitions between the four segments — that is to say,each sample/season should slowly transform into the next. The underlying sonic bed should be constructed only from the four samples in combination — and in that role, they can be transformed as much as you desire. There should be no additional sounds. While a given sample is in the foreground (that is, during its prominent quarter of the overall track) it should remain at least somewhat recognizable."

Method:

I decided to keep this one fairly simple, as I was pushed for time.

My aim was to evoke the cycle of the year as being a continuous, fluid movement, with separate defined sections that share many features. (For example, it is windy in Autumn and Winter, ice forms in Winter andmelts in Spring, it rains in Spring and is stormy in Summer, etc.)

I used four of my own original samples (all recorded in the Highlands of Scotland) - in the order they appear in the track, they are:

• Spring: birds, barking dog and stream recorded in Culloden woods at the end of March 2011
• Summer: contact mic recording of a thunder storm, near Inverness, July 2011. (Contact mics taped to a window).
• Autumn: wind at the edge of cliffs, recorded near Durness April 2011 (didn't have any recordings I wanted that were recorded in Autumn)
• Winter: logs crackling in a fireplace, Moray, April 2012 (it was snowing outside, and just like Winter)

All recordings made on a Zoom h4N, using the internal mic and Jez Riley French's superb contact mics. (See hydrophones.blogspot.co.uk/and soundcloud.com/jezrileyfrench)

I was originally going to use a recording of ice melting in a drainpipe (recorded with Jez Riley hydrophones) for the Winter section, butI preferred the feeling and statement of the crackling fire.

In Audacity, I chopped the samples into 55 second slices. I manipulated them slightly so that the transitions were noticeable but still fairly smooth. I slowed them down a little in the last 5 seconds, and applied fade-ins and fade-outs.

Next, I assembled a 'sonic bed' from the four 55 second samples by time-stretching them to the length of the 4 samples blended together (2 minutes and 55 seconds). I also layered them in various other ways, creating an (unnecessarily) complex background - a mixture of mono and stereo, pitch-shifted, time-stretched and reversed mixes and layers.

Lastly, I pasted the main mix of the four samples flowing into one another over the top of the 'sonic bed'.

Not sure I like the 'sonic bed', but the rest of it is reasonably satisfying to me. I think this track/concept would work much better over the course/length of an album.

The track image was adapted slightly from this one: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...our_seasons.jpg

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More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto