Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 319
November 13, 2016
Angela Wilson + Devin Sarno’s Dark Homeland
“Homeland” is a dark sonic phantasm, a five-minute dip into an echoing space that’s all muffled voices, anxious activity, and industrial dread. The track is a collaboration between Angela Wilson and Devin Sarno, heard nudging sublimated vocals, affectless expressions whose distorted syllables merge with the overall sound design. The underlying audio is a droning substrate, seemingly the result of some heavily mediated string instrument, mixed here with those contorted vocals and scratchy field recordings. In a brief post at Sarno’s website mentions that the collaboration was virtual, the two musicians trading files via email.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/devinsarno. More from Sarno, who is based in Los Angeles, at devinsarno.com. More from Wilson, also from Los Angeles, at angfranc.es.
November 12, 2016
What Sound Looks Like
I’ve never owned Paul’s Boutique on cassette tape before. I may frame this j-card.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
What Sound Looks Like
I’ve passed the logo for this long-ago audio company on the 101 south of San Francisco many many times, but these tapes (hand me downs from a friend) are the first time I’ve owned the product. These date from around 1994, apparently.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
November 10, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0254: Fog and Steam
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.
This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, November 10, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 14, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0254: Fog and Steam
Make music from two provided samples.
For the 254th weekly project, we’re going to revisit the second project, from back in early January 2012.
Step 1: Download these two samples:
Fog Horn: http://www.freesound.org/people/schaa...
Train Whistle: http://www.freesound.org/people/ecodi...
Step 2: Create an original piece of music utilizing just those samples from Step 1. You can only use those two samples, and you can do whatever you want with them.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0254” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track. (Assuming you post it on SoundCloud, a search for the tag will help me construct the playlist.)
http://llllllll.co/t/music-of-fog-and...
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, November 10, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 14, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, but three minutes sounds about right.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0254” 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: It is necessary, due to the licensing of the source audio, that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 254th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Fog and Steam: Make music from two provided samples” — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/music-of-fog-and-steam-...
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Fog horn sample by Schaarsen: http://www.freesound.org/people/schaa...
Train whistle sample by Ecodios: http://www.freesound.org/people/ecodi...
Image associated with this project is by Paul Johnson and used with a Creative Commons license:
November 8, 2016
I’ll Be Talking About Doorbells in Oakland (Dec. 1)
I’ll likely mention this again, since today is sort of a busy day for many people, but the meetup.com invitation has gone live for the talk I’m giving on doorbells on December 1 in Oakland. Here’s the description:
You’re visiting someone — a friend, a colleague — and you arrive at their building. You put the tip of one of your fingers up against a tiny button that sits beside the entrance, and you push. Somewhere inside the building a bell resounds. Tied up in that tidy interaction are a host of telling cultural, historical, and technological details about the way machines mediate human interaction.
How long do you wait before ringing again? What does the echo of the bell tell you about the interior space? Is the doorbell paired with a camera? Does the camera make you feel suspect, or at least wish that you’d fixed your hair? Will a disembodied voice inquire about your identity? How long have you been standing there? Did the bell ever actually ring? Had you accidentally let your finger slip? Did you perhaps never really register your presence?
Marc Weidenbaum, a longtime critic of and community organizer in electronic music, will talk about the cultural history of that everyday pushbutton gadget, the doorbell. He will discuss the intercom’s development in Japan, the rise of the domestic surveillance apparatus, the consumer-product soundscape of everyday life — and, ultimately, what lessons the humble, ubiquitous doorbell provides in regard to the Internet of Things, the smart home, and the role of sound in user interfaces.
Marc is the author of the 33 1/3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. His sonic consultancy has included work on GPS mobile apps and coffee-shop sound design, and he has done music supervision for two films, the documentary The Children Next Door and the science fiction movie Youth. He’s exhibited sound art in galleries in Los Angeles, Manhattan, and Dubai, as well as at the San Jose Museum of Art. December 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of his blog, Disquiet.com, which focuses on the intersection of sound, art, and technology.
The talk will be held at the offices of Futuredraft (futuredraft.com) in Oakland at 304 12th Street Suite 4E. The talk is free, but RSVPing (via that MeetUp URL) would be nice.
November 6, 2016
Hawtin + Gursky
The patterns are where the match is made.
Andreas Gursky’s large-scale photos are rich with repetition. In his current show at the Gagosian gallery in Manhattan there’s a shot from an Amazon warehouse that looks like the Ellis Island of books. It has a clear interest in microscopic detail, commercial markets, and patterns that takes on a rhythmic sensation, much like his earlier photos of rainbow-colored candy shops, and ornate hotels, and massive apartment complex facades.
Richie Hawtin’s music is among the most minimal of technos. Under his own name, as well as under the Plastikman mantel, he pushes white noise and reverb, pin-prick beats and limited palettes, until they submerge the listener in an anxiously monochromatic aesthetic realm. And yet he never is far from the dance floor.
