Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 163

Analog Reboot

Getting my “dumb speaker” system in order

twitter.com/disquiet: Tangles, X-Ray, Thelonious

I do this manually each Saturday, 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 in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s 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.

▰ “The two of you, like headphone wires tangling, caught up in this something.”

Very much enjoying Caleb Azumah Nelsons novel Open Water.

▰ Maybe it’s just me, but I’m having situations where to log onto Bandcamp (through Safari, on a current MacBook Pro), I have to click through as many as a dozen different captcha screen things. What is up?

▰ Each time I start learning a new song in guitar class, the first thing I do after the session (well, after I record myself playing the difficult bits before I forget them) is to search for the song at ethanhein.com.

▰ And sometimes you just need to put on Souled American’s 1988 album, Fe, marvel at the sheer personality of Joe Adducci’s bass, and listen to what Scott Tuma is up to (and extrapolate from there to what’s ahead for his own music). Such an incredible record.

▰ The X-Ray shorts tucked into the final season of The Expanse are enjoyable glimpses of the private lives of many characters. Also, observing Avasarala catnap and Peaches mourn in solitude provides ample opportunity to get immersed in the ambient sound of the spaceships they call home.

▰ I’ve learned of Elliot Harmon’s death, via Niki Korth. Elliot, while at Creative Commons (before EFF), was supportive of her exploration of Disquiet Junto activities, leading to a lengthy 2014 conversation (). My thoughts go out to Harmon’s family and friends.

▰ The year is 2022. It’s inexcusable for spellcheck to not recognize “Thelonious.”

▰ Caleb Azumah Nelson’s Open Water and Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock are two very different novels, and I like how both books wait until just about the midway point for the title phrase to appear in the story.

▰ There will be another edition of the This Week in Sound email newsletter on Monday. Topics include:

hold music tyranny
Beethoven synesthesia
military noise pollution compensation
European cases of Havana syndrome
more

Subscribe (free) at tinyletter.com/disquiet.

▰ And on that note, have a great weekend.

Pick a favorite novel and re-experience it as an audiobook

Rank your home appliances in terms of relative melodiousness

Watch a favorite TV show episode with an esoteric (to you) voice-over language

OCP’s Apéritifs

Half Baked Ideas by ocp

OCP is Operador de Cabine Polivalente, or Multipurpose Cab Operator, or João Ricardo, of Porto, Portugal. Half Baked Ideas is 17 tracks of steady-going broken beats, dub tangents, and ambient jitter. Described in a brief liner note as “experimental locked grooves,” it’s a collection of (mostly) brief tracks in which interstitial compositions are made from downtempo detritus. They range in length, generally, from 54 seconds to a little under four minutes, most in hovering around or below two. There’s beats that sound like the drum machine is falling down a staircase (“Pierrot”), what could be a bicycle wheel aspiring to drone status (the opening track, “Anel”), and whirligig stop’n’start buzziness (“Trumpa”), just to name a few flavors. The one exception, the one nod toward longer form, is “Duckie,” which clocks in at over seven and a half minutes, manifesting noir-flavored ambient techno, as serene as it is devoid of color. None of the work here is half-baked, despite the album’s title. It’s simply left as ingredient, as sketch, as the bit of a larger, more “complete” work that you’d have on loop in your head anyway. So, it bypasses the concept of a song, and just goes straight to the groove that’s predetermined to hook into your consciousness.

Album originally posted at blackholetimewarp.bandcamp.com. More from OCP/Ricardo at operadordecabine.blogspot.com.

Disquiet Junto Project 0524: Sunset Waveform

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, January 17, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 13, 2022.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0524: Sunset Waveform
The Assignment: Read a photo like a graphic score.

Background: This photo was taken at 5:34pm at Spreckels Lake in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The temperature was roughly 54º. The untouched image eerily resembles the sort of mirror-effect waveform ones sees representing sound visually online.

There is one step to this project: Interpret the above photo as if it were a waveform.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0524” (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 “disquiet0524” (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-0524-sunset-waveform/

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, January 17, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 13, 2022.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0524” 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 524th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Sunset Waveform (The Assignment: Read a photo like a graphic score) — at: https://disquiet.com/0524/

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-0524-sunset-waveform/

Sunset Before the Sunset

The neighborhood went full on Ralph McQuarrie mode this evening. I’m not usually one to post sunset photos, but this one is quite appealing to me, and it seemed fitting, since tomorrow’s Disquiet Junto project will also involve a sunset.

This Week in Sound: Fake Birds, Fake Radio, Early Chimes

These sound-studies highlights of the week are lightly adapted from the January 10, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound (tinyletter.com/disquiet).

As always, if you find sonic news of interest, please share it with me, and (except with the most widespread of news items) I’ll credit you should I mention it here.

