This was recorded on Saturday, March 23rd in the late morning. I went for a run and took along my Zoom H2 in case there might be any interesting sounds for this junto. It was colder out than what I like to run in, upper 30's, but sunny with only a light breeze. It was a good run and I did about 3 miles. Not bad for not having run all winter. I hate running when the temps are below mid 30's and won't run on snow or ice. There's always my indoor recumbent cycle and weights instead, or a trip to the natatorium for a swim.

I've been in a creative funk lately. No desire to do anything new, edit anything old, or even mess around. I hate that, but I go through those kinds of times. It's nice to have the junto emails to at least consider, and this week I figured I'd try to break out by working on this one.

There were a number of 1-minute recordings made, but I picked this one. I must admit that I couldn't take notes at the time when it was recorded live, so I listened once when I got back and scribbled on an index card. In the mean time I had lunch, a shower, watched some college basketball and then attempted to make sounds based on what I wrote down.

Rochester Ridge is a new set of homes built just to the north of my 70's-era neighborhood. They're big and quite expensive, about double the average price for a typical single family home, and most of the lots are the size of a postage stamp. They're selling like mad, though, and perhaps 20 of the 53 planned homes have been put up in the past 16 months and most are sold.

Two homes recently got roofs put on, and I was lucky to capture the tail end of some nail gun action on one of them.

Additionally, there are sounds of birds, a plane overhead, a car passing by, and other sounds typical of a neighborhood.

I composed my non-field recording piece using Samplr on the iPad. These were based on recordings I created using Ableton Live.

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Disquiet Junto Project 0064: Composing from Memory

This week’s project's theme is composing from memory. It is recommended that you read through all the steps in the project before proceeding to attempt to execute it.

These are the steps:

Step 1: Find a place, preferably outdoors, where you can sit for five to fifteen minutes without being disturbed. This place should have a fair amount of inherent noise to it, and that noise should be variable, not static — i.e., not the long held drone of an overwhelmingly loud HVAC system, but the bustle of a street corner, or of a playground, or, if weather or other circumstances keep you indoors, perhaps of a busy cafe.

Step 2: Bring with you a portable recording device as well as something on which you can quietly take a small number of written (or typed) notes. You may wish to do a test recording to be certain that your note-taking isn't part of the audio recording.

Step 3: Settle into the space and get a sense of its sounds. Listening closely.

Step 4: Make a field recording of one full minute, or a little longer, of continuous sound in this place. While recording the sound, use time codes to make note of any memorable sonic instances.

Step 5: Trim the field recording to exactly 60 seconds.

Step 6: Without listening back to the field recording, compose and record a 60-second piece intended to complement it. Refer back to your time-code notes to align composed instances with those real-world instances that you recall having distinguished your field recording. You can use whatever instrumentation you like, but it is recommended that you use no more than one or two instruments. You should not employ any field recordings in your composed piece.

Step 7: When your composed piece is completed, layer the two tracks together into one new 60-second work. They should be played back at equal volume, more or less. You can adjust a little to achieve the impression of balance between the field recording and the composed work. The only editing you can do is to fade in and out, if that is so desired.

Deadline: Monday, March 25, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your finished work should be 60 seconds long.

More on this 64th Disquiet Junto project at: disquiet.com/2013/03/21/disquiet0064-halflive

More details on the Disquiet Junto at: soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto