Reticence [disquiet0030-nonsilent]

Music and production by Broken Hours. Submitted under the kind auspices of Disquiet Junto. Disquiet Junto is a special and important project to which I am grateful to be able to contribute. Realized at Drummysgroin, July 25-27, 2012, this is my fifth piece in Disquiet Junto.

Some time ago I digitized a cassette tape of Georges Delerue film scores that I obtained many years prior because it contained the gorgeous original music from Godard's ”Contempt.” For this Disquiet Junto piece, I captured a few seconds of a gap between the digitized Delerue tracks and loaded the clip into Sound Forge Pro where I multiplied the volume several-hundred percent and applied the élastique time-stretching algorithm to extend the two-second sample to a little longer than one minute.

I did not monitor the sample with speakers until this point, at which I loaded it into Acid Pro, cut up, reversed and pitch-shifted some of the bits, and duplicated the working tracks for further arrangement, using up to five audio tracks, adding delay and distortion and fiddling with EQ, as I operated under the vague notion of assimilating melodies in the ”Contempt" score.

I created four drafts and auditioned them in the car while driving to and from a music performance on July 26. I returned to Acid Pro and tweaked the five tracks a little more, then rendered them into four separate stems and loaded these files into Acid Pro as a new project, then mixed that project for the final version.

About the abrupt end, I'm not sure what to say, or whether there's even anything to explain - it is simply the choice that I made after experimenting with fade-outs and decays, much like choosing a fade-in rather than an abrupt beginning; I might interpret the abrupt end as an indication that I'd prefer not to resolve my relationship with working in a "noise" genre, or perhaps my relationship with Disquiet Junto. My participation in Disquiet Junto has cultivated in me a burgeoning appreciation for noise-based composition, and for the challenges I am encountering in creating texture and balance in the mix. Although it contains elements I would have wished out of the mix, the present piece reveals more sonic treats to me continually - the sometimes unnoticed hissing/rumbling in the high end, the unforced arpeggios that develop, the experiences of howling wind and of human voices - and it has already begun to inform how I would approach future noise tableau projects.

Finally, let me be the first to observe that this piece bears little resemblance to any of the profoundly lyrical and exquisitely mournful Georges Delerue score, and certainly hasn't anywhere near its craft; "Contempt" is merely a reference, providing energy and an ideal for the brief duration of this production. One of the most compelling moments of the Delerue score is the abrupt beginning of the section accompanying the Main Titles, and this idea may have morphed into the choice to include an abrupt moment.

More on the 30th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2012/07/26/disquiet0030-nonsilent/;

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

Disquiet Junto