Interstellar Vacuum Cleaner [Practical Music (Disquiet0245)] by ikjoyce

This week's Junto is to record a simple, rhythmic piece of music that exudes tidiness and efficiency, and that is eminently playable on repeat — music to listen to while doing routine tasks.

For some reason, this just brought to mind the old music that you would hear between the programmes for schools that were played on BBC2 in the 1970s (when the teachers would wheel out the great big TV set and we'd all have to sit quietly waiting for the programme to come on). Anyway, that vibe in mind, I set to work. This turned out to be a complicated patch, that creates new and less repetitive sequences from a few short sequences. I started with a drone that has a sort of 'vacuum cleaner' essence about it, and some spiky notes borrowed from the other oscillators by Clouds, that might be considered to be 'dust'. I then faded in some echoed sine waves, which are of course eminently clean. A nice little working bassline follows, and some percussion to add a bit of momentum and sparkle. Then the dust and hoover fade away, for a clean finish. It could have been much longer, very easily. Rinse and repeat :-)

For the benefit of my international friends - back in the days when we only had three TV channels, none of which were on air continuously, there used to be programming especially for schools, and before the programme started, there would be a clock shown, while music played, allowing the school time to get the TV ready. This link is an actual recording from 1982: best started from about 1 minute in (after the Ceefax text and completely black screen!) www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NwuHPfhHDE

More on this 245th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Write a piece of music for getting things done, suitable for playing on repeat” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0245/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0243-synth-trial/4288

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is by jurek d. and is used thanks to Flicker and a Creative Commons license:

http://flic.kr/p/npLwcU

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/