Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 269
May 19, 2019
Junto Event in Montréal on June 23
More details as it approaches, but there’s a special Disquiet Junto live event taking place in Montréal, Quebec, on Sunday, June 23. Various members of the Junto are meeting up in the city that weekend (several local, others traveling for the event), hanging out, and on Sunday performing at Cabaret Berlin (cabaretberlin.ca). There’s a more detailed entry on Cabaret Berlin’s Facebook page. The participants include: New Tendencies (aka Matt Nish-Lapidus), Electric Kitchen (aka Mark Lentczner), and the duo of Simon Demeule and Maxime Giard. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to make it, but in some ways it’s all the more exciting for me when Junto events occur that I’m not directly involved in. That said, I do hope I can make it.
May 16, 2019
Disquiet Junto Project 0385: Audubonus Instrumentum
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, May 20, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 16, 2019.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0385: Audubonus Instrumentum
The Assignment: Imagine a fake instrument, and make music with it.
Step 1: Imagine an instrument that doesn’t exist.
Step 2: Develop documentation (description, back story, perhaps even a sketch) of the instrument.
Step 3: Record a piece of music that supposedly employs this instrument. Bonus points if the piece of music is an étude.
Background: The inspiration for this project is the naturalist and illustrator John James Audubon (1785-1851), who it has been discovered created upwards of 30 nonexistent animals and included representations of them amid his celebrated drawings of real species.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0385” (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 “disquiet0385” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation 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-0385-audubonus-instrumentum/
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, May 20, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 16, 2019.
Length: The length is up to you. Shorter is often better.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0385” 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: Consider setting 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 385th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Audubonus Instrumentum / The Assignment: Imagine a fake instrument, and make music with it — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Thanks to Paul Harrington for the Latin assistance.
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0385-audubonus-instrumentum/
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
John James Audubon image associated with this project adapted (cropped, colors changed, text added, cut’n’paste) from a public domain Audubon illustration, courtesy of Wikipedia.
May 13, 2019
Studio Journal: “The Body Pneumatic”
Usually when I use my iPad as part of the process, it’s just that: part of the process, creating something that I then employ in another context (like a sample for my modular synth), or processing something external (such as my electric guitar). This time, I wanted to do something where the iPad was the beginning as well as the end of the process, and everything in between, all the way through uploading the finished recording to SoundCloud.
The short version of the process: I recorded my breath (something closer to a breathy vowel), then cut it up into slivers, then enacted some alterations on those individual slivers, then triggered them, then recorded a second variation triggered differently, then combined the two tracks by overlaying them, and then uploaded.
This is part of the current Disquiet Junto project (number 0384), in which we find rhythmic material in our breathing. When working with the sample-triggering, I set the pace of this to 60bpm, which is sort of my happy pace. I didn’t think of the start of each breath as the pace, but instead various moments within the breath.
For more detail, here are the iPad apps I used: I recorded the breathy vowel into AudioShare. It took several tries to get the quality I was looking for. The iPad’s microphone turned most of the initial breath attempts into harshly serrated white noise, which is when I added a vowel/hum quality to the breath, and that took the edge off it. I transferred the sample from AudioShare to ReSlice, and then I used ReSlice to break it down into evenly divided segments, and then changed the attack, decay, and release on those slices, in order that each had a unique quality (I also set two of them to play in reverse).
I used the Autony app to trigger the slices in ReSlice for one track, and then added more randomness within Autony to a second round of triggers, yielding a second track of equal length. I could have done those two tracks separately and added them together after the fact, but I wanted to hear what they sounded like together, so I did this all in the AUM app. When I was happy with the balance between the two Autony-triggered ReSlices, I transferred the two lines to the Cubasis 2 app, then used the mixdown tool within Cubasis to output a finished mix. Then I sent that back to AudioShare, and used AudioShare to upload to my SoundCloud account.
More on this 384th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Breath Beat / The Assignment: Explore breath as a resource for rhythm — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-pr…t-0384-breath-beat/
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this project adapted (cropped, colors changed, text added, cut’n’paste) thanks to a Creative Commons license from a photo credited to Victor Morell Perez:
May 10, 2019
Rob Walker’s The Art of Noticing
This is a quick note in case you’re coming to Disquiet.com for the first time, having read about my writing, research, and teaching in Rob Walker’s excellent new book, The Art of Noticing: 131 Ways to Spark Creativity, Find Inspiration, and Discover Joy in the Everyday (Knopf, 2019).