▰ This New York Times story by Anthony Ham about the rediscovery of the Australian ghost bird includes the tantalizing statement that the person who did so has been charging in the past with having “faked audio recordings of the birds.” And people thought the big concern about deepfakes was in politics.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/04/science/night-parrot-ghost-bird-australia.html

▰ Great piece by Louis Chude-Sokei, a professor of English at Boston University, on using your ears when you travel: “I’ve been in cities and towns in Africa where a brutal, deafening din seemed to have no impact on the residents at all and in seaside locales in the Caribbean where the lull of water made people endlessly irritated.”
https://www.afar.com/magazine/the-next-time-you-travel-try-a-soundwalk
(Via Rob Walker’s Art of Noticing email newsletter)

▰ “At a crucial moment during 2020’s racial justice protests, Seattle police exchanged a detailed series of fake radio transmissions about a nonexistent group of menacing right-wing extremists,” reports Daniel Beekman.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-police-improperly-faked-radio-chatter-about-proud-boys-as-chop-formed-in-2020-investigation-finds/
(Via subtopes)

▰ The Ring line of residential products now has a sensor that can alert you if it recognizes the sound of breaking glass. Cue the Nick Lowe.
https://www.engadget.com/ring-glass-break-sensor-home-alarm-160001208.html

▰ “Much ‘early chime development’was done in California.” The chimes refered to in this piece by Tessa McLean are doorbells. She’s quoting expert Tim Wetzel on the subject of longbells. “I think there is sort of a zen to ringing the doorbell and hearing a nice door chime on the inside,” says Robert Dobrin, founder of the company ElectraChime, “because it bridges the inside with the outside and invites the visitor into your home.”
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/story-behind-longbell-vintage-doorbell-sf-16751663.php
(Thanks, Lowell Goss!)

▰ KQED has sonification of the data of snowfall in California’s Donner Pass for the past half century:
https://omny.fm/shows/kqed-segmented-audio/snow-sonification-softer
(Thanks, Mara Wildfeuer!)

▰ The company Eargo has made a name for itself with hearing aids that are barely visible. Now, writes J. Trew, they’re getting more sophisticated: “the company claims its proprietary algorithm can automatically sense your surroundings and the hearing aids will automatically optimize themselves to give you the best settings for it.”
https://www.engadget.com/eargo-6-hearing-aid-030036492.html

▰ “You’ll also no longer be able to change your Speaker Group volume using your phone’s physical volume button.” Such is one of the results of a ruling in favor of Sonos in a patent lawsuit against Google, per Lauren Goode: “The lawsuit is especially fraught considering that Sonos and Google are still partners in technology: Sonos’ newer smart speakers can be controlled by Google’s voice assistant, something Sonos was compelled to integrate after it found itself years behind in developing its own AI-powered voice assistant.”
https://www.wired.com/story/sonos-google-patents/

▰ “Our improved understanding of underwater sounds on coral reefs might help scientists keep track of how these ecosystems are faring,” writes Iain Barber, Deputy Dean, School of Animal, Rural & Environmental Sciences, Nottingham Trent University.
https://theconversation.com/listening-to-the-ocean-reveals-a-hidden-world-and-how-we-might-save-it-173790

▰ “The Cradle 1.0 listening blocker prevents your smartphone from hearing your conversations and those annoying times it accidentally activates when it’s not supposed to. Whether it’s on your nightstand, your desk at work, or in the living room while watching TV, rest assured your smartphone won’t hear a thing.”
https://pozio.com/products/pozio-cradle-block-talk

▰ The Clubhouse app (first on iOS, then Android) now works in browsers. Filipe Espósito thinks this may be too little, too late: “While this is definitely important in helping the platform become more popular, it may be too late for Clubhouse as it has been losing ground to competitors like Twitter Spaces – which has been available on iOS, Android, and the web for a while now.”
https://9to5mac.com/2022/01/06/clubhouse-finally-works-on-the-web-but-now-its-too-late/

▰ A new, pandemic-era mask can protect you and “amplify your voice by 60 decibels up to one meter away,” writes I. Bonifacic. The mask comes from the company Razer, most associated with video game equipment, as the mask’s design shows.
https://www.engadget.com/razer-zephyr-pro-announcement-180037042.html

The GitHub in My Life

This piece appeared in the January 2022 issue of The Wire as part of its look back at 2021:

One of my favorite records of the year was released by a company that makes guitar pedals. Several other favorites collected samples (atmospheres, beats) whose intended audience was musicians, though those samples are eminently listenable on their own. Many of my 2021 favorites included heartfelt thanks to the hardware and software developers whose engineering was part of the musicians’ creative process. Sometimes those expressions were merely admirative; often they revealed working relationships.

In all such cases, the releases were meaningfully proximate to the practitioners’ own working lives, minimizing any reliance on record label mediation. Throughout 2021, conversations between participants flourished not just on formal social media (Twitter, Facebook), but in niche safe harbors using platforms like Discord, Discourse, and Slack. (Much as the aged email newsletter had its revival, so too has the BBS.)

In a given week you might spy Lloyd Cole on llllllll.co asking for iOS app advice, or Robin Rimbaud on YouTube answering a comment about technique, or the Who’s Pete Townshend singing the praises of a virtual synth’s engineer on Instagram. GitHub, long the shared virtual workspace of coders, provides a window on collaborations both within and between projects thanks to pull requests that evidence input from users. Listening in on these conversations, and sometimes participating, has been one of the year’s great pleasures.

