Notescast

Annfina Harper and Fitziak Edward I wrote a web app (sorry, barely had time for the bare minimum; it’s rough) for this Junto prompt that represents plants in a garden as players in an ensemble. Each plant has, among other things, these characteristics: voice (a timbre) age peak age amp (volume) pan riff base rate (the pitch that its riff is based on) death chance (a periodic roll is made with a di...

Got Me in a Cell This week's Junto prompt was to make Steve Reich-style phase music. I've actually done phase music for two , four , five , and thirteen weeks ago. I really love this technique, and I just enjoy trying samples and loop lengths and hearing what patterns emerge. It's like playing a slot machine, except less destructive, I'd like to think. This week, though, I have a lot of weekend co...

I also tried out a Slayer riff for the Steve Reich piece. There's so many riffs that come out of phasing this! I ultimately went with the Public Enemy one instead, though.

The prompt this week was to make a phase piece in the style of Steve Reich. I used a Black Sabbath sample for this. I think it's good listening, but it wasn't as good as the other piece I did.

If you've never listened to Public Enemy a capella, you should. The voices (Flavor, too!) are incredibly good. Just check out this snippet. That alone is better than so much music!

Meditation in the Smoker After doing a couple of weird attempts for this reverb prompt , like putting an amp in the washing machine that didn’t sound nearly as interesting as I’d hoped, I picked up a free smoker someone gave away on Craigslist. I got it for the purpose of smoking food, but then I realized that it’s a giant metal canister with a sidecar on it. So, I put a mic inside of it and hit i...

Attacking the Immune System Having failed at the first two attempts at this prompt , this one is simple. It’s a line from a Masta Killa verse, phased so that it’s, for a period of time, more about the sound than the words, like the kind of thing you’d find in sound poetry.

Samples from Zelda and Angel of Death, together at last! (This week's Junto prompt was to remix something.) I started out by remixing the original Legend of Zelda, focusing on the tenser riffs in that soundtrack. Then, I started making beats for it, at which point I thought I’d adhere to the spirit of the prompt more closely by remixing another track to get drums. I landed on Dave Lombardo’s drums...

At one point, I tried to make the Angel of Death break riff using samples from Zelda exclusively. It was awkward.

Wild Wilds Per this prompt about making background music for a board game, this is a soundtrack for Magical Athlete, a game that takes a bunch of very, very simple rules and creates this surprising emergent complexity from them, which in turn creates delightful drama. It also has a great sense of humor. Accordingly, I took a simple riff and made some variations that do not line up until repeated a...

Eventual Consistency This is handmade phase music I wanted to play physically for this one, so I got wrote bass and guitar parts. Unfortunately, I wrote a riff for the third little movement that was a bit more than I can handle, what with my not practicing (especially arpeggios) very often, so after trying all day (it’s surprising how you can burn time trying to get a take), I just went with what...

There’s some confounding chords in the Link to the Past ending, apparently.

Cat Vortex The prompt was to create a sonic zoo, so I took a 30-second sample of Oatmeal ( a cat we’re taking care of ) and repitched and stacked it using a web audio tool I wrote to do microtonal stuff. It sounds like many bewildered cats! It got a little intense, so I threw in Dr. Wily saying “mrrp!” in breaks.

Cursed Minus Worlds Prompt : Make music with three sounds: one you love, one you dislike, and one you consider to be neutral. I thought about just picking three sounds that were short and arranging those samples rhythmically, musique concréte-style, but in the interest of stretching, I went with long field recordings of: A Dave and Buster's-style arcade/bowling alley, packed with casino-like games...

Richards's Allotted Break Time The prompt for this one was lunch break . I wanted this to be a fun break time for Richards, for whom I imagine it's not enough, but he considers himself lucky to have a break at all in this capitalist dystopia. So, we've got to make the most of it. The main riffs popped into my head while I was sleep deprived and walking through Incheon International Airport. I trie...

Light Wants Out In response to this prompt to use a light bulb sample , I arranged snippets from the sample by loading them into a software drum machine, then I played along to that on a guitar (with the gain all the way up on the amp) to try to sort of match the light bulb timbre. Then, I also played along on a fly simulator I’m building, trying to imagine electricity trying to get out of a light...

I periodically still try to find a third riff for this song. It’s sort of its own ritual now. It doesn’t matter if I come up with one; I just do it for its own sake.

Crack of Stones I made sounds in two ways here: 1. Hitting two rocks together. One of them broke while I was playing them. 2. Lifting and dropping this milk crate full of rocks . I looped the riff I recorded with the lifting and dropping a bunch of times, then I clipped out some sounds from hitting the rocks together and arranged them to be sort of in time with the lifting and dropping loop. I the...

Train Has Joined the Chat I live near train tracks, and sometimes I have to pause recording something because a train is going by. So for this background noise prompt ,I went out and recorded the train, then planned to write a song and record it while playing back the train recording. I ran out of time, sort of predictably, so I improvised three guitar tracks while playing back the train with a be...

Screened Pastoral In response to this prompt , I came up with a pastoral-ish horn chord progression. Then, to represent the horizontal fibers of the window screen, I wrote a set of notch filters . To represent the vertical fibers, I turned them on and off on a fixed interval. By then, it was 11:30 PM on Monday. I improvised a bass part, but only had time for two takes, then had to mix. So, there i...

I still don’t have a third riff to go with these two riffs, so I thought I’d try to improvise one out. I think maybe I have the direction right at least.

FLFLAASSHFFLLAASSFHLFALS Per this prompt , I "remixed" the original Flash Gordon title track, which apparently was derived from a Liszt piece. I picked three pairs of loops from the track. (And a few others which didn't work out.) Each pair is a loop and a slightly truncated version of that loop so that they're all out-of-phase. Then, I terraced their entrances and put in a double time section.

Puzzle Lurching I found a couple of half-finished tracks from a few years ago. The first was labeled “Murk” and had horns and a kettledrum. I think it was meant to be some kind of swamp-marching music. The second was named “The Puzzle-2” and was supposed to be music for a puzzle game. It had a recorder, harp, and synth bass. The bass fit right in with the horns, which was a pleasant surprise. My s...

Expect Delays, Karts For this one , I created a variation of Trying Your Best Grand Prix! . It’s both a simulation of a race that has lots of stops and delays and of a band that can’t get it together. I had a good time, and I hope it’s not too painful to listen to.

Expect Delays, Karts For this one , I created a variation of Trying Your Best Grand Prix! . It’s both a simulation of a race that has lots of stops and delays and of a band that can’t get it together. I had a good time, and I hope it’s not too painful to listen to.