disquiet, junto Kaboodle Sound
Grain/Shift [disquiet0017-transition]

Mission:

For this week's Disquiet Junto assignment, we had to make a field recording and select a 30-second segment from it. We then had to to select a pre-existing track (from a choice of two) and edit another 30-second segment from it.

Finally, we had to "create a new track in which your field recording can be heard to slowly transition into the preexisting track. You can add whatever you like to the new track, and you can transform the field recording and the preexisting track. However, the first five seconds of your field recording and the last 5 seconds of the pre-existing track should be left untouched, aside from fading in and out. The goal is for the transition to be as indiscernible, as seamless, as you can achieve in the time allotted for production."

Approach:

I recorded me washing a towel in the shower (not a usual thing for me to do), and various other things through the day (Friday) - including the sound of the washing machine, me trying to sort a double Debian dual boot on my laptop, and me having a shower. I liked the sound of the towel being washed most, so I used a segment from that. (Me having a shower seemed somehow distasteful to put out there for public consumption).

I didn't get much time for this week's task because I was re-installing Debian Linux on two computers, and I decided to spend a few days completely improving and overhauling my systems. I only just got it finished in time (11:30pm Sunday night)...

I was initially going to do it all in Audacity, but I got bored, and then had a brainwave. I took the two samples and loaded them up in Mixxx (fantastic DJing software). I played the same sample (my field recording of the shower) through two decks and four virtual samplers, starting with one sample on its own (to get the untainted 5 seconds), and then adding the others.

As the other samples started to play, I fed them all through grain-shifting effects on two Mini KP Kaoss pads (for right and left decks) and a KP3 Kaoss pads (for everything - the two decks via the Mini KPs and the four samplers). While the samples were being effected, I increased the effect until the samples were mangled, then started to swap the samples one by one for the 30 second segment from "The Day Love Came In The Mail" by Lee Rosevere. Eventually, the four virtual samplers and the two decks were playing the Lee Rosevere sample, and I reduced the effects until they were gone, then gradually faded out and turned off the samples, ending with just one, uneffected sample playing for around 10 seconds untainted.

Everything was done live, but it took me several attempts to get the track down to less than four minutes. I liked my nine minute version, using delays, a lot more.

More Information:

I used a segment from "The Day Love Came In The Mail" by Lee Rosevere off the album Play 3 on the WM Recordings netlabel, thanks to Creative Commons license. More information at:
archive.org/details/WM074_900
wmrecordings.com/free-download...rosevere-play-3

The image is adapted from this one at Wikimedia Commons:
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fil...rted_grains.jpg

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto