Here is the information for this round of the Disquiet Junto Project and my finished track at the end.
Disquiet Junto Project 0581: Helsinki Downspout
The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track.
Step 1: This is a shared sample project, one in which all the participants will utilize the same provided recording, about a minute and a half long, as the rhythmic element for their own music. Access the track, originally recorded by Scott Fletcher and used with his permission, here:
Step 2: Listen to the provided track several times. Think about ways to map its content, perhaps making notations about when certain unique, momentary aspects surface.
Step 3: Record an original piece of music for which the provided music is the underlying rhythm. You might take this quite literally, using the source as it is, resulting in a track that is precisely 1:35 long. Alternately, you might elect to sample and rework the source material. If you go the latter route, make certain that the original sound is, at least at some point in the finished track, recognizable.
The sample made me think about how much I loved finding Environments, Atmospheres, and field recordings in used record stores when I was growing up. I knew I wanted to use the sample and modify it as little as possible and hope it echoed those kinds of records and sounded like percussion instruments being played in the forest.
I made three edits to the sample. One was to get rid of a pop at the beginning. My second was to use a short clear excerpt from the sample, and then the third was the edited loop. That looped track was then bussed to about 9 tracks of various delays, eqs, and pitch plug-ins in Logic. All were stock plug-ins except one use of the free Valhalla Super Massive delay/reverb to make the eighth-note loop towards the end.
More on this 581st weekly Disquiet Junto project, Helsinki Downspout (The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track), at: disquiet.com/0581/
Thanks to Scott Fletcher for having provided the original material. It is used thanks to a Creative Commons license: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0). Original track at: Disquiet – Helsinki-downspout
More on the Disquiet Junto at: disquiet.com/junto/
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Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-pr…helsinki-downspout/
Stephen McClurg 