Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 244
March 29, 2020
The Night Before
There’s a scene, as my friend Westy Reflector reminded me via email recently, in many zombie films, among other tales of life after a dire change, when the story flashes back to “the days right before” — how, as he put it well, “all the signs are apparent in retrospect.” Those days before for me are the ones I spent in New York at the very end of February. The Disquiet Junto was due for a get-together, something I try to arrange when I travel, and a very small crew of us gathered on that frigid Friday night at a bar in Brooklyn, right across the bridge from where I was staying in Lower Manhattan. The place was virtually empty, as the restaurant in the hotel had been the prior afternoon for lunch, and as had been the flight from San Francisco, and as would be the train I’d take out to Long Island the next morning. We spent the evening talking about ancient synthesizers, and cover versions, and online collaboration, and musical mentors, and many other topics, including escape plans, and at the end of the night we headed over to pay up. Across from the cash register was this pinball machine. It stood there, humorously ominous in its bright silence. I’ll always associate it with the night before.
March 28, 2020
Lab Rat
Like a lab rat accessorized by scientists with some sort of mind-machine alpha-stage, pre-release technology graft, this humble, generic, ubiquitous model of doorbell has been raised to the ranks of high security thanks to the unlikely pairing of a digital touch pad. The pad comes with a sentience- and surveillance-suggesting red light. There are two other spots to its left where additional lights may appear, or maybe they are slots for cameras. Perhaps if you know the entry code, you’re aware of their purpose. Or perhaps that bit of knowledge is reserved for yet a higher echelon still of security clearance.
March 27, 2020
Oxford Ambient Collective x Encym
Nearly eight minutes in length, “Estuary Fog,” a collaborative track between the Oxford Ambient Collective and Encym, has time to spare and spends it carefully. The piece is barely halfway through before a deep drone makes itself present. Somehow, despite this being a significant shift in tonality, one that lasts the remainder of the extended playing time and totally subsumes the chirping, effects-speckled opening sequence that preceded it, the overall continuity of the piece isn’t ruptured. Instead, the thick morass makes the ear remember, and listen for, what came before.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/oxfordambient. More from Encym (aka Roland Reinke) at instagram.com/encym_. There’s a bit more about their collaboration on the piece at oxfordambient.com.
Offline(ish) Weekends
Hello from my Starship Earth cabin. Hope you’re secure in yours. Ship-wide communication was fun last weekend, but I’m taking this weekend off social media. This has been my mode for a long time, and while I appreciated being connected last weekend to friends as the tide in the current global scenario continued to shift, I’m going back into weekend offline(ish) mode again.
Suggested activities:
☐ Start a sound journal.
☐ Re-read a fave book just for its sound.
☐ Watch a movie silent with a fave album.
March 26, 2020
Eternal Spiral
Apparently this is what The Downward Spiral was foretelling all this time (waiting for the Nine Inch Nails albums to download). Jokes aside, they released two excellent albums in the Ghosts series today for free (at nin.com), because the internet hasn’t been suffering enough under Covid-induced streaming traffic.
Disquiet Junto Project 0430: Solitary Ensembles x 2
We’re breaking a Disquiet Junto rule this week. The rule is that in the Junto, musicians should only contribute one track per project. That remained the case last week. Due to the extraordinary output last week (66 different musicians from around the world), we’re going to allow multiple tracks this week (up to 3 per participant). However, where one rule is cast by the wayside, another rule rears its head: For your first track this project, you can use whichever source audio you’d like from the previous project. For your second and third, however, you must choose randomly, with some qualifications. Details below.
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, March 30, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 26, 2020.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0430: Solitary Ensembles x 2
The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio that others will complete.
Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project is the second in a sequence intended to encourage and reward asynchronous collaboration. This week you will be adding music to a pre-existing track, which you will source from the previous week’s Junto project (disquiet.com/0429). Note that you aren’t creating a duet — you’re creating the second third of what will eventually be a trio. Keep this in mind. Leave space for what is yet to come.
Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice, as a complement to the pre-existing track. First, however, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are tracks by 66 musicians in all to choose from, 64 as part of this playlist:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0429
Count as the 65th this track from Jason Richardson:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0429-solitary-ensembles/30277/9/
And count as the 66th this track from Samarobryn:
https://samarobryn.bandcamp.com/track/sui-generis-disquiet-0429
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 66, the first 64 being numbered in the above SoundCloud playlist, and 65 being Richardson’s and the 66th being Samarobryn’s.
