Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 21

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.

Down on the Corner

This was at the corner. I resisted the urge to snag it.

Scratch Pad: Algorithm, Apps, Mycology

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.

▰ I sometimes wonder if the Algorithm processes that much of the music I Shazam is stuff I can’t stand, so I can avoid it in the future. The Algorithm can’t regularly distinguish curiosity from affection from dislike.

▰ Listened to some old Power Station albums for the umpteenth time and remain astonished by Tony Thompson’s drum production

▰ I love when it’s clear a website has tweaked its backend because suddenly the RSS reader is full of a dozen or so old posts

▰ I’ll take a small pleasure at the end of the week. I use an phone app a lot, and I so send a note to its developer with a small suggestion, and less than a day and a half later my suggestion is part of the app, and now I’m using the app even more regularly. Doesn’t matter, really, what app, or what feature. Just a kind of interaction and response and sense of connectedness I marvel at, and hope not to stop marveling at.

▰ End of week:

▰ A lot of foghorns and a lot of wind, that’s what’s going on here. Have a good weekend.

▰ I didn’t finish reading any books this week, but I’m about halfway through the first Bosch novel (by Michael Connelly), The Black Echo, and about a quarter of the way through The Mushroom at the End of the World (by Anna Lowenhurst Tsing). I love how seemingly unrelated books that one might read at the same time end up having connections. For example, without giving too much away about the Bosch book, both it and the mushroom book center around skills gained by people in Vietnam and around Southeast Asia, and how those skills then get transferred to the United States: in one case, of military veterans committing crimes based on skills learned in tunnel combat; and in the other, of mushroom hunters foraging in the forest.

More Live/Stream Venues

The word “livestream” is for events that are streamed live. During the early pandemic, that was in lieu of an in-person audience, and these days it means simultaneous with the live performance. These latter events are something special, not “livestream” so much as “live/stream”: offering locals and the far-flung (and the infirm, or otherwise homebound) opportunities to attend. I made a list earlier this week of a bunch of venues that live/stream regularly, and here are two more, courtesy of folks on the very interesting izzzzi.net social network, where I hang out a bit:

▰ A member named brandon directed me to Boston-based Non-Event (nonevent.org), which is not livestreamed but has a heap of archived material from past events at various places, including a 45-minute Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe show at Boston City Hall, which as of this writing merely 214 people have streamed, Jessica Pavone at First Church a few months back, Raven Chacon, Neil Leonard performing Phill Niblock, and much more. These are egregiously under-viewed full-length concert recordings. I’m used to being one of 10 people seated on folding chairs at a concert, but a year and a half later, a Seth Cluett solo show should have more than 414 views. I’ve now subscribed to the Non-Event YouTube channel, and look forward to what’s next, and exploring its past. (And Non-Event is not a venue in the physical sense. It puts together shows at a wide range of places.)

▰ And courtesy of another izzzzi member, onewayness, I’ve been introduced to Wonderville in Brooklyn, which has a presence on Twitch and YouTube, a lot of live coding, modular, and other musical activities. I’ll be digging in.

I’ve added both these to my “Livestreams After Lockdown” post.

Disquiet Junto Project 0696: Chain of Layers

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 0696: Chain of Layers
The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers.

This project is the first of three that are being done in by the Disquiet Junto in collaboration with the 2025 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 3 through 7. The festival topic this year is « Kette » — which translates, as the organization explains, to “Chain”: “Chains connect but they also bind. They create relationships but also restrictions. As a gift they look nice, feared when used in vice, and yet they can span bridges across fire and ice.” All three Junto projects will engage with the work of Svetlana Maraš, who is the Composer-in-Residence for the 2025 festival.

We are working again at the invitation of Tobias Reber, an early Junto participant, who is in charge of the educational activities of the festival. This is the seventh year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern.

Step 1: Record 10 to 15 layers of continuous sound.

Step 2: Create a piece of music in which you only change the relative presence of those individual layers from Step 1 over time. Some light effects and panning are certainly fine, but the majority of the impact should be how the prominence of the individual layers changes.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0696” (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-0696-chain-of-layers/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you.

Deadline: Monday, May 5, 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 696th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chain of Layers — The Assignment: Make music change by altering its layers — at https://disquiet.com/0696/

Listening to Mushrooms

Yes, I’m enjoying Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing’s 2015 book, The Mushroom at the End of the World, which I’ve owned for almost as long and started twice and am finally getting into. It’s interesting how much John Cage is in it. Even before I got to the Cage mention at the start of the “interlude” between section I and II of the book, I’d noticed, amid all the mycology (of which Cage was a major enthusiast), much attention paid to “indeterminacy” (“the unplanned nature of time,” in the author’s words) and “happening” (as opposed by Tsing to “gathering”), both key Cageian concepts.