Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 332
July 5, 2016
Unleash Your Personal Drones
Part of the beauty of cassette releases is when they tap into the design energy — the tactile experience, the cultural legacy — of the object itself. As Ted Laderas wrote to the New York Times late last year in a letter to the editor, the cassette continues to offer something beyond mere nostalgia: “The cost of manufacturing vinyl and CDs is prohibitive for musicians who sell small numbers of albums. While not ideal, tape is easy to manufacture and easy to personalize, and provides small-time musicians with a viable way of sharing our music that our fans are willing to buy.”
Sure, the tape cassette was once a dominant pop-music medium, and yes it has long since faded from mainstream commercial employment, but in addition the pop music market it was the foundation of late-night infomercials that promised a fast-forward education in business, real estate, language — and self-knowledge. The Austin, Texas–based Amulets (aka Randall Taylor) feeds on this association with his new album, Personal Power. Its seven tracks, with titles like “Self-Sabotage” and “The Power of Focus,” are built from the source audio of motivational tapes, specifically those of Tony Robbins, the audio of Amulets replacing the original text spoken by Tobbins. Personal Power was released on June 28, just a few days after participants in one of Robbins’ “firewalks” were reportedly treated for second- and third-degree burns.
Short bursts of speaking flesh out some of the tracks, referring to the side of the tape the listener is on, and welcoming the audience to the realm of self-actualization. The music itself is deeply droning, occasionally giving hints of guitar and loops, and generally enjoying the warpy loveliness of tape-based composition. There’s a certain cultural bleed at work here, a certain irony, in that for all his “business” aura, Robbins is a creature of what’s often called the “new age” movement. The music of the new-age movement, in turn, overlaps with and bears certain aesthetic and structural parallels with exactly the sort of music that Amulets is up to, namely a meditative music that can serve as background for activities and focus on introspection.
Amulets’ creative repurposing of the source material isn’t restricted to the sound and the tape cassettes. Even the “notes/study guide,” as he described them, are part of the project. No doubt the limited edition, a total of 20, was determined by the availability of the originals. If you miss out on the physical cassettes, the audio will still be available for download.
Album originally posted at amulets.bandcamp.com. More from Amulets at amuletsmusic.com. (Chart via businessinsider.com.)
July 4, 2016
The Romancing of Minimalism
It’s not for no reason that the music of Theo Alexander appears in SoundCloud playlists on occasion alongside that of Nils Frahm. Like Frahm, Alexander balances a solo acoustic piano style between neo-classicalism and post-minimalism — that is, between an adherence to a longstanding instrumental literature, and an affection for a more recent one. What makes both musicians’ work trenchant today is how minimalism, once upon a time an avant-garde school, has become, through film and TV scores as well as through the popular rise of its founding composers, a romantic form.
The pulsing of Alexander’s right hand at the opening of “Disappearing Altogether” might have been a comment on mechanization and formal purity had it been composed and performed 30 years ago, but today it is the beating heart of a romantic figure. That Alexander can balance a percussive instinct with, as the piece proceeds, a penchant for melodic flourishing is very much to his credit.
Another thing Alexander shares with Frahm is a penchant for putting the mic very close to the piano. Just listen at 50 seconds in — when the piece takes its sole, momentary pause — to how the silence isn’t pure silence, but instead a careful framing, the waveforms of a handful of notes bending and bleeding and fading together, true to the track’s title.
“Disappearing Altogether” is from a forthcoming album titled Irresolution. Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/theoalexander. More from Theo Alexander, who is based in London, England, at theoalexander.bandcamp.com and theo-alexander.com. I first heard the track when I was, briefly, giving the service submithub.com a try.
What Sound Looks Like
Michel Banabila’s recent album of early works, for which I wrote the liner note, was on the new release board at the great San Francisco record store Aquarius, which closed down this week in advance of new ownership and a new name.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
June 30, 2016
Disquiet Junto 0235: Dice Music
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.
This project was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, June 30, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 4, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto 0235: Dice Music
The Assignment: Create a piece of music based on a structure determined by the roll of a single die.
This week’s project requires one die (that is, singular of dice).
These are the steps:
Step 1: Roll one die to determine the length of your piece in minutes.
Step 2: Roll two dice to determine the number of sections to your piece. Their length should be equal.
Step 3: For each section roll one die to determine the number of layers.
Step 4: For each layer roll one die to determine the number of different notes played. A note is only played once per layer, but it can be held for as long as desired within that section.
Step 5: Bonus: Create additional dice-based rules and mention them in the notes associated with your finished track.
Step 6: Create an original piece of music based on the result of Step 1 through Step 5.
Step 7: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 8: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 9: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, June 30, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 4, 2016.
Length: Length is determined by the first step in the project.
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 “disquiet0235.” Also use “disquiet0235” 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 235th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Create a piece of music based on a structure determined by the roll of a single die” — 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 by Chris Gladis, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
June 27, 2016
Three Machines
This is a live set by Dakitanmonkey, aka Tintao, on three machines from the same manufacturer, Elektron. What starts as a sweeping array of low-level textures slowly gains rhythmic activity. (It’s the latest piece I’ve added to my ongoing YouTube playlist of fine “Ambient Performances.”) A place-marker ping is joined by a cycle of sharp static that comes and goes — and, as the half point nears, a steady, downtempo beat kicks in. That beat is enshrouded enough in the thick ambient tones to be perceived as an underlying current rather than a backbeat. Its role is more about taking the pulse of the drone than it is about emphasizing a strict tempo.
