I’ve been skipping the Disquiet Junto projects (and music in general) these past few weeks. Real life has been a bit… event-filled. But this week’s project appealed to me:

We were told to generate three elements: A beat, a drone, and a ‘melodic fragment’. We were then to use these to create a 90 second piece, with each element ‘showcased’ for 30 seconds by applying some kind of 3D/spatial effect to it. (Melody from 0-29, the Beat from 30-59, and the Drone for those last 30 seconds).

Process details are here. Link to the entire Disquiet project is here. I basically panned the hell out of the ‘melody’ for 30 seconds, applied an interesting pong delay pattern to the beat for 30 seconds, and then ran the drone through an even more interesting pong delay pattern for the final 30.

I’m still trying to find an easy workflow as I make these pieces. I find myself using AudioMulch as the ‘laboratory” for creating the actual sounds, but it’s then easier to load the created sounds into Ableton Live and work on them there. I realize that most folks will tell you to just pick one DAW and learn the hell out of it, but AudioMulch is so much closer to the old-school ‘pedals and cables’ way of doing things, I find it easier to be creative there. Meanwhile, Ableton Live is just so much better at the actual construction of a piece of music, once you’ve created the raw materials.

Speaking of Ableton… 25% off the upgrade to Live 9 if I do it today. Hadn’t intended to upgrade until Spring, but I’m tempted. Live 9 Suite has the Max for Live extension that I’ve been dying to play with for almost a year.