Be In Jail (disquiet0246) by Nate Trier

This week's assignment was to create a piece that doubled, tripled, then sextupled. I worked backwards and found a beat that worked at 120 bpm and then began the piece with the beat at 20 bpm. I like to explore Reich's idea of "process music," where the transition between states forms the piece, but in an electronic/glitched up context. So I worked a smooth transition between states into the piece, starting Ableton's tempo at 20 and gradually increasing to 120.

As I was setting this up, my school's a capella group was rehearsing in the room next door, so I decided to make the most of the coincidence and record them (shh don't tell them they don't know!). Keeping in the spirit of the piece, I timestretched a 45 second recording out into about 2 minutes. I told Ableton to warp the recording as if it was a beat, meaning Ableton tried to fill in the gaps with percussive sounds.

I picked out the most interesting glitches, and I arranged them by my usual golden mean subdivisions. However, this time I tried to look at the "big picture" groupings of subdivisions rather than each one. I split the piece up into thirds and ended up with something similar to ABA form.

Mixing this was tough - the singers were recorded from the other side of the wall, and the timbre of the timestretched beat changed as the tempo changed. I tested it on a few systems, including one in a building where I often hear weird, confounding sounds when I think I'm alone. As I was checking my mix, I realized that there was probably someone else in the building hearing weird, confounding sounds. Maybe there's another Junto participant right under my nose? :)

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More on this 246th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece of music that increases speed in stages as it proceeds.” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0246/

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/double-quadruple-sextuple-music-disquiet-junto-project-0246/4549

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