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Six Held Tones for the Great Blue Hole

by Brian Grainger

supported by
Burton Thomas
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David Prescott
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1.
Six Held Tones for the Great Blue Hole 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 (2023/03/13)

March's six held tones are:

1. Roland Juno 106 (E)
2. Roland Juno 106 (E)
3. Roland Juno 106 (E)
4. Roland Juno 106 (B)
5. Roland Juno 106 (B)
6. Roland Juno 106 (B)

This session was as simple as the patch notes imply - the six-voice polyphony within the Roland Juno 106 synthesizer was employed across three different pitches each on the E and B keys, with the output subsequently routed into the Peavey FX2 mixing board. Three takes with different chordal profiles were recorded, with the remaining two takes not presented here likely to be issued after Year Six has completed. In post, the recording was treated with some parametric equalization, low-pass filtering via Arturia's recreation of a Moog ladder filter, some subtle plate reverberation on the send via Arturia's recreation of the EMT plate reverb, and just a hint of pitch modulation applied to the latter also. Fades implemented via a vactrol-like configuration.

credits

released March 31, 2023

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, March 13th 2023 using the Roland Juno 106 polyphonic digital/analog synthesizer. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WD63, #63 in the Workingman's Drone series, dedicated to Piet Mondrian and Leonard Nimoy. (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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