Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 134

Disquiet Junto Project 0558: Chore Progressions

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 12, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 8, 2022.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0558: Chore Progressions
The Assignment: Use a routine activity as the map of a composition.

Step 1: Think of a routine chore that you do frequently.

Step 2: Think through the process of the chore, and break it down into a handful or so of phases.

Step 3: Reenact the chore, and record a representative bit of audio at each of the phases determined in Step 2.

Step 4: Produce a musical composition that occurs in a sequence of phases, following the sequence determined in Step 2. During each phase of the composition, employ sound recorded during the corresponding phase of the chore.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0558” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0558” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0558-chore-progressions/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 12, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 8, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. Using the length of the chore may or may not make sense when determining the length of your piece.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0558” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 558th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Chore Progressions (The Assignment: Use a routine activity as the map of a composition) — at: https://disquiet.com/0558/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0558-chore-progressions/

Garden Variety

A garden variety doorbell on a garden gate. Because it’s on the gate, the bell itself is quite far away, inside the adjacent house — heck, perhaps triggering a tone on a cellphone for that matter. And thus there is no aural feedback, no sonification in the user-interface sense of the word. You don’t know if anyone heard until they come to let you in.

Personal Aesthetic Forensics

The physical and emotional labor of Labor Day. Typical Gen X housecleaning: replacing old long boxes with new ones, and neglecting to whittle whatsoever.

I was streaming videos of Mountain Man as I performed aesthetic forensics on my teens, 20s, and 30s. I generally listen to very little music with vocals, and yet I listen to Mountain Man all the time. Their harmonies kill me, and today’s activity, packed as it is with nostalgia, aligned with their music tonally.

I am a nut for anything by Tim Sale, Eddie Campbell, and Guy Davis. Challengers of the Unknown is one of my favorite formally playful superhero series. (And yes, “formally playful” is one of my favorite oxymorons.)

One more round, as I pack up the sixth of today’s long boxes: minis from Ellen Linder, Jason Shiga, and the late Dylan Williams.

I edited comics for a decade, and dipped into it a few more times in more recent years, and revisiting this material really brought me back to that work, which I always found incredibly rewarding.

Exceptional Instructions

twitter.com/disquiet: Alarms, Jet Lag, Lighter Sonics

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the tweets I made the past week at twitter.com/disquiet, which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets pop up sooner in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com. I’ve found it personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud. This isn’t a full accounting. Often there are, for example, conversations on Twitter that don’t really make as much sense out of the context of Twitter itself. And sometimes I tweak them a bit, given the additional space. And sometimes I re-order them just a bit.

▰ That’s strange. I experienced the second fire alarm of the trip, this time at 2:45am in Brooklyn. The prior time was just before 6am on Long Island. It’s an understatement to suggest that one’s brain processes a fire alarm differently at 2:45am than come daylight.

▰ The occasional “sorry I haven’t replied to your request for coverage” tweet

▰ Finally home in San Francisco after much much time in New York, and I was happy to see the newly installed fire hydrant on the corner — partially because it is kinda cool looking, but mostly because its existence means I missed out entirely on its noisy installation.

▰ Body in SF, brain still in NY. The next Disquiet Junto project goes out tomorrow, just later in the day than it would have were I not so bushed. :)

▰ Looking good, old timer. I mean, the shadow of that neon is so gorgeous.

▰ A combined play on a Brian Eno phrase and a John Cage visual motif is pretty much foundational Disquiet Junto territory.

▰ Been very much enjoying the series My Name on Netflix. Reminds me of some of my favorite Hong Kong triad/police movies. This moment is from a flashback in which a cigarette lighter, initially deemed too quiet, is pondered for its sonic component.

▰ K-drama fans: any recommendations for someone (i.e., me) who really dug My Name, 마이 네임 (i.e., contemporary, thriller, sensibility of solid Hong Kong triad/police dramas, very limited romance/humor)? Thanks.