Gursky may have less interest in soft focus and muted colors than Hawtin, but they both embrace and intermingle hardened minimalism and commercial intrigue in their work. Thus it’s a welcome surprise that the musician has created an installation score for that Gagosian exhibit, titled Not Abstract II, which opens on November 10 and will run through December 23. The team-up got a brief mention in today’s New York Times, following earlier mentions on dancingastronaut.com and thump.vice.com that noted precedents, like Hawtin’s live Guggenheim show in 2013 and a 2012 participation in an Anish Kapoor installation at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Gagosian has posted over eight minutes of the score at its website, gagosian.com, and better yet it’s set to repeat. It’s little more than a dense ambient room tone serving as backdrop to slow, martial pounding, like the workings of a robotic factory floor documented in all its inhuman glory. A brief note mentions the connection between Gursky and Hawtin: “His unique hypnotic sound echoes Gursky’s exploration of the formal questions of abstraction through scale distortion and rhythmic repetition of motifs.
The combination brings to mind a recent scenario at the de Young Museum here in San Francisco, where a massive wall long inhabited by an op-art piece by Gerhard Richter made way for a video installation by Carsten Nicolai, aka electronic musician Alva Noto, who one evening took over the interior plaza and played a short concert. The connections between Richter and Noto were self-evident but where at the de Young it was a serial handing of the baton, at the Gagosian the patterning is simultaneous, layered, coincident.
From July 2 until today, November 6, there was an exhibit Not Abstract at Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen Düsseldorf, where the above photo by Johannes Kraemer was shot (that’s Hawtin on the left, Gursky on the right), which also had a Hawtin score (see kunstsammlung.de). What isn’t clear is if the Gagosian music is a sequel or a repetition.
Less than a year after the Guggenheim exhibit there was a seven-track record put out by Hawtin of the performance. Perhaps the Gursky sounds will also be released.
November 3, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0253: Doorbell Rehab
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.
Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:
This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, November 3, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 7, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0253: Doorbell Rehab
Record some welcome music.
Step 1: Ring your own doorbell. Consider how it sounds outside your door, to a visitor, and inside, to you, the inhabitant.
Step 2: Compose a new, personalized doorbell sound. Make a recording of how it might sound to the visitor and to the inhabitant.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Per the instructions below, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0253” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track. (Assuming you post it on SoundCloud, a search for the tag will help me construct the playlist.)
http://llllllll.co/t/make-a-doorbell-...
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, November 3, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, November 7, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, but presumably it’ll be brief.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0253” 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: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 253rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Doorbell Rehab: Record some welcome music” — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
llllllll.co/t/make-a-doorbell-disquie...
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Photo by me (Marc Weidenbaum):
What Sound Looks Like
I enjoy writing liner notes, all the more so when the record comes out on vinyl. I’m pretty sure this — a three-LP set of early (1970s + 1980s) electronic music by Carl Stone — is the first time I’ve seen my name on one of those little stickers that goes on the vinyl cellophane wrapper. I used to decorate my bedroom door in high school with such stickers. Very proud to have worked on this, and to have my writing appear alongside that of two writers whom I admire: Richard Gehr and Jonathan Gold.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
November 2, 2016
“Tug Tropes”
The peripatetic and admirably curious journalist Alexis Madrigal wandered down to the San Francisco Bay today and came back with audio recordings. The tapes document what occurs as a trio of tugboats, in Madrigal’s description, “drag a huge cargo ship out of its berth.” He subsequently posted two tracks of the audio to his SoundCloud account, one with the “underwater,” or “hydrophonic,” sounds, and the other with the “above water” sounds. He then, via Twitter, offered them up for remixing.
I’ve been fiddling, perchance, these past few days with a new piece of music software called Grainfields. The application is by the sound designer Kasper Fangel Skov, who was born in Texas and lives in Skanderborg, Denmark. Grainfields is a granular synthesizer, which is to say that it allows you to focus on slivers of sound within a given sample and employ them for their varied tonal and rhythmic characteristics. In granular synthesis a fleeting, even microscopic moment can be distended to something “playable.”
Grainfields was designed for use in Max, the visual programming language developed by Cycling ’74 and named for Max Matthews, the late computer-music pioneer. Grainfields is used in coordination with a Monome, the open-source grid music interface.
When Grainfields was first released on GitHub, about four days ago, I started with some varied bell recordings from freesound.org, and then sampled some dub techno tracks that I find myself often returning to. This evening I downloaded Madrigal’s pair of field recordings and listened through them (each of the two tracks is just under 21 minutes long), eventually isolating three choice snippets. From the hydrophonic audio I selected one bit that had a rattle quality, and another that was more tonal. Both had a density that spoke of their submerged origin, though they also had the rough texture of something recorded where there was lots of activity. From the above-water track I found a tiny instance of what sounded like a horn. Grainfields allows for eight voices or samples, but in this case I just used those three. Combined they were just under a minute of sound total, the shortest just two seconds in length.
