Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 242
April 13, 2020
Mentors
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Many thanks to illustrator Hannes Pasqualini (horizontalpitch.com, papernoise.net) for the collaboration.
April 12, 2020
Vinyl Desk
If you’re six feet tall, then three stacked boxes of LPs make an OK occasional standing desk.
(Art above laptop: Pete Doolittle. Postcard: Jorge Colombo. Tape: Arckatron)
April 11, 2020
This Week in Sound: Deep Listening to NYC + …
This is lightly adapted from an edition first published in the April 6, 2020, 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.
▰ Ruth Saxelby writes at NPR about the changes in our soundscape: “A wildlife sound recordist had noted that birdsong is more noticeable right now because noise pollution levels are down. ‘We’re hearing the world as people heard it decades ago.'” And Saxelby doesn’t restrict herself to a definition of nature that excludes human activity: “At night, I turn on an air purifier that we bought before things got hectic. The idea was to help provide relief during allergy season, but it has come to occupy a talisman-like role in my mind.”
▰ Apple has absorbed an AI company, Voysis, that specializes in natural language technology. The company “managed to shrink its system to the point where, once the AI is trained, the software uses as little as 25 megabytes of memory — about the same size as four Apple Music songs.”
▰ In Paris, “noise levels are down to as little as six to nine decibels at night, some 70%-90% lower than normal, according to Bruitparif, which monitors noise quality.” This isn’t just from reduced activity. It’s also from reduced population size: “Geolocalising data collected by mobile phone operator Orange indicates nearly one in every five Parisians fled the capital in the hours before the lockdown was imposed.”
▰ Interesting research about which trees are better at absorbing sound, for use when things return to whatever we redefine “normal” to mean: “If you want to minimise the amount of noise in an urban environment it’s better to plant conifers than broadleaved trees, scientists claim.”
▰ Rebecca Powers in the Washington Post does a reverse conch shell, exploring how the currently confined can tour the world’s cities through sound. (Via Mike Rhode.)
▰ “What Oliveros calls ‘deep listening’ can be overwhelming and draining to do all the time, especially in moments of crisis. But it can also prompt an expansion of curiosity.” The New York Times’ Lindsay Zoladz applies Pauline Oliveros’ philosophy of sound to life in a state of literal alarm: “To hear an ambulance siren is to faintly register the interruption of a high, whining pitch; to listen to an ambulance siren is to picture the face and the body and the family of the person it is carrying to a hospital, likely another neighbor suffering from Covid-19.”
▰ Gary Hustwit, the filmmaker, has been screening one of his documentaries for free each week, and through April 14 it will be Rams, his Dieter Rams feature, which has a score by none other than Brian Eno.
April 10, 2020
Compact Device, Spacious Sound
You needn’t know anything about the intricacies of synthesizer design to appreciate the performance that Star Azure ekes out of this compact setup. The small assortment of devices yields a spacious and constantly shifting range of sounds, and the constant presence of the musician’s hands adjusting settings makes the scale clear. The track’s title, “Fermi’s Paradox,” relates to the search for extraterrestrial life, which here can be said to map to the subtle contrast between the deep droning backing music, and the patterns of more singular bleeps and beeps that are charted across it.
This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended fine live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at YouTube. More from State Azure at stateazure.bandcamp.com.
April 9, 2020
Disquiet Junto Project 0432: Ensembles (Remix)
Two notes for participants: (1) With this project, we’re back to the standard Junto rule of one entry per musician. (2) If you participated in the 430th or 431st project, it would be great if you’d upload the isolated track of your part and link to it from your previous entry, which will make it available to this week’s remixer. Thanks.
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 Monday, April 13, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 9, 2020.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0432: Ensembles Remix
The Assignment: Take an existing musical trio and remix it to make it your own.
Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project brings the trios sequence to a close. Over the three previous sequential projects, musical trios were created by accrual, one participant at a time. You’ll now remix one (or combine more than one) and make it/them your own.
Step 2: The plan is for you to remix a pre-existing track from the previous project. First, however, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are well over 80 tracks in all to choose from, 83 in all. You might also choose to use more than one track, mashing up tracks that have nothing in common, or that share elements. Here’s the playlist, with 81 of the tracks from last week:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0431
And there are two others from Bassling (aka Jason Richardson):
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0431-solitary-ensembles-x-3/30855/12
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0431-solitary-ensembles-x-3/30855/7
To select a track, you can listen through all that and choose one, or you can use a random number generator to select a number from 1 to 83, the first 81 being numbered in the above SoundCloud playlist, and the other two being Bassling’s mentioned above. (Note: it’s fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece.)
