Six Held Tones for Svartifoss

by Brian Grainger

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Six Held Tones for Svartifoss 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 (2023/02/06)

February's six held tones are:

1. Silver Ornament (Quadraturia / 83.05hz)
2. Silver Ornament (Quadraturia / 2/3 of 1)
3. Silver Ornament (Quadraturia / Unity with 1)
4. Silver Ornament (Quadraturia / 5/3 of 1)
5. Black Ornament (Vector LFO / 140.01hz)
6. Black Ornament (Vector LFO / 56.01hz)

Two different Ornament & Crime modules were used for this session - one running the standard firmware, and the other running the Hemispheres firmware. Both utilized programs that generate LFOs at specific numerically input frequencies, with variable waveforms, and with different divisible relationships to one another. All six LFOs were brought well into the audible range, and filtered differently. Tones 1/2 were filtered via the Behringer 1006 Filtamp (a reiteration of the ARP 2500 low-pass filter), tone 3 was filtered via a low-pass filter in the Expert Sleepers Disting Mk4 (algorithm D5), tone 4 was filtered via a 2HP low-pass filter, and tones 5/6 were filtered via a Doepfer A-121-3 band-pass filter. Tones 1/2 were panned hard left, 3/4 were panned hard right, and 5/6 remained mono/centered in the Behringer 305 mixer, and routed through a Zoom H1 and relayed to Goldwave. Minimal post-session editing was used, primarily some parametric equalization to clean up high-frequency noise and midrange hum, and fades were applied to the ends.

credits

released February 9, 2023

W/P by Brian Grainger. Recorded live at White Pillar Workshop, February 6th 2023 using the R-EW Audioholistics modular system. Mastered by The Analog Botanist. Text and design by ABM&D. This is Milieu Music number WD62, #62 in the Workingman's Drone series, dedicated to Robert Morris and Lucio Fontana. (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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