The resulting track, “Tug Tropes,” aims to make something musical from Madrigal’s field recordings. (The title is my nod to Ingram Mashall’s beloved composition “Fog Tropes,” which was based on fog horns recorded in the San Francisco Bay.) The piece moves back and forth for the majority of it between two notes — that is, two grains, two attenuated slivers of the aquatic sounds. What I was trying for was a see-saw quality that was barely a song and had some of the ebb and flow of the water. The other elements come in on occasion, lending some drama, and after the halfway point I begin to nudge to the shriller end of the segment that provided the two main notes. I didn’t change the tuning of any of the source audio, even though Grainfields allows various forms of alteration, including pitch.
Playing field recordings as if they were instruments is one of my favorite musical activities. When you’re out in the world, especially when you’re alone, there can be a symphonic quality to the everyday sounds that are around you. Your brain does something in real time that experiences the audio as if it were music. That experience is reinforced on repeated listen, when the familiarity of a recording hardens the elements that initially were happenstance. With “Tug Tropes” I tried to get at, through the artifice of musical performance, the way everyday sounds can feel like music, how our memories and our human habit of locating — even projecting — patterns can suggest the presence of a composition in the quotidian.
More from Skov and his Grainfields application at kasperskov.dk. He introduced it on the Monome discussion boards, llllllll.co, which is where I first learned about it. More on the Monome at monome.org.
Tug Tropes
The peripatetic and admirably curious journalist Alexis Madrigal wandered down to the San Francisco Bay today and came back with audio recordings. The tapes document what occurs as a trio of tugboats, in Madrigal’s description, “drag a huge cargo shop out of its berth.” He subsequently posted two tracks of the audio to his SoundCloud account, one with the “underwater,” or “hydrophonic,” sounds, and the other with the “above water” sounds. He then, via Twitter, offered them up for remixing.
I’ve been fiddling, perchance, these past few days with a new piece of music software called Grainfields. The application is by the sound designer Kasper Fangel Skov, who was born in Texas and lives in Skanderborg, Denmark. Grainfields is a granular synthesizer, which is to say that it allows you to focus on slivers of sound within a given sample and employ them for their varied tonal and rhythmic characteristics. In granular synthesis a fleeting, even microscopic moment can be distended to something “playable.”
Grainfields was designed for use in Max, the visual programming language developed by Cycling ’74 and named for Max Matthews, the late computer-music pioneer. Grainfields is used in coordination with a Monome, the open-source grid music interface.
When Grainfields was first released on GitHub, about four days ago, I started with some varied bell recordings from freesound.org, and then sampled some dub techno tracks that I find myself often returning to. This evening I downloaded Madrigal’s pair of field recordings and listened through them (each of the two tracks is just under 21 minutes long), eventually isolating three choice snippets. From the hydrophonic audio I selected one bit that had a rattle quality, and another that was more tonal. Both had a density that spoke of their submerged origin, though they also had the rough texture of something recorded where there was lots of activity. From the above-water track I found a tiny instance of what sounded like a horn. Grainfields allows for eight voices or samples, but in this case I just used those three. Combined they were just under a minute of sound total, the shortest just two seconds in length.
The resulting track, “Tug Tropes,” aims to make something musical from Madrigal’s field recordings. (The title is my nod to Ingram Mashall’s beloved composition “Fog Tropes,” which was based on fog horns recorded in the San Francisco Bay.) The piece moves back and forth for the majority of it between two notes — that is, two grains, two attenuated slivers of the aquatic sounds. What I was trying for was a see-saw quality that was barely a song and had some of the ebb and flow of the water. The other elements come in on occasion, lending some drama, and after the halfway point I begin to nudge to the shriller end of the segment that provided the two main notes. I didn’t change the tuning of any of the source audio, even though Grainfields allows various forms of alteration, including pitch.
Playing field recordings as if they were instruments is one of my musical activities. When you’re out in the world, especially when you’re alone, there can be a symphonic quality to the everyday sounds that are around you. Your brain does something in real time that experiences the audio as if it were music. That experience is reinforced on repeated listen, when the familiarity of a recording hardens the elements that initially were happenstance. With “Tug Tropes” I tried to get at, through the artifice of musical performance, the way everyday sounds can feel like music, how our memories and our human habit of locating — even projecting — patterns can suggest the presence of a composition in the quotidian.
More from Skov and his Grainfields application at kasperskov.dk. He introduced it on the Monome discussion boards, llllllll.co, which is where I first learned about it. More on the Monome at monome.org.
