Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 185

Not a Photoblog

This isn’t now a photoblog. I’m just getting used to my new camera, and I am thinking about how my visual documentation of the neighborhood corresponds with my sonic sense of place. The images I’ve shot on my phone the past few days are far better representations of how I think of the neighborhood than are the shots I’ve taken with my phone over the years. I think, then, about how audio representation might vary based on technology, as much as with capacity to employ the technology expertly, and what “fidelity” means in such context. It is more than the capacity of a file format, and it is more than having a proper wind shield on your microphone? And what is the sonic aspect of this neighborhood that is as prevalent as the rust resulting from the salty ocean air?

twitter.com/disquiet: Hassell, MIDI, Shazam

I do this manually each Saturday, collating recent tweets I made at twitter.com/disquiet, 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.

▰ Was tempted to break from my weekend offline status to pay tribute to Jon Hassell on his death, but I just listened and reflected. I don’t think, for me personally, any other musician created a sound world at once more magnetic, absorbing, anticipatory, and ecstatic.

▰ Apparently this device alerts me that its battery has been fully charged when its battery light goes dark. Which is also what happens when, you know, the device has ceased functioning entirely.

▰ Was wondering if I could hook a MIDI Fighter Twister up to a Bitbox Micro, and of course while looking around for information I realized that Trovarsi was already on the case.

▰ Uh, yeah, I sure felt that.

▰ Nest but it Shazams and logs each song blasted by every car, bicyclist, jogger, etc. that passes by your front door.

▰ There will be an outdoor gallery for sound art, the Butler Sound Gallery, at the Blanton Museum in Austin, Texas: sightlinesmag.org.

▰ Off to the known unknown

▰ Afternoon trio for dishwasher, drip coffee, and distant traffic

▰ Band name, logo, and album cover readymade. First come, first served:

▰ Have a good weekend, folks. Or best you can. Eat something new. Read something ancient. Kill an idol. Take a longer walk than usual. Listen to some quiet music loud. See you Tuesday (three-day weekend here).

First Stroll

First stroll with my new camera, first non-phone camera in 15 years, first good camera since I was a teenager

More (and in considerably higher resolution) at flickr.com, in the “disquietpxl” account.

Shutter

The finch doeSn't flincH if I take aim carefUlly, no moTion That could suggEst I'm a hazaRd

Disquiet Junto Project 0496: Isolation Room

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, July 5, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 1, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0496: Isolation RoomThe Assignment: Create new music around one strand of something you made in the past.

Step 1: Think of something you’ve recorded in the past that you want to revisit.

Step 2: Isolate one part of the original recording. The optimal option, though by no means the only approach, is something that runs for the length of the track, such as a a rhythmic element or a specific instrument. It’s certainly understandable if the isolation effort isn’t clinical. Other remnants of the source audio are fine.

Step 3: Compose a new track around the material isolated in Step 2.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0496” (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 “disquiet0496” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0496-isolation-room/

Step 5: Annotate your tracks 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.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, July 5, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 1, 2021.

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

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0496” 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 496th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Isolation Room (The Assignment: Create new music around one strand of something you made in the past) — at: https://disquiet.com/0496/

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-0496-isolation-room/

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

The image associated with this project is by Patrick, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

https://flic.kr/p/7S3zqm

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

Tilliander’s Strobe

“Two sine waves entwined pass me by Part 2 (2021)” by Andreas Tilliander, the musician who sometimes goes by Repeatle, is far more than two sine waves. And fair warning, the image in the accompanying video is stroboscopic in a manner that certainly aligns with the title’s aesthetic approach — in which patterning pushes the sensory limits — but also might, for some people, provoke seizures.

That isn’t the point, of course. This isn’t aggressive music, and the strobing of the video isn’t an anti-social act. It is a thriving thing, and a beautiful one at that. The filament-like symmetries we watch flutter through various formations, a kind of nanotech Rorschach or moiré ballet, while Repeatle’s music explores a kind of industrial babbling, ripples of drones serving as nubbed percussion, eager metrics plotted with soft edges.

Video originally posted to youtube.com. More from Repeatle, aka Andreas Tilliander, who is based in Stockholm, Sweden, at repeatle.bandcamp.com.

