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Six Held Tones for Fengxian

by Brian Grainger

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1.
Six Held Tones for Fengxian 55:55

about

Following immediately on the heels of Year Five, Workingman's Drone returns with Year Six, carrying twelve more monthly volumes of sustained tone music. Adhering to the same format as Year Five, with a dedicated focus on unchanging 'held tones' for the duration of each session, 2023's recordings consist of six different sound sources - oscillators, feedback, granular synthesizers, etc - all tuned and panned by ear for each piece.

Due to the temperamental nature of analog tools, oscillators will sometimes drift slowly across the piece's runtime, allowing factors such as temperature and electrical current fluctuations to affect the music in real time, and these drifts have been left intact on Workingman's Drone releases in order to capitalize on the unique sensations that become possible with glacial pitch deviations in a dense stereo field. The resultant recordings are minimally equalized and compressed for mastering and final release, and offer a view of the endless in their hypnotic shimmering walls of polyphony.

Workingman's Drone has always paired well with psychedelics, meditation, sleep deprivation and other forms of deep listening, and listener experimentation is always encouraged. Differences in stereo systems, volume levels, bass output and closed ear/open air playback will yield many new sonic experiences, highlighting my interest in producing music that is as much a utility as it is composition.

Adjacent recordings to Workingman's sessions are often captured and issued as Limestone Ziggurat/LSZ releases, and may also appeal to listeners seeking to explore more sound material in this vein: weltlandschaft.bandcamp.com

As with Year Five, Year Six's titles refer topically to various locations, events and other esoteric subjects that exist only as a possible writing prompt for each session. These subjects are in no way shape or form meant to be endorsed or advertised by the recordings, and should be considered in pure aesthetic terms only. Additionally, each session is published with one or more dedications to artists, writers, scientists and other creative minds that share a date of birth with the month of the recording. These people have all, in one or several ways, influenced my own endeavors and so it is my desire to thank them here, where and when I can.

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PATCH NOTES (2023/06/27)

June's six held tones are:

1. Arturia Microfreak / Custom wavetable oscillator (L)
2. Arturia Microfreak / Custom wavetable oscillator (L)
3. Arturia Microfreak / Custom wavetable oscillator (L)
4. Arturia Microfreak / Custom wavetable oscillator (R)
5. Arturia Microfreak / Custom wavetable oscillator (R)
6. Arturia Microfreak / Custom wavetable oscillator (R)

June's session differs from the prior five sessions of the year in that it sweeps through filter and wavetable timbre modulation with a randomized sample and hold LFO running at an extremely slow rate (0.06 hz). While the chord held is a static structure compositionally, the voice shifts and changes over time depending on where the oscillator chooses to derive its timbral characteristics from within the wavetable. The wavetable itself is a custom table constructed from a sample of my daughter's speech, and is playing three notes from the Dorian scale. As the Microfreak is a four-note paraphonic instrument, six notes were made possible by recording three held notes for the duration, and in post-processing, reversing and inverting the entire session and overlaying both in the hard right and hard left channels of the stereo field. Slight alterations were made in post with parametric equalization, some filtering and compression, in order to maintain a constant level of volume throughout the piece.

credits

released June 28, 2023

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, June 27th 2023 using the Arturia Microfreak exploring a custom wavetable built with a sample of the human voice. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WD66, #66 in the Workingman's Drone series, dedicated to M.C.Escher and Alan Turing. (C) + (P) Oscillog ASCAP 2023. All lights observed.

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Brian Grainger Dayton, Ohio

Drone music, warm atmosphere and textural ephemera for the working man.

I also release music as Milieu milieumusic.bandcamp.com and Coppice Halifax coppicehalifax.bandcamp.com

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