Note: It’s fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece.
Also note: Be sure to look back at the discussion on Lines to see if any additional material related to your track is available, such as source code or MIDI data or video, which some of the tracks include:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0429-solitary-ensembles/
Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly the length of the piece of music you selected in Step 2. Your track should complement the piece from Step 2, and leave room for an eventual third piece of music. When composing and recording your part, do not alter the original piece of music at all, except to pan the original fully to the left if it hasn’t been panned left already. In your finished audio track, your part should be panned fully to the right. To be clear: the track you upload won’t be your piece of music alone; it will be a combination of the track from Step 2 and yours.
Step 4: Also be sure, when done, to make the finished track downloadable, because it will be used by someone else in a subsequent Junto project.
Step 5: As mentioned up top, unlike usually in the Junto, you can contribute more than one track this week. You can do up to three total. Unlike with your first track, you should choose your second and third randomly. However, if you end up with something you really don’t enjoy working on, then you can roll again. And alternately, you can choose to use a track no one else has used yet (by looking at the project’s post on Lines, linked to in these instructions, or to the project playlist, which will be posted here once tracks start coming in). The goal is for many as people as possible to benefit from the experience of being part of an asynchronous collaboration. After a lot of detailed instruction, that is the spirit of this project.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0430” (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 “disquiet0430” (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-0430-solitary-ensembles-x-2/
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, March 30, 2020, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 26, 2020.
Length: The length should be essentially the same length as the track you are adding to. Yours might be a little longer, if you choose to begin earlier or end later than the source audio.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0430” 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 track you’re collaborating with, and credit the musician who recorded it.
More on this 430th weekly Disquiet Junto project — The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio that others will complete — 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-0430-solitary-ensembles-x-2/
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.
March 25, 2020
Ah, Magnets
Frequently and for months I tried different ways to hang up these wireless earbuds near my desk when I wasn’t using them. And then it occurred to me: oh yeah, they’re magnetic.
SineRider, Off-Screen and On
There are several key factors in the ongoing playlist I maintain on YouTube of fine live performances of ambient music. There are three, in fact, and the very first is: “I’m only including recordings I’d listen to without video.” As something like test evidence, I came upon this piece, “Peat Moss” by Sine Rider, today on SoundCloud, and it turns out it’s the audio from one of his performance videos. It’s a warbly drone, like someone left the melody out to dry over night and hadn’t considered the damage that the morning dew might do. Except it didn’t do damage. It rendered the melody ever more fragile, and ever more beautiful for that fragility. And here’s the original video:
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/sinerider. More from SineRider, aka Devin Powers of Norwood, Massachusetts, at sinerider.bandcamp.com and youtube.com/sinerider.
Room Tone
. . .
Many thanks to illustrator Hannes Pasqualini (horizontalpitch.com, papernoise.net) for the collaboration.
March 24, 2020
Minimalism and Its Echoes
Nathan McLaughlin’s performance this Sunday was a highlight of a weekend packed with free live online shows. There are many more such shows to come during our time of widely distributed isolation, and I recommend not only a listen to his gig, if reflective solo guitar sounds up your alley — but also one if you’re planning on playing live online yourself. He does so much, so simply, and (audio glitches in the archived transmission aside) with enviable concentration, that it’s a model for such a thing as destination viewing. The video is just him, in a wooden chair, with an acoustic guitar in hand, and enough (largely off-screen, though there is a reel-to-reel machine rolling along against the wall) equipment to lend his already raga-like playing a nimbus of graceful echoing. There’s a clear aesthetic connection between his minimalist finger-picking and the hall of sonic mirrors in which it occurs — so clear that the two factors in fact blend together. Close to the end, he ruptures the fabric of performance by stopping his picking. He turns the guitar up in his lap, as a recording of his playing plays on. And then he takes a bow to the strings, and creates a drone that consumes all that came before, and then he gets up from the chair and walks off-screen, leaving the drone to drone, until he slips back in to lower the volume to a finish. I’ve been listening to and writing about Nathan McLaughlin’s music at least since January 2006, back when he went by the name Doogie, and, at least to my ears, he’s never sounded more thoughtful and focused.
Video originally posted at the YouTube channel of the Decentralized Sonic Quarantine Network. More from Nathan McLaughlin, who is based in Hudson, New York, at nathanmclaughlin.bandcamp.com.