Squarepusher on Guitar

After releasing a remarkable collection of Aphex Twin transcriptions for classical guitar earlier this year, Simon Farintosh has now tackled some music by Aphex peer Squarepusher. The track “Tommib” originally appeared on Squarepusher’s 2001 album Go Plastic. It’s brief, not even a minute and a half, though its placid pace and lilting melody extend time a bit. In Farintosh’s hands, the original synthesizer piece takes on an even more folk-classical feel, the lilt even more clear — a bit Spanish, a bit Celtic, but still all Squarepusher. I interviewed Farintosh about the Aphex Twin transcriptions back in February. He explained at the time: “I think that in a sense, every transcription is a cover. … The reverse is not true, however.” What he’s getting at is that there is more to a transcription than tracing the main melody and mapping out the chords. His work gets at the inner workings of the piece. Listen to the original to compare:

Go Plastic by Squarepusher

Video originally posted at youtube.com. More from Farintosh at simonfarintosh.com.

Frédéric Tentelier’s Silences

On Établit un Temps, On Creuse un Épais by Frédéric Tentelier

There are numerous elements in “Du clos de l’ouvert” and “Se pencher sur la forme d’un fil, I,” the two tracks made available for streaming from Frédéric Tentelier’s On Établit un Temps, On Creuse un Épais. The album was released earlier this month by Hitorri, a label from Tokyo, Japan. The accompanying text lists its contents, “field recordings, Fender Rhodes, organs, banjo, objects,” and judging by these two pieces, “objects” should come first in the list, so flush is the album with sounds that while not identifiable are contraindicatory of any sort of standard issue instrument. Instead there is a subtle chamber music of cracks and thwaps and creaks and knocks, with drones and bell tones and bits of melodic suggestiveness in between. And higher still on the list of materials should be “silence,” because beautiful as the source audio scraps are in combination, what really makes them work is how much space there is between them and within them, how the slightest sound is allowed full center-stage presence, and how any two bits might be separated by a significant lull. The silences are so prominent that even when they are absent, the music is heard against them as a backdrop. When sounds quiet down, they aren’t merely quiet. They are exposing the silence around them.

Album originally posted at hitorri.bandcamp.com.

Current Favorites: “In C,” New Davachi, Live Scanner

A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them.

▰ “In CV”: not just Terry Riley’s “In C” performed on modular synthesizer, but with a module specifically designed to play it. (via Jason Wehmhoener)

▰ Sarah Davachi has announced Antiphonals for release this coming September. For now there is one track, “Rushes Recede,” overlapping waves giving way to something more expressly gothic and churchly:

Antiphonals by Sarah Davachi

▰ I missed the Robin Rimbaud show last weekend, and am digging this 13-minute video excerpt of the full performance: pulsing minimalist beats and haunting voice (or voice-like material). Submerge:

twitter.com/disquiet: Cameo x Patreon, CDs x R2D2

I do this manually each Saturday, collating recent tweets I made at twitter.com/disquiet, 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.

▰ My favorite morning sound remains the ice cubes clinking/fizzing in my coffee. I have a new one too. I hooked up a CD player/recorder so it’s always connected to my laptop when I’m at my desk, and in the morning when I turn everything on it emits delightful “R2D2 wakes up” whirs.

▰ Cameo, but 45-minute (real-time) music lessons from as wide an array of musicians as one could hope for. More like Cameo x Patreon.

▰ “Your pinky is like your secret weapon.”

(Thing I heard myself say in guitar class.)

(Lest there be any confusion in the matter, I am the student.)

▰ I find that music-making tools I’m drawn to are often those with active communities online. I then wonder what connection there is between building a community and building an instrument beyond both expressions including the word “build.”

▰ This week, Disquiet Junto participants share a protip and make music as an example (disquiet.com/0495). These are some of ’em:

dragged micsnotepad miniaturesenforced re-useover repetitiontrying new thingswind organsexcising perfectionism

▰ And on that note, have a good weekend. Get fresh air. Listen as you do so. Thank someone who made the past year livable. Re-read a favorite book while focusing on a stylistic element or secondary plot. See you Monday, or maybe Tuesday.