Step 3: Create a remix based on the track or tracks you selected in Step 2.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0432” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0432” (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 track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0432-ensembles-remix/
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.
Additional Details:
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, April 13, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 9, 2020.
Length: The length is up to you. It can be interesting to make long tracks short, and short tracks long.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0432” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.
Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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: Given the nature of this particular project sequence, it is 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:
Be sure to name and link to the source tracks you’re remixing, and credit the musicians who recorded them.
More on this 432nd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Disquiet Junto Project 0432: Ensembles (Remix) — The Assignment: Take an existing musical trio and remix it to make it your own — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0432-ensembles-remix/
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this track is by Abby, used thanks to a Creative Commons license and Flickr. The image has been cropped, colors shifted, and text added.
Cage Omen
Apparently the light from the dining room at night in the dark reflects off the metal case that is my copy of John Cage’s book-like object Rolywholyover A Circus, which sits on a shelf above home-office desk. This in turns casts an X perfectly positioned on what I think is called the window casing directly behind where my head is when I’m seated, but in any case this is in no way ominous.
April 8, 2020
Robert Henke Is on Bandcamp
In a welcome development, Robert Henke (aka Monolake) started a page on Bandcamp today. There’s just one release currently, a dreamy 10-minute drone titled “Oomoo.” The sinuous palindrome of its title mirrors the flowing vibe of the piece. The name was familiar to me, and then I realized that I wrote about the track when it was first released, back in 2007, as a free MP3 download from his monolake.de website, which no longer seems to be operational. (He was releasing a free MP3 a month back then.) Instead, he makes his home on the web at roberthenke.com, as well as, now, at roberthenke.bandcamp.com. That’s the same year, 2007, that SoundCloud was founded, and it’s a year before Bandcamp was founded, and longer still before either became default locations for musicians to post their recordings. The track “Oomoo,” meanwhile, sounds as fresh today as it did upon its release. As I described it at the time: “it’s a film-score-ready drone that moves like a single sheet of material buffeted by wind, from rapturous peaks to rumbling valleys. Listening to it in a car alone after dark will turn any routine drive into a scene from a Michael Mann movie.” I don’t usually post tracks twice on Disquiet.com, but this seemed like a reasonable occasion to do so. Very early on in the Downstream series here I accidentally did, because so little music was freely available and I’d forgotten. A reader at the time helpfully pointed it out. Technically, the track “Oomoo” remains a free download, because it’s set at “name your price,” but do consider chipping in a little.
April 7, 2020
Music for the Pause of Time
To follow up yesterday’s video, more music from the musician who goes by Shipwreck Detective, aka San Francisco-based Devanand Addison Bhat. These four short, “simple tape meditations” were recorded just as the shelter-in-place orders were taking effect in the city (March 23 – 29, 2020), and then released a couple days later (the 31st) under the collective title Rest. They are textures comprised of melodies comprised of textures. Track “i” sets the pensive tone and tempo for the set: a warped tune that melts as it proceeds. Track “ii” introduces the slightest crackle of surface noise, and what would be listened past in most other music here becomes percussive due to the deeply quiet context. Each piece, including the plucked, echoing “iii” and the mix of fast-moving drone and sodden keyboard that comprise “iv,” has the quality of a Buddha Machine set on loop as the batteries slowly run out. There’s more to it than that, but only a little, and the restraint is key to Bhat’s success. In subtle ways, the tracks do progress, like how “iii” introduces static-like rain (or perhaps rain-like static), and how “iv,” in particular, gains substance as it goes. But as Bhat suggests, the motion here is all relative. This is music for our collective pause. The world has grown chaotic at the same moment when so many find their lives on hold. This is music for its title purpose, rest.
Album originally posted at shipwreckdetective.bandcamp.com. More from Bhat at instagram.com/shipwreckdetective.
April 6, 2020
The Ocean a Year Ago
Located in the perfect slot between listening and not listening, this earthy drone by the musician who goes by Shipwreck Detective dates from over a year ago. The Shipwreck Detective account on YouTube has been a frequent source of comfort during the current spell of cooped-up-edness. This track’s brief description calls it “the ocean heard in a conch.” The ocean is barely a mile from where I live, and this track brings it close, indeed. When the track was first posted, I imagine the sounds summoned up a vast expanse, whereas now it feels cloistered, personal, homey.
Video originally posted at YouTube. More from Shipwreck Detective, who is based in San Francisco, at instagram.com/shipwreckdetective and shipwreckdetective.bandcamp.com.
