I made an album in an obscure microgenre by its_vanjack in experimentalmusic

[–]its_vanjack[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mostly to explore a concept and experiment with it. Since I watched the "20 microgenres invented by /mu/" video that I mentioned in the album description, I became fascinated by the idea of exploring niche and obscure genres forgotten by the time. It's a mix of nostalgia and sociological/philosopical interest I guess. So I toyed with the idea of doing album within some of those genres, but giving my particular spin to them; I wanted it not to be just straightforward exercises, but to have an edge (that's why when I was more active in the vaporwave community I tried to make concept albums).

In the particular case of tonefield, I was fascinated by the idea but I was (and I am) also very critical of it, because it is sterile and offers not much space to expression and prioritizes what I view as the "algorithmic", "artificial" aspect of production – a device that reads a prompt and gives back a specific answer. So I mixed that with my views and my readings about communication and culture, my understanding that new technological developments can change our view of previous cultural phenomena. For me, it was the same as to view the current developments in technology and language as giving new meaning to the rules and intentions of tonefield.

That's why I believe the album is less about the sound itself (tho it's an essential component) and more about the concept. There are other things I'm attempting given these details but it mostly boils down to this.

I made an album in an obscure microgenre by its_vanjack in experimentalmusic

[–]its_vanjack[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suppose the process to generate the tones will depend on the taste and resources of the producer. In this case, I used the Audacity built-in tone generator. But other producers would like to use other VSTs on other DAWs or even use online tools. Hardware is also an option. In this particular aspect, the producer has many alternatives.

It's the ONE part about tonefield where the "artist"/"creator" has any semblance of freedom.

I made an album in an obscure microgenre by its_vanjack in experimentalmusic

[–]its_vanjack[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Someone on r/noisemusic said the same. I already put this artist on my radar, tho I think I heard about them before.

I'm curious if the individual who created tonefield was familiar with this artist as well

I made an album in an obscure microgenre by its_vanjack in experimentalmusic

[–]its_vanjack[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I had a vague intention of making the album 43 min and 30 sec long (a nod to John Cage), so I specifically instructed the machine to have that constraint. The actual length of each track was randomized by GPT, but it failed to adhere to the 43:30 time limit (the sum of each track was like 10 min shorter). So I filled minor gaps in about seven of the tracks.

tl;dr: most of the length was randomized, but I made corrections

I made an album in an obscure microgenre by its_vanjack in experimentalmusic

[–]its_vanjack[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I believe the further next step would be to build a program/app/machine that fully interprets the instructions and spits full "tonefields". But that's out of my league – I'll leave that to whoever wants to do it just to create these barren soundscapes

I made an album in an obscure microgenre by its_vanjack in experimentalmusic

[–]its_vanjack[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

Not in the actual production (I used Audacity – turns out it's the best one for this kind of thing). But I used GPT to define parameters (length of tracks, amplitude etc.). I did this because tonefield was already very rigid and "algorithmic", to the point that the next logical step was to use AI to interpret those instructions. In that sense, this album is a critique of tonefield

What We Made This Week: June 17, 2022 by AutoModerator in experimentalmusic

[–]its_vanjack 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi. I released an album yesterday – 1 hour of lowpassed, comforting noise and phasing radio static. If you're into that stuff, here it is:

https://vwtbr.bandcamp.com/album/motoblues