Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 330
July 26, 2016
What Sound Looks Like
This wire dangles near the side door of a friend’s home, which I visited last week when I was on vacation. The home is having significant work done on it, involving the remodeling of all three floors and most of the existing rooms. There’s a main entrance to the home on the first floor, next to the garage, but due to how the property is landscaped, you could find yourself easily following a path up and around to the side of the house. A doorbell makes sense. Why exactly the crew doing the work decided to put the cable hole so far from the door, however, isn’t necessarily clear. Presumably a doorbell is a simple thing, just a dot the size of a finger tip, perhaps with a small frame around it. But perhaps in our time of connected devices, of networked domestic life, of semi-sentient consumer products, the general contractor was planning for a far wider and more talented contraption, something with a camera, something with a speaker-microphone combination — less a side-door welcome than a state-of-the-art surveillance apparatus.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
Chrissie Caulfield’s “Ambient Improv”
Chrissie Caulfield, who’s based in Leeds, England, has a broad understanding of the violin and of ambient music. She pushes both well past their assumed identities. In her hands the violin is a sound source for myriad tweakings and warpings, transformations and embellishments. Likewise, her ambient music is rarely static, rarely free of developmental process. It’s rarely even peaceful.
“Ambient Improv,” a recent track she uploaded to her SoundCloud account yesterday, may not even have a violin in it. She lists the instrumentation as Blofeld (the synthesizer, not the James Bond villain) and Montage (presumably the Yamaha synth), though perhaps the violin is so implicit in her work that she doesn’t even think to mention it. The piece is a spacey mix of heavy oscillations, burpy grace notes, and nearly sub-aural hums that radiate when played with a proper woofer. It changes as it proceeds, from horror-movie organ chords to otherworldly sci-fi touches.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/chrissieleeds. More form Caulfield at chrissieviolin.info, twitter.com/chrissie_c, and
chrissieviolin.wordpress.com.
Disquiet Junto After the End of SoundCloud Groups
This morning SoundCloud announced that it is sunsetting it Groups functionality. This is the note that came today to Groups moderators:
We’re constantly looking for ways to make it easier for creators to share their work and connect with new fans. As well as adding new features and updates, we review existing features to see if they’re still beneficial to the community.
As we dug into the best ways for curators to connect with artists and fans, we found that Groups aren’t working as well as reposts, and curated playlists.
With that in mind, we’ve decided to phase out Groups on Monday, August 22nd to make room for future updates.
Until then, you can collect, like or repost the content you would like to save, and connect with your fellow Group members.
As a Group moderator, we understand the following you’ve built by moderating submissions to your Groups — we suggest to keep that following going by creating a profile to curate. You can use Reposts and Playlists to share suitable tracks, and accept submissions via Messages.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on how we can continue to improve your experience on SoundCloud. Send your ideas and feedback by replying directly to this email.
Here is the note that I sent out just now to the members of the Disquiet Junto email list (tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto). The short version: the Disquiet Junto is not going away.
Dear Members of the Disquiet Junto,
You may have read about upcoming changes to SoundCloud, specifically that the Groups functionality is going to be mothballed.
Just to be clear, the Disquiet Junto is not going away. More on that below.
SoundCloud has been incredibly supportive of the Junto since the group was founded back in January 2012. The Junto was, in fact, devised with the Groups functionality in mind. In many promotional/editorial ways, SoundCloud employees have played a big role in helping the Junto build an audience and its membership. Key personnel there have also been especially responsive to technical queries over the years. (Speaking of which, on an unrelated note, if you know someone at Instagram who is supportive, I have a small request I’d like to make.)
With the SoundCloud Groups functionality going away (technically the old groups will be frozen in state), I’m now pondering next steps. There are various options.
Certainly for the short term, the Junto will proceed on the SoundCloud service. I’m not sure how exactly I’m going to manage the production of playlists, but my current workflow thought is as follows:
Step 1: Participant posts track to SoundCloud.
Step 2: Participant (privately) messages me the track’s URL.
Step 3: I then add the track to two playlists: (1) an overall group playlist and (2) a project-specific playlist.
The end result is that there still would be, as with the current group page, a playlist that allows Junto participants and observers to witness all tracks as they’re added. (An alternate to Step 2 above is the participant tags my username, @disquiet, in the comment of the track. That could save a step that messaging would require.)
There actually some potential small benefits to this scenario. One benefit is that it’s harder this way for someone to spam the group, because they have to get through me first. (Spam has been a hassle, not because of the process of removing tracks, but because of how rude people can be when I do so.) The other benefit is that participant messages (or comment tags) will automatically ping me, which in turn means I don’t have to check the Junto page multiple times a day (as I do now) to see if new tracks have been added. This would also, come to think of it, free up whatever part of my brain remembers the most recent track that I’ve already added to the group — and believe me, freed-up brain space is attractive to me, even in tiny increments.
