There’s really nothing musical about it, not even staying on beat. An obvious place to look is in a collection of samples I made many years ago with a large rubber band. Then I wanted a bass of some sort, as I reopened the file about a week later. That was probably the end of day one-March 11, 2022-just choosing a few samples, deciding which were to loop and which as one shot, and what effects might work. (It seems to me I have already used this sample, maybe 10–15 years ago, though I can’t recall on which composition.) The other sample from that session used here is a vocalization. I chose one that is, maybe, made by scratching or dragging a finger across the membrane-the track is copied, jogged slightly out of time, then the two are panned hard right and left. Instead of a mesh striking surface it has a plastic membrane that resonates in a very pleasing way (like x-ray film being used for a drumhead, for instance), reminding me of timbales or a high-pitched snare. Then I started running through a folder of samples I recorded with a racket toy, sort of a tennis game, called Sonic Smash. What can mainly be heard of it is a beat (caused by the thread reinforcing?), of sorts, but what I found attractive about it was sort of a rumble of rubber on rubber between those beats.…The two samples didn’t really work together, so the clicking is an intro and outro sound, kind of quoting the main body. Maybe it was some other object that was nearby during that session that I momentarily picked up.…The second sample, that loops almost the whole length of the piece, was, I think, made by rubbing the hose on itself. But how I made such a sound with that dull hose is long forgotten. I brought it home, set up a microphone, and played around with it.…The first sample I use here, a clicking sound, could easily be created hundreds of ways-pencils, twigs, chopsticks, drumsticks, et cetera (listening now, before posting this, I hear it as a metallic scratching, which I find equally perplexing). A layer of rubbery plastic wrapped in crisscrossed threads encased in another rubbery layer, this one transparent. Maybe 2002 or 2003 I was cleaning out an abandoned industrial site and found an interesting bit of hose (at least this is where and when I remember finding it). The item has been muted in the Item Properties panel and is there only to extend the end of the composition, so the reverb tail won’t be cut off. Note the single bar sample at the far right of the timeline. Reaper screenshot of “Quarantined”-draft 1. (The text will be toward the end of the post.) I would say it’s something of a random, haphazard examination of self-loathing. My composition, the “poem” written years ago, has nothing to do with infectious diseases. Obviously anything from 2020–2022 with a title like “Quarantined” is about life with covid-19 as fact or metaphor.

Native instruments guitar rig 5