Tiny Feedbacks (Disquiet0298) by Nate Trier

For this project, we were given a series of notes and a series of note durations, and the two "sets" did not necessarily align.

I didn't go into the project with anything in mind, but I ended up with a series of long-ish tones that seemed like a great cantus firmus (or bassline) and the seed for an art song.

I dusted off my first-species counterpoint skills and came up with notes to harmonize with the bassline on the downbeat of every measure and thus sketch the outline of a chord progression.

Then I added more notes following those "guide tones" to have a complete melody.

The title comes from a text a co-worker sent me about some PA issues. I brainstormed and came up with a couple of verses - the first verse ended up being something completely different from what I expected, the second verse was more what I imagined the text would be about.

Production wise, the piano sounds came from my Nord Electro (an upright piano patch, which in retrospect is a little clangy and did not have enough sustain for this project). The synths in the second half of the song are the initial bassline, twice as fast and pitched higher, and starting after each other in canon. One of the synths is then constantly transposing upward to create a tilting melody. The final arpeggio is all of the notes from the cantus firmus stretched in duration so they overlap and run through Ableton's arpeggiator.

I am not a great singer :)

Lyrics:
Stuck on a deep frame
Hung on a wall, I'm
gazing
at loping hillsides and then
I'm lost (I'm lost)
in layered landscapes
in blue on blue
in flaking poster paint
scattered glass spatters
nothing's perfect anywhere

pops and ex-plosives
ligament snaps like
static
they interfere and then they
open fissures
like local weather
or aliens
the message is unclear
rabbit-eared radio
nothing's perfect anywhere

* * * * * *

More on this 298th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Dungeons & Drum Machines: Make a track with two rolls of a 20-sided die — at:

https://disquiet.com/0298/

Major thanks to Jason Wehmhoener for initiating this project, and for co-plotting it.

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0298-dungeons-drum-machines/