There are, of course, demerits to the change, and while I have no plans to vacate SoundCloud, I would be ill advised not to think about ways to potentially migrate the Junto down the road, either to another service or to the Junto’s own dedicated online space. I’m interested in seeing what Naviar Haiku and other groups based on SoundCloud do. The Weekly Beats site (weeklybeats.com) is worth taking a look at in this regard. Likewise, the great Stones Throw Beat Battle uses a public message board (in contrast with our semi-private Junto Slack) as a way to track participation. It’s here:
http://www.stonesthrow.com/messageboard/?showforum=11
For the Junto, I don’t currently see this Groups-function sunset as a huge issue. I think it’ll potentially have a more adverse effect on groups dedicated to particular types of software and hardware, as I’m not sure how a dedicated Octatrack or OP-1 or Monome (etc.) group would transition to a playlist-only system. Then again, I’m only just now beginning to think about all this.
Anyhow, I wanted to get my thoughts on this out as soon as possible. As always, if you have any input on options for the future, that’d be super. A year or so ago I put out a call for a Disquiet “board of advisors,” and ironically I was so overwhelmed by the response (about 35 people offered to participate) I just haven’t had the time to (yet) act on the generosity.
Thanks for reading.
Best wishes from San Francisco,
Marc
marc@disquiet.com
July 25, 2016
The Drone as Terrain
Some drones are lilting things that serve as background listening, as emotional cues, as gentle attempts at spatial reconfiguration. Others are dense constructs, enveloping environs that invite investigation, sonic mazes akin to virtual terrains, like the maps of RPGs and the plots of complex fictions. The latter descriptor applies to “Numinous,” from the Kiev, Ukraine–based Dronny Darko. For a solid seven minutes it traffics in a thick, guttural, slow-motion howl. Its vibrant darkness is occasionally, mustily illuminated, giving hints at vocal intonations, distant noises, anxious activity. It’s a place with no answers to its inherent mystery — and you’ll find yourself visiting it repeatedly for the pleasure provided by their absence.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/dronnydarko. More from Dronny Darko at facebook.com/dronnydarko and dronnydarko.bandcamp.com.
July 24, 2016
What Sound Looks Like
Scored a half dozen hip-hop 12″s at Amoeba for the instrumentals. First up, Common and Mark the 45 King’s “Car Horn.” Next up, a pair of Beatnuts 12″ instrumentals: the so-so “Let’s Git Doe,” and the super “Find Us” (sweet guitar break) / “Hot” (stompin’). Followed by the Roots’ “You Got Me” (with Erykah Badu). The A-side instrumental is a little loungey, but the remix B-side makes it worth it.
Whew. The Tajai (Souls of Mischief, Hieroglyphics) “Do It” (taut horns) will be the score of the haul. (Backed by anxious “The Weatherman.”) I could listen to that screech on Cypress Hill’s “How I Could Just Kill a Man” for an hour. The 12″ is the Spanish version, but the vocal hook is still in English in the instrumental.
That’s on the B-side, along with “Another Victory,” of the 12″ of Cypress Hill’s “Worldwide.” And that’s today’s hip-hop haul.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
July 21, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0238: Magnifying Contact
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at disquiet.com/junto, 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. 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 morning, California time, on Thursday, July 21, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 25, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0238: Magnifying Contact
The Assignment: Record a piece of music, emphasizing the sounds of production over the music itself.
Project Steps:
Step 1: Record a short piece of music. When recording the music, use additional microphones to capture the process itself: your fingers on strings, touching keyboard and screen surfaces, clicking on laptop keys, etc.
Step 2: When the piece is fully recorded, create a mix that makes the “performance” sounds slightly either equal to or slightly more prominent than the performance itself.
Three More Steps When Your Track Is Done :
Step 1: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud. It’s here:
https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquie...
Step 2: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 3: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, July 21, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 25, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you. Between one and three minutes seems about right.
Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this project, 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please in the title to your track include the term “disquiet0238.” Also use “disquiet0238” as a tag for your track.
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, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 238th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Record a piece of music, emphasizing the sounds of production over the music itself” — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place on a Slack (send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for inclusion) and at this URL:
Image associated with this project adapted from one by Alf Storm, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
July 20, 2016
A Drone Built from Media Artifacts
Kate Carr’s “She Played The Drums Badly/I Never Found Huitlacoche” is built from bug noise and field recordings. The latter seem to be of people talking and (talking while) listening to TV and recordings, maybe catching live bands. The sources are difficult to recognize because Carr relegates them to temporary background state, muffled and situated behind everyday sounds. It’s music made from the experience of consuming music, music that consumed music and that produced something else in turn.