I’ll write more about Rob’s book in the near future, but in the meanwhile, one of the things he talks about in his book is my practice of reviewing the sounds of everyday things. (This specific page from The Art of Noticing is helpfully archived on books.google.com, for reference.)
A sequence of such reviews appears here on the Disquiet website under the tag #listening-to-yesterday. These include the final moments of a dying lightbulb, the odd quiet of a usually bustling restaurant, and the background noise of a bank’s institutional authority, among many others.
Ornament and Candy
Why, yes, a five-star review on Reverb.com to the person from Poland who included the lovely rainbow power cable and a bonus region-specific candy bar* with my, speaking of candy, (mini) Ornament and Crime synthesizer module (due to be updated momentarily with Hemispheres alternate firmware, though by “momentarily” I mean after work, and though “after work,” this being Friday, will likely mean this weekend, which is to say before Monday, if I’m lucky).
*”Milk chocolate bar with creamy flavoured filling (contains alcohol).”
Update: Who knew? Updating the Ornament and Crime module to the alternate firmware called Hemispheres took approximately five minutes, tops. I’m all set.
May 9, 2019
Disquiet Junto Project 0384: Breath Beat
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, May 13, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 9, 2019.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0384: Breath Beat
The Assignment: Explore breath as a resource for rhythm.
Just one step this week:
Step 1: Record yourself breathing, and make that the pulse of a piece of music.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0384” (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 “disquiet0384” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation 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-0384-breath-beat/
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, May 13, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 9, 2019.
Length: The length is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0384” 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: Consider setting 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 384th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Breath Beat / The Assignment: Explore breath as a resource for rhythm — 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-0384-breath-beat/
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this project adapted (cropped, colors changed, text added, cut’n’paste) thanks to a Creative Commons license from a photo credited to
Victor Morell Perez:
May 5, 2019
Synth Learning: Muxlicer Piano (First Patch)
This is my first patch with a new module, a device from the manufacturer Befaco called the Muxplicer. It is capable of many things involving slicing up an incoming signal and effecting changes upon it, such as triggering all sorts of percussive cues. In this case what’s happening is a sample of an electric piano is being triggered every eight beats, and then for each of those beats (pulses, really) various things occur. In most of the cases it’s a matter of the volume level shifting, but in two cases (that is, on two of the pulses) some heavy reverb is put upon it. In addition, a sliver of of the signal is being sampled and replayed in a glitch manner at a lower volume. (Technically the first slice was the same patch processing live guitar chords, but I decided to use a sample playback on this initial round.)
May 3, 2019
Synth Learning: Distant Train Vapor Trail Fragments
This is a single field recording of a train horn (source below) being warped simultaneously in various ways by my modular synthesizer. One strand is going through a reverb, another through granular synthesis, another through a lo-fi looper, and another through a spectral filter, and then there’s the unadulterated line, and all of those are being warped or tweaked themselves. The shape of the overall sound, for example, is affecting the density of the granular synthesis. Various LFOs are adjusting the relative prominence of different elements, and other aspects such as the size of the reverb.
The source audio is from freesound.org. It is a distant train horn recorded by Andy Brannan in Wyoming.
Sleepless in San Francisco
I Dream of Wires is the incorrect title for that great documentary on modular synthesizers.
It should be titled: Couldn’t Sleep Because I Read Manuals Too Late at Night and My Brain Wouldn’t Stop Patching.
. . .
In the meanwhile, here is where my system is currently at (or will be when two of those modules arrive from, respectively, Poland and down in Southern California). The blank space at the bottom is, indeed, bank. Likely other modules will go before it is filled. We’ll see.
RSS and Its Contents
For the past month, for unclear reasons, the RSS feed of Disquiet.com wasn’t functioning well — or at least, little to nothing showed up on Feedly.com for many weeks in a row. In any case, that issue seems to have been corrected or otherwise resolved, hence the test post (since deleted) you may have noticed yesterday if you use RSS. Here are some of the stories that popped up on Disquiet.com during the blackout:
I had the privilege of appearing on Darwin Grosse’s excellent podcast, Art + Music + Technology.
The gorgeous new album from Rotterdam-based musician Michel Banabila, titled Uprooted, features a short essay from me as its liner notes.
Graffiti in Sacramento, California, suggests a P2P underground.
Marcus Fischer had a beautiful installation at a Portland gallery involving speaker cones and seed pods.
Louise Rossiter (based in Leicester, U.K.) is sharing the music she’s making as she learns the coding language Supercolider.
The Japanese translation of my Aphex Twin book was spotted in Tokyo again.
