Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 175

Nerd Forecast

It’s several months away, but I’m excited to have not just a mini-essay but the closing entry coming out in a 25-part series by as many writers at hilobrow.com. The collection, “Nerd Our Enthusiasm,” is edited by Peggy Nelson, who wrote in the introductory post:

The word “nerd” has gotten a bad rap over the years. Deployed in any number of movie, meme, and IRL recess situations, it has connotations of poor social skills, and a perceived too-intense focus on (variously) math, computers, chess, historical factoids, how-to manuals … let’s just generalize as a perceived too-intense focus. And despite the term’s partial rehabilitation by our current tech overlords and the world they have wrought (and the incredible wealth they have amassed), there’s still something that hesitates before application of the term, either to others, or to one’s self.

When I chose “nerd” as the theme of this Hilobrow “Enthusiasm” series, however, I intended something different, definitionally — an upgrade, if you will. I wanted to cast as wide a net as possible, and hear about what people were just very, very interested in and excited about in all its glorious detail — their passion, their hobby, their self-claimed area of official or ad hoc expertise.

It’s an incredible roster that Nelson has collected. Before my piece (“celebrating nets of nerd communities,” in Nelson’s description) pops up on December 28, there will be ones from, among others, Josh Glenn, Miranda Mellis, Annie Nocenti, Vijay Parthasarathy, Luc Sante, and Jessamyn West. Whether or not you share their particular nerd fixations, you’ll enjoy the enthusiasm and insight they bring to their self-explorations.

twitter.com/disquiet: AI, Infrastructure ASMR, NYC,

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.

▰ I just typed “Tell me more” in a text message and I fear I’ve become an AI.

▰ The state of track metadata on Bandcamp downloads could really use some attention. So much effort on recording, mastering, physical releases, art, photography, design, liner notes, promotion, etc. Then you download something and find that maybe one or two fields are filled in.

▰ Among the benefits of living in California is the io9 Morning Spoilers (gizmodo.com/io9) being posted before my day begins. Having to wait for it while visiting the East Coast is always a surprise somehow.

▰ Yeah, I made iOS shortcuts to turn on and off those background sounds under accessibility. Gonna sample and hold this ocean track and suss out its secrets.

▰ The Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) announcements on the train are clearer than they used to be, but no less mumbled, and at this low volume are akin to infrastructure ASMR.

▰ Seconds after posting that previous tweet I realize that “infrastructure ASMR” is my optimal listening experience. Hours later, as I sit in a hotel room listening to a readymade duet for building construction and autumnal HVAC, I am all the more certain. Autumnal HVAC will be the title of my first poetry collection.

▰ A customer support call menu is both the simplest and most frustrating text adventure.

▰ Pro trip: You don’t need to set an alarm when there’s an enormous construction site next to your hotel.

▰ It’s likely just the echo effect of the skyscraper canyons, but I’d swear that car horns in Manhattan linger longer before fully fading.

▰ I walk a lot in San Francisco, but yow do I walk a lot in Manhattan. At least eight miles yesterday, not counting pacing ruminatively around my hotel room. (I don’t have a tracker. I just roughed out the path in Google Maps after the fact.)

▰ It’s not every week I plumb the works of Piero della Francesca for a Disquiet Junto image, but for this week’s project it seemed appropriate.

▰ After three mornings in this hotel, I may just change my alarm sound to a recording of construction noise.

▰ Headed to JFK. Been in New York two and a half weeks and never (over)heard Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, or Bon Jovi once. Unusual. I have, however, heard Metallica and Journey numerous times. That’s the Bay Area calling me back. … And as we’re boarding, “Tell Her About It” comes over the JetBlue terminal speaker system.

Speed Test

Definitely my speed

Let’s Go to the Video Tape

Video tape. I’m kinda like, “Prove it.”

Disquiet Junto Project 0509: The Long Detail

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, October 4, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 30, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0509: The Long DetailThe Assignment: Create a piece of music with moments from a preexisting track.