▰ One of the best things about the graphic score projects we do on occasion in the #DisquietJunto is the resulting graphics, such as this one, where a participant (Marc Eisenschink) mapped the four circles from the shared score to the four knobs on the Teenage Engineering OP-1.

Before I hit pause on social media for the three-day weekend, one more example of how the graphic score was interpreted — in this specific case, mapped to a piece of software. Details on the project (Condensation Is a Form of Change), along with the original art, at disquiet.com/0557.

Local Resonance

The local movie theater, the Balboa, has great film programming, including VHS screenings, archival goodness, themed festivals, and animation, plus current blockbusters. And on top of all that, it’s hosting concerts these days, including the electronic goodness that is Resonant Frequencies (details: resfreq.live).

Disquiet Junto Project 0557: Condensation Is a Form of Change

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 5, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 1, 2022.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0557: Condensation Is a Form of Change
The Assignment: Interpret a graphic score that depicts four phases.

A combined play on a Brian Eno phrase and a John Cage visual motif is pretty much foundational Disquiet Junto territory. This week, interpret this image as a graphic score:

And there’s a high resolution copy of the image, too.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0557” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0557” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0557-condensation-is-a-form-of-change/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.

Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, September 5, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 1, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0557” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 557th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Condensation Is a Form of Change (The Assignment: Interpret a graphic score that depicts four phases) — at: https://disquiet.com/0557/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0557-condensation-is-a-form-of-change/.

Boombox Moral Panic

Saw these warnings all over Brooklyn and Manhattan. Boombox moral panic is real.

Cage Chord Compilation

This lengthy single track, just under an hours and 45 minutes in duration, was compiled by Tobias Reber from the work of 54 participants in a summer 2022 collaboration between Musikfestival Bern and the Disquiet Junto music community. Contributors were invited to make drones based on a shared single chord from a John Cage composition. More details at disquiet.com/0554.

Below is a full list in alphabetical order of the musicians included in this compilation. A few others were produced, as well, in the course of the music community project, which ran from August 11 through August 15, 2022. More on the festival, scheduled from September 7 through 11, 2022, at musikfestivalbern.ch.

33per, A Thousand Plateaus, Aethyr, Alchemical Cage Chord, analoc, ausgesuchtestenohren, baconpaul, Benn DeMole, celaeno, Chridmeister, Clint Burgess, craniform, Dan Simpson, Death Hags, encym, Fake Genius, feXon, Gerard Paresys, h b, he_nu_ri, hugh g twatt, -infDB, Kei, Krakencraft, krseward, Lazenbee Industries, Lee Evans, Leon Clowes, Marc Eisenschink, Marci Lucchi, Martin AB Cee, melondruie, nobuka, noimspartacus, Noodle Twister, Ossimuratore, Ostacoli Sonori, Paul Beaudoin, pineyb, Punks Dig Disco, RabMusicLab, ray_cobley, robbie, samarobryn, SinnySounds, Sonic Search, Stefan Strasser, Synthi, Tuonela, undermulden, wagneric, wasabicube, x i i i x x i, zeroperimeter

We don’t do a lot of this sort of thing (by which I mean a post-project compilation), in large part because I never want Junto participants to feel like they need to complete a piece before posting it, and in part because external overarching editorial consideration — as is necessary for a compilation like this — is also something I don’t want someone thinking about as they produce tracks for the Junto. But that said, the projects with Musikfestival Bern are unique ones, and part of the announced plan from the start was some tracks may be selected for playing during part of the festival. This excellent compilation is one expression of that plan. Many thanks to Tobias for having executed this compilation.

Five-Alarm No Fire

That there is no This Week in Sound email newsletter today may relate to the fact that I’ve just gotten back from 18 straight days in New York, and more specifically to the scene outside my hotel this morning at 3:00am when at least five fire trucks arrived en masse. The alarm initiated at 2:45am. Fortunately there was no fire. Eventually I did get back to sleep.