Recording Trios Around the Globe

In the Disquiet Junto music community, which has been going on weekly with shared composition prompts since January 2012, there are a few projects we do each year, notably the first of the year and the last of the year, and then somewhere in between there’s a three-part (sometimes four-part) sequence in which musicians around the world collaborate to record trios (the fourth part is if we tag on a remix stage).

In the trios sequence, the first week people record solos. We had over 40 solos by the end of the first week this year. The second week, people select a solo, pan it to the left, and turns it into a (temporary) duet by recording a track panned to the right. And the third week, these “duets” become trios, as musicians add a final piece to the resulting constructions.

Great works and fantastic forms of collaboration result as the weeks progress. It’s an incredible way for musicians to hear their own works in unexpected contexts, and an informative compositional experience to record while leaving space for others.

It’s always appealing to my ear, in particular, when multiple re-users turn a given solo into a variety of duets, and the duets into varied trios. Hearing the same foundational tracks put to different ends by different people can be revealing.

The second of these three projects is currently underway. You can read the instructions at disquiet.com/0678. Usually with Junto projects I just hit send on the instructions and sit back and listen as the tracks appear, adding them to a playlist being about all I have to manage.

However, with the trios sequence, I get more directly involved, maintaining a necessarily complex online-viewable spreadsheet so Junto participants can sort out what has been done with their music, and what music they might, in turn, try a hand at. I love when I pull up the webpage and something like this pops up, showing me that a bunch of people are checking out the documentation.

I usually update the Junto’s weekly playlists once or twice a day as the given project unfolds, but for these trio projects I attend to the spreadsheet almost hourly, trying to keep on top of things. It’s exciting to watch and listen as the family tree of these tracks comes into full bloom.

Here’s a glimpse of what it looks like currently. Again, details are at the link above. The duets — really one-third-empty trios — are due by 11:59pm (your local time) on Monday, May 19, and then the final trios phase of the projects begins next Thursday, May 22. Join in if you have the time and interest.