Step 1: You’re going to be making a piece of music using only a few select details, or brief moments, from an existing piece of music. Choose a source track, preferably one of your own, to begin with.

Step 2: Isolate some details from the track, not so much beats and tones as moments, each of which has a unique quality. Do as many as feels right, based on the source material: perhaps a handful, perhaps a dozen. It’s up to you.

Step 3: Create a piece of music in which each detail/moment is followed by another, for as long as you want. Feel free to repeat them. Put some space between the moments so they exist independently from each other. You might want to edit the moments so they fade in and out, or you made want the edits to feel abrupt. Trust your ear, and your listener’s ear.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0509” (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 “disquiet0509” (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-0509-the-long-detail/

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.

Note: Please post one track per 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, October 4, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 30, 2021.

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

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0509” 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 509th weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Long Detail (The Assignment: Create a piece of music with moments from a preexisting track) — at: https://disquiet.com/0509/

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-0509-the-long-detail/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is a detail from a painting by Piero della Francesca (1415-1492).

A Way to Listen to Patzr Radio

The Patzr Radio podcast, its raw everyday noises coddled and collated, filtered and warped, by Jimmy Kipple, always surprises. What begins here as industrial whine gives way to a shuddering, a rabid flux, that is animal-like, maybe actual animals, such as the quick motion of sea creatures fleeing a net, or simply “-like,” some mechanical device nearing collapse from aeons of use and abuse.

The entries in this ongoing series (episode 237!) are short because they should be listened to on repeat. By the time you get to the end the first time, you understand more about where it began. When it begins anew, you understand the subsequent transitions better (when the whine dies out, when one sound transforms into another). And the more you listen, the more those changes take on compositional quality, the more the piece becomes a composition. Noises become motifs, transitions become development, and alterations become narrative.

And after listening to an episode on repeat, you’ll want to listen back to other episodes and sense how this piece helps unpack previous ones.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/patzr-radio.

Epic Alejandro Morse

Alejandro Morse has shared an initial pieces off a forthcoming album, Adversarial Policies, due from the Static Discos label. It’s an epic recording, halfway between a vast granular synthesis daydream and an Ennio Morricone western score. It tracks a thick rising cloud of tremulous drones, as if a string section had been left to keep a hostage negotiation under control. It’s enthralling.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/alejandro-morse. Morse and Static Discos are both based in Mexico.

Alarm

I wish someone hAd toLd me thAt the secuRity systeM was on before I openedthe window.

My Back Pages and Then Some

▰ Some of my adolescent treasures I’ve unearthed from my parents’ garage. I always liked the gentle oxymoron that is “Level II Basic.”

▰ Back to the old future:

▰ The desk that got me through my entire pre-college education:

twitter.com/disquiet: Home, Rain, Insects

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.

▰ Dust never sleeps

▰ 2021 is, in part, sitting alone in two different virtual conference tools associated with a single meeting’s calendar invitation, and waiting to see which (or if, yes, either) will turn out to be where the meeting will take place.

▰ Hometown telephone pole graffiti

▰ I did make it to . If only this place existed when I was a kid.

▰ You can go home again, and you can learn things about your home in the process.

▰ Sometimes I stare at the crates of records against a wall near my desk and think: that exact space could hold an upright piano, and if there were a piano, it could (eventually) play more music than all these LPs combined. (I kept the LPs and bought a guitar instead, but yeah.) I’m actually 3,000 miles from my desk at the moment, but in a way that lends perspective.

▰ Pro tip: turn off the ceiling fan before conducting the interview you intend to record. (Turning off the rain is another story.)

▰ Fairly certain this week’s Disquiet Junto project has the best/worst pun in the 508 consecutive weeks to date.

▰ If you’ve been living in a rain-starved region for years, waking up to (from?) the sound of the roof being pummeled by a storm feels somehow wasteful. (It also sounds like thousands of tiny horses are rushing past frantically overhead.)

▰ The sheer volume of insect noise in my hometown is insane.

And now I have Hall and Oates in my head. “They only come out at night …”

And now maybe you do, too.