Other YaWha
TRAPPIST-1 (disquiet-0272)

Disquiet Junto Project 0272: Exoplanetary Intervals
Use music to express the relationships between planets.

Recently, scientists announced the discovery of a nearby star system, TRAPPIST-1. Orbiting its ultra-cool dwarf star are seven planets, three in the habitable zone. Remarkably, six of the planets form the longest known chain where each orbits at a resonant frequency of it’s neighbor. From the slowest, the planets orbit at: 1x, 4/3x 2x, 3x, 5x, 8x.

Using those harmonic orbital ratios for relative musical intervals, I created a sequence following those notes (the slowest planet as the root, then fourth, octave, octave and fifth, two octaves and major third, three octaves), dropping the octave of the faster planets for musical sense. I also created a progression that transposed the sequence, by those same musical notes. Finally, I layered some drums, playing those same orbital ratios as a polyrhythmic drum parts for a six-piece drum kit.

As with all my Juntos so far, I am sure it would be possible to improve on this, sonically, given a bit more time. But time constraints are what gets me to a finished track in the first place, so as ever I am thankful to have that discipline enforced on me. Also, I found some great use of many of the (powerful) core Ableton midi devices (for randomisation mostly), and with three MaxForLive devices - Ultimate Step Seq for sequencing the notes, Robert Henke's Note Modulator for transposition of the sequence (which I had to edit in Max to enable 64 step divisions), and RPE by Hyakken for the polyrhythmic drum part. The result was a Project that played itself! No midi clips necessary - start t he note sequencer, transposition sequencer, and drum sequencer, and let them do their thing. As a result, there is no automation here - I simply disengaged the Track Mute buttons to introduce each part. While I could have used more free-running LFOs (in either the synths, or in maxforlive) to add further movement, or indeed automated synth parameters, I think it sounds fine, and kinda retro, clean and as-is.

Synths used: TAL BassLine 101, 2x TAL Uno LX, Synthmaster, Strobe, Vacuum Pro. Drums from Ableton Live drum racks by Goldbaby.

Hope you enjoy.