Sound Ledger¹ (Privacy, Insulation, Birds)

1262: The specific California Assembly bill (AB-1262) addressing privacy in regard to voice recognition

6.2: The value, in billions of U.S. dollars, estimated for the global building acoustic insulation market by 2028

35: The percent decrease in number of species of birds sighted at the Okhla Sanctuary in India, due in part to noise pollution

▰ ▰ ▰

¹Footnotes: Privacy: legislature.ca.gov. Insulation: yahoo.com. Birds: indiatimes.com.

Originally published in the January 10, 2022, edition of the This Week in Sound email newsletter (tinyletter.com/disquiet).

Weekly Beats 2022

I’m gonna give the Weekly Beats series (weeklybeats.com) another go this year. It’s a great online community, one where people post their tracks and comment on each other’s. Unlike with the Disquiet Junto and other communities, there is no required compositional prompt, though folks do propose such things in the WB forums.

My first Weekly Beats recording of the year, “Three Clock Problem,” is a simple drone (yeah, yeah, arguably beat-less) I put together in VCV Rack 2. A series of quantized pitches are sent through a reverb that has a wide array of controls. Rather than one consistent clock, there are three clocks, one at a time, that are triggering the quantizing, including whether or not it’s even running. Due to the reverb’s generous spaciousness, there’s never a gap. It’s quite simple. The foundation of this originated from a patch by Omri Cohen. Recorded in Audio Hijack from the system sounds, with the fade out introduced in Audition.

twitter.com/disquiet: Echo, Novels, Airplanes

I do this manually each Saturday, 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 in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s 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.

▰ Flashback to three years ago today, when I went to SFMOMA and stumbled on a lesson about how to pack a characteristically massive Richard Serra sculpture for shipping.

▰ The doorbell rings. It’s mechanical and takes time to decay. There’s a light echo in the hallway. A few minutes later there’s another echo, a text message beeps to note delivery had occurred. I kinda wanna change the text ringtone to match the doorbell: a more literal echo.

▰ I wander into the kitchen and think, as I often have for 22 months now, of home as spacecraft, specifically the Rocinante. I float in, refill my water bottle, get some dried fruit, and return to my station: monitors on, feeds enabled, tasks ahead. (Sound design by dishwasher.)

▰ That moment after guitar (Zoom) class, where I hold my left hand in position and then, after signing off, use my right hand to take a picture of my left hand before I forget the chord.

▰ Over breakfast I finished reading the third and final volume of Fonda Lee’s Jade trilogy, Jade Legacy. I took the last three chapters slowly just to stretch them out. What a run, what a ride. So many great characters, so many moments when the author didn’t take the easy way out. Now that I’m done with reading the final Jade book, it’s time for the ninth and final Expanse novel. That’s two epic series done with, and I read both in real time, as they were released, rather than after the fact. Both are excellent.

▰ The pandemic has really made me lose interest in participating in longterm interstellar travel.

▰ I think a lot about the Matthew McConaughey character in Interstellar listening to field recordings of Earth to keep his mind off the thin metal wall between him and the void. The thin wall would, yes, weird me out but the monotony in that cabin is what holds decreasing interest.

▰ Not that I’m going to movies yet, but I sure do love my neighborhood.

▰ Hate can’t be promised to die in a vacuum, but at least it suffers in a vacuum.

▰ Start of a thread of novels I finished reading, 2022 (habit borrowed from Jeremy Bushnell). The first week of the new year is when you finish reading books you almost finished reading over the holiday break.

No. 1 Jade City by Fonda Lee. Three words: triad boardroom fantasy. One more: awesome.

No. 2 The Last Tourist by Olen Steinhauer. Septuple agents, quadruple crosses. If thriller plot intricacies were an Olympic gymnastic event. Fourth book in Milo Weaver series. Benefits from intriguing introduction of occasional first-person perspective of a new, junior character.

▰ I’ve been one on plane trip since March 2020, so I’m here on the couch listening to the white noise of an airplane interior through headphones while I type away. I’m thinking of passing buses as clouds, and of the occasional emergency vehicle sirens as cockpit announcements.

▰ That’s pretty cool. Well under 24 hours after sending out yesterday’s This Week in Sound email newsletter, half the 2100+ subscribers had opened it. Tinyletter has minimal tracking, which is fine by me. Just nice to know it’s not falling on deaf inboxes, so to speak.

▰ Exactly four days later, the newsletter has a 54.5% open rate, which apparently is pretty good. If you’re into the role sound plays in culture, technology, politics, science, ecology, storytelling, warfare, art, and elsewhere, get This Week in Sound via tinyletter.com/disquiet.

▰ Topics for this coming Monday’s This Week in Sound email newsletter will include:

audio fakes by birdersphone surveillance prophylacticssound of snowflakeslistening for broken windowsmore

Subscribe (free*) at tinyletter.com/disquiet

*I just have a tip jar. No paywall.