Disquiet Junto 0619 Beat Accrual

Assignment

I play the drums so this disquiet assignment appealed to me.

I decided that complex for me meant complex timing. I wanted to play something in odd time signatures, and I feel like the number 23 is underrepresented in music. Here was my process:

  1. I improvised a 4 bar drum beat in 23/8 time (which I really counted as 8/8, 5/8, 7/8, 3/8), and recorded it in Ableton.

  2. I experimented with a few ways to “accrue” the beat, and decided to accrue by time rather than by part.

  3. In Ableton Live, I edited the beat to repeat, but only play a section before repeating. I chose Fibonacci numbers for the length. For the first repeat only 1 8th note of the 4 bar 23/8 repeat plays. Second repeat, 2 8th notes. Third repeat, 3 8th notes. Fourth repeat 5 8th notes, etc until the entire beat is revealed. It took on the feel of a breakbeat.

  4. For more accrual, I copied the original 4 bar beat to another track, and used a filter slowly introduce it beneath the Fibonacci cut breakbeat. They are not aligned at first, so there is a kind of beating that takes place between the two until the last full repeat where they are completely aligned.

grant lucas muller · Broke Beat [disquiet0619]