Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 14

Empty the Magazine

This was at the doctor’s office today. I have no idea what it means. I do like that someone added that question mark. It wasn’t me.

Work in Progress

Work in progress for the next Frame by Frame comic I’m doing with Hannes Pasqualini (hannes.papernoise.net). Meanwhile, full back catalog of the series at disquiet.com/fxf.

Listening to Bosch Listening

I mentioned last month, when I started reading the first Bosch book, The Black Echo, a scene in which Michael Connelly, author of the series, highlights the details of such a mundane thing as dialing a pay phone. It’s a moment, as I said at the time (having not yet finished the book), when something someone might not have imagined at the time of the book’s writing, the early 1990s, would ever become outdated was given the attention normally associated with historical fiction: getting all the precise aspects right.

Phones play a crucial role in the novel, as Bosch, a Los Angeles Police Department detective, and his FBI agent partner try to sort out the nature of a complex crime they are investigating. There are office phones and pay phones and home phones, and pagers, and, no surprise to the reader, surveillance taps on such phones, as delineated in this passage above.

The key thing in that passage is Bosch’s ear. This isn’t merely Connelly writing about phones; this is Bosch’s own thinking, the thinking of a detective. He had, earlier in the book, noticed a hang-up on his home phone’s answering machine. Much later in the book he reconsiders what he had heard, and finds meaning in it. The above, per my Kindle, is 58% of the way through the book. The original scene, when he first notices the recorded hang-up, occurs at 41%:

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What’s especially funny to me, as the book’s reader, is that like Bosch, I also didn’t take much note of the hang-up at the time. In fact, I highlighted a totally different sentence when I read that paragraph, the bit about how Bosch listens to CDs. I did so because in the TV show, the Bosch character also listens to jazz, but only on vinyl. (I noted this on social media at the time, but somehow left it off my weekly collation of my social media posts, so I just added it.) Above I’ve now also highlighted the moment when this bit of crucial information — in the form of silence — is witnessed by Bosch, and he doesn’t comprehend it until another 17% of the story passes.

Scratch Pad: iOS, STT, Savory

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I find knowing I’ll revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ After-dark trio for dishwasher, skateboarder, and whirring electric vehicle

▰ A friend who saw me mention using an Anbernic retro game handheld: I thought you didn’t play video games.

Me, after thinking about it: I don’t much, but I try. Mostly I’m interested in alternative firmware, sound design of virtual worlds, and chiptune music. (All of which video games are rich with.)

▰ I’m not sure if this was the intention with the iOS app “library,” but I find myself, on my iPhone and iPad, removing the vast majority of my apps from the home screen and accessing those just from the library

▰ A friend who uses speech-to-text a lot for writing sent me an email in which what was intended was “mazel tov” but it was transcribed as “muzzle tough”

▰ Hyper-local* food post: there are two Cherry Blossom cafes, one in the Inner Richmond and one on Ocean, and they both have many treats to offer. The essential one — for me, that is — is the savory scallions and ham, which is light and fluffy.

*San Francisco

▰ Reading-wise, I’m very close to the end of the first Bosch novel, The Black Echo. A lot of the book involves Bosch and his partner figuring out what might be going on, laying out their various hypotheses step by step. I’ve come to wonder how much of that is the author describing the detectives figuring things out, and how much of it is a lightly altered version of the author thinking as he himself was devising the plot in the first place. Thus what appears to be the unraveling of the given crime may actually have been the opposite: the raveling, as it were. There’s also an excellent little bit later in the book involving telephones that follows up nicely on the item I posted about earlier. I’ll share that excerpt later. This weekend is largely given over to family activities, of the sort centered around a cemetery, so time is understandably limited. I imagine I’ll finish it tomorrow before bed. The book club in which I’m reading The Mushroom at the End of the World delayed its meeting until next Sunday, so I’ve slowed my pace so it’ll be fresh when discussion occurs.

RIP, Skype (2003–2025)

Skype, the telecommunications app, launched in 2003, the same year as MySpace and the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia.

Skype was a progenitor of our late-pandemic, Zoom-mediated lives. And now, after 22 years, and almost a decade and a half following its acquisition by Microsoft, Skype has been shut down, as of May 5.

Between cellphones and Facetime and Slack huddles and all manner of conference-call apps, we take instant realtime video communication these days as a given, but Skype originated (voice-only initially) at a time when such things were expensive, all the more so when connecting people internationally.

For just under a decade, I taught a course about sound to art school students, the majority of whom were from other countries (e.g., Sweden, Korea, China, Spain, and Saudi Arabia). I started doing so in 2012, a year after Microsoft bought Skype. A core part of the assigned homework was maintaining a “sound journal,” in which students wrote several times a week, detailing an observation they made about one sound or another.

Certain topics revealed themselves as common to these journals as the years of my teaching went by: the issues of noise in a city, the comforting purr of a house cat, the way the chatter in cafes somehow provided the perfect backdrop for doing homework. The everyday utility of Apple’s AirPods became a nearly universal subject in these sound journal shortly after their debut in 2016.

And at least one student a semester would inevitably write a short essay affectionately describing the sounds that Skype made, in particular when it opened and when its bubbly melody announced an incoming call. These Skype-specific sounds meant that the student would soon be talking to family or friends back home. Often these sound journal entries would describe how the student didn’t even recognize a persistent low-level homesickness until Skype announced itself — and then the sense of longing and the awareness of loneliness kicked in.