It’s a mixtape, a travelogue, a drone of sorts built from media artifacts. It’s not a tonal drone, but a media drone — a slowly shifting yet seemingly continual state of relative blankness. Despite its decidedly derivative circumstances — in the Creative Commons sense of “derivative,” which is to say derived from something, not qualitatively inferior — it maintains the form of a composition, especially when, around the 2:40 mark, it takes a brief, dramatic pause, before slowing the perceived tempo further for the final, reflective stretch.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/katecarr. More from Karr, who is from Australia but currently based in England, at katecarr.bandcamp.com, gleamingsilverribbon.com, and twitter.com/flamingpines.
July 17, 2016
What Sound Looks Like
Next-gen music technology courtesy of the House of Ideas. This is from the first issue of Vision, which popped up recently on Marvel Unlimited, the digital subscription service of Marvel Comics. Vision is written by Tom King and drawn by Gabriel Hernandez Walta.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
July 14, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0237: Combination ABCs
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at disquiet.com/junto, 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. 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. For some reason the playlist isn’t currently embeddable, but this is a link to it:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0237
This project was posted shortly before noon, California time, on Thursday, July 14, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 18, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0237: Combination ABCs
The Assignment: Build a 90-second composition from three 10-second segments.
Project Steps:
Step 1: Record three 10-second sound elements. Keep in mind that they will be layered subsequently in various combinations. You might find it useful to set one or more of the elements to loop naturally after 10 seconds, but you might also enjoy the seam where a given loop begins again.
Step 2: Label the three 10-second sound elements A, B, and C.
Step 3: Create a 90-second track of the following sequence of standalone and combined elements: A, B, C, A+B, A+C, B+C, A+B+C, A+B, A.
Step 4: Your track is complete. However, you may opt to go back in and adjust transitions and add effects.
Three More Steps When the Track Is Done :
Step 1: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud. It’s here:
https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquie...
Step 2: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 3: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Background: This project is partially inspired by the recent book Dramaturgy in Motion: At Work on Dance and Movement Performance, written by Katherine Profeta. In the book, Profeta notes A/B/A as a structure for contemporary dance choreography. It’s a structure I’ve noted, as well, as being perceptible in contemporary electronic music, especially drone-based music. This project is a step toward seeing what the A/B/A structure might sound like when a third element, C, is added.
Deadline: This project was posted shortly before noon, California time, on Thursday, July 14, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 18, 2016.
Length: The finished track should be 90 seconds long.
Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this project, 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please in the title to your track include the term “disquiet0237.” Also use “disquiet0237” as a tag for your track.
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, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 237th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Build a 90-second composition from three 10-second segments” — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place on a Slack (send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for inclusion) and at this URL:
July 13, 2016
Bill Laswell, Bandcamp, and Interiority
Realm I by Barton Rage & Bill Laswell
Just yesterday I typed “Bandcamp” into the recipe book at IFTTT, the service that interconnects a broad range of software and, increasingly, hardware. There is plenty of music-connection available via IFTTT. SoundCloud can be set to automatically share songs with other services, like Tumblr and Twitter, and even sync with Spotify. Spotify, in turn, can save information to a Google document, send out a weekly email of the list of songs you’ve liked, and set “smart home” lights to match the color of the album you’re currently listening to (well, it’s a little more complicated than that, but such is the Internet of Things). There are tools to have music services turn off when your doorbell rings, to funnel record-album discussion to a playlist, and to text your friends recommendations.
In any case, Bandcamp has no IFTTT presence, and the absence left me wondering if that’s part of the reason I only just sorted out there’s a Bill Laswell page on Bandcamp. It’s not necessarily IFTTT specifically that nestles the service inside a less digitally connected cultural sphere. It’s that the broader employment of the sort of tools that make IFTTT function are essential to the flow of information — the sort of thing that makes a cultural object of the Internet, rather than simply on the Internet.
This isn’t to question Bandcamp’s general awesome-ness. It’s to wonder, simply, if it could be more awesome. Awesome enough that I would have known sooner that there was, for example, a Bill Laswell Bandcamp page. Bandcamp doesn’t connect accounts as fluidly as SoundCloud does, so when an album or track ends on Bandcamp, you aren’t immediately treated to something else you might not have heard before — thus limiting what has, for better and worse (more worse), “discovery.”
In any case, there is a Bill Laswell Bandcamp page, naturally at billlaswell.bandcamp.com, and highly recommended among the material there is Realm I, which teams the eminent bassist, producer, and future-dub explorer with producer and multi-instrumentalist Barton Rage. It’s a dubby treat, percussive enough to have a club-oriented pulse (a particularly subdued club), but still emphasizing echoing atmospherics. It has a welcoming interiority — which is to say, the music can be praised for exactly the sort of self-enclosed spaciousness that Bandcamp can be critiqued for.
Album originally published at billlaswell.bandcamp.com.