There was a lot packed into those little Skype noises, and the app became a useful tool for discussing the broader topic of the course, that being the role of sound in the media landscape, and the more focused matter of what’s come to be termed “sonic branding.” Some of the best ways to introduce subjects in class, I learned, was to let them happen naturally. So for the most part, I didn’t introduce Skype each semester. I just waited for it to come up — for it to, in effect, ring — and then we would collectively dive into its emotional and cultural meaning.

Making Trios Together Over Time

This is from the note that went out to members of the Disquiet Junto music community early on Thursday, May 8, 2025:

There are a few projects we do each year in the Disquiet Junto. We start the year with the “ice” project (record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it), and we end with the “diary” project. And somewhere during the year, we do the “trios” project. That’s about to happen, starting today. 

A longtime Junto participant and observer, music educator Ethan Hein has described this particular sequence — it’s actually three projects over three weeks, though to be clear, you don’t have to do all of them — as “a horizon-broadening creative experience.” 

Here’s how I’ve summarized the trio projects in the past:

[T]he first week, participants upload a solo piece, one that is intended to, over time, with the contributions of other musicians, become a trio. Thus, for the first week, it’s helpful for participants to leave room for who and what will follow. 

The second week, musicians each select solo pieces from week one, pan them to the left, and add a second channel on the right, creating not just duets, but incomplete ones. Then the final week, new participants add a third track in the center, thus completing the trios. 

It’s a pretty incredible project to listen to as it unfolds, especially when, come week two, you can sometimes hear multiple duets built from one initial solo track — and the same, when the trios are complete, come week three.

To receive the weekly Junto project announcements, sign up, for free, at juntoletter.disquiet.com.

Disquiet Junto Project 0697: First Third

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0697: First Third
The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio.

Please note: While this project is the start of a three-part sequence that will unfold over the course of three consecutive weeks, you can participate in any or all three of those parts. 

Step 1: This week’s Junto project is the first in a sequence intended to encourage and reward collaboration. You will be recording something with the understanding that it will remain unfinished for the time being. Your part will be done, but more will happen. Read on.

Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music using any instrumentation of your choice. Conceive the piece as something that leaves room for something else — other instruments, other people — to join in. (Keep in mind that your piece resulting from this week’s project will be panned to the left in the second and third weeks of this sequence.)

Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly two to three minutes in length, as described in Step 2. 

Step 4: This is important: be sure to make your track downloadable because it may be used by someone else in the next Disquiet Junto project, and the one after that.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0697” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0697-first-third/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is usually up to the musician, but for this one, please, per the instructions, keep it to roughly two to three minutes in length. Thanks.

Deadline: Monday, May 12, 2025, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 697th weekly Disquiet Junto project, First Third — The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio — at https://disquiet.com/0697/

Pekler & Jelinek, Hardware Dept.

I’ve been meaning to post this photo since I mentioned attending the excellent recent Andrew Pekler and Jan Jelinek (and Chris Otchy) concert at Gray Area here in San Francisco a couple weeks ago. Just for the historical record, that is Pekler’s setup on the left and Jelinek’s on the right. They did not play at the same time. Otchy opened, then came Pekler, and then Jelinek.

A Tony Passarell Joint

Tired: Getting reminders on social media to say happy birthday to (or otherwise reconnect with) deceased friends.

Wired: Stumbling on newly uploaded recording sessions featuring deceased friends.

The prolific concert recorder who goes by 3.Cameras.and.a.Microphone on YouTube just posted a previously unreleased jazz fusion studio session featuring the late Tony Passarell, an old friend, with limited available details about the source material’s circumstances. The players are listed as, in addition to Tony: Stephen, Charles, and Robert, with no last names. There’s a scribbled addition in parenthesis, which appears to be “Davon.” The date given is “8/14/13” — August 14, 2013, a Wednesday. It’s a loose affair, featuring presumably Passarell’s sax, plus guitar, bass, and drums.

EVP Melodies

The phenomenon called EVP, or electronic voice phenomenon — apologies for the redundancy there — is one in which voices are heard emanating from noise: signals in the static. For one type of listener alert to EVP, this can be accepted as a fascinating illusion, a demonstration of the mind’s capacity to identify patterns and to lend them meaning. For another listener, it can be experienced as a voice from beyond, perhaps from beyond the grave, or perhaps from across the event horizon to the singularity, a truly electronic voice. Either way: ghosts in the machine.

The word “voice” means something specific in the context of synthesizers, where a voice is an identifiable individual instrument within a larger system, or perhaps a standalone instrument. A “voice” in that context has enough source material and controls that it can be utilized for expression. There’s a difference between an oscillator, which simply emits a sound, and a voice, the latter concept invoking a collection of additional tools that allow it to be shaped and used to express something.

The concept of EVP comes comes to mind during this live performance by Nick Lisher, who records as Lesjamusic, because the noise is rich enough that the sense of something melodic-like happening does so, to a large degree, at a substrate level. The helpful thing about a performance like this one is that you can watch the technology be employed as you listen to the sounds, and thus get a sense of what’s happening, at least in terms of an alignment of cause and effect. In this case, the musician has done us the additional benefit of explaining a bit of what’s going on in an accompanying note. If you keep an eye on that yellow button toward the right of the screen, you’ll recognize moments at which changes occur. Explains Lisher, this is when “a new fragment is being captured and stretched.” At those instances, melodic cogency occurs not deep beneath but, instead, at the top level, and then the top level slowly becomes the drone within which other subtler sounds occur — or at least appear to.