Dakitanmonkey describes what he’s up with his three tools (from left to right the Analog Four, the Octatrack, and the Monomachine) to in a brief accompanying note: “Ambient track with deep strings and basses from the Monomachine. Analog four produce only the piano, and the reverb effects for the MnM. Octatrack acts as a mixer, and radical sound change on fader.”
Video posted to the dakitanmonkey YouTube channel. More at his Google+ account.
June 25, 2016
The Wire Magazine on the Disquiet Junto
Many thanks to Lottie Brazier, who wrote a piece about the Disquiet Junto for the “Unofficial Channels” column in the current issue of The Wire magazine (July 2016, the one with Loren Connors on the cover). I especially appreciate that she put in print a comment by Ethan Hein that I’ve long thought captures part of the essence of the Junto (“He writes reviews of music that doesn’t exist yet and then gets internet strangers to make it”), and for emphasizing my sense of “ambient participation” and how I connect it to the child-development concept of “parallel play.”
I’m hopeful the Wire coverage of the Junto will introduce it to a new batch of potential participants. She also quotes Richard Fair on, among other things, the weekly aspect of the Junto as part of its utility. And she singles out a track by Detritus Tabu from the 0028 project.
Here is the piece:
More from the Wire at twitter.com/LottieBrazier and the Wire at thewire.co.uk.
June 23, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0234: Remix Ximer
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.
This project was posted in the late afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 23, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 27, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0234: Remix Ximer
The Assignment: Make one track from three different netlabels, courtesy of a Creative Commons license.
This week’s Junto project builds directly on last week’s, though you needn’t have participated in last week’s to join in this one. This week we’re remixing remixes. The remixes we’re remixing are the pieces that resulted from last week’s project, which involved taking three tracks from different netlabels and making one new track from them. Last week’s Junto project celebrated derivatives, as licensed by the Creative Commons. This week’s celebrates derivatives of derivatives. (Thanks to Audio Obscura, aka Neil Stringfellow, for proposing this week’s project.)
These are the steps:
Step 1: Select and download three tracks from last week’s project, Disquiet Junto 0233:
https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/...
All the tracks in last week’s project were made from the first 30 seconds of three pre-existing recordings: “HNY” off the album Wormbole by ʞık (Karl & Karlik) on the Bump Foot netlabel, “Pepper Jelly” off the album Recombinations by Andre Darius and Riley Theodore on the Haze netlabel, and “Autista 3” off the album Autista by Pablo Reche on the Impulsive Habitat netlabel.
Step 2: Extract the first 30 seconds from each of the three remix tracks that you selected in Step 1.
Step 3: Create an original piece of work including that source material from Step 2.
Step 4: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project was posted in the late afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 23, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 27, 2016.
Length: Length is up to you, though between two 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 “disquiet0234.” Also use “disquiet0234” as a tag for your track.
Download: It is necessary that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing and attribution, per the Creative Commons license of the source audio.
Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:
More on this 234th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Make a remix of three tracks of a remix of three tracks, courtesy of a Creative Commons license” — at:
Be sure to credit all the tracks (first and second generation) employed in your piece.
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:
Thanks to Audio Obscura (aka Neil Stringfellow) for proposing this week’s project.
June 22, 2016
The Monk by the Desert
The track has a protean rattle, a breathy noise that shares kinship with the antic blare of the vuvuzela, with the mystic call of the didgeridoo, and with the vibrant particulate of the rain stick. But since the sound is not as immediately recognizable as any of those, it shifts easily into a nether zone. Thick overtones charge the track with meditative spaciousness, even as that reflective cast is challenged by arid textures and an underlying sonic turmoil. Swells introduce pause-like structural moments as they die down, and an anxious sense of narrative as they inevitably rise back up again. Titled “Desert,” it’s a nearly three-minute piece by Ivan Ujevic of Zagreb, Croatia, who records as the Monk by the Sea. It’s from his album Drones, which includes a collaboration with Victor Yibril, released earlier this week.
Track originally posed at soundcloud.com/themonkbythesea. More from the Monk by the Sea at twitter.com/UjevicIvan, themonkbythesea.bandcamp.com, and youtube.com.
A John Cage Master Class (on the Junto Slack)
This thread is extracted from a conversation yesterday on the recently launched Disquiet Junto discussion Slack — that is, on the slack.com platform (if you’re interested in joining in, send me an email at marc@disquiet.com). The subject of “randomness” or “chance” in music was brought up by J. Siemasko (aka Schemawound), and then fleshed out in conversation between Joe McMahon, Ian Joyce, Anatol Locker, Robert M. Thomas (aka Dizzy Banjo), and others. And then Mark Lentczner said he had a story about John Cage he wanted to share.
Around 7:30pm Lentczner (aka mtnviewmark on the Junto Slack) did exactly that, recounting an encounter with Cage at Harvard where Lentczner studied with Ivan Tcherepnin. The above photo (from tcherepnin.com) shows Tcherepnin, right, and his two sons, on the left, with Cage. The photo below (from harvard.edu) shows the Harvard Electronic Music Studio from that era. This is Lentczner’s story about Cage visiting a music class he was attending (“in the early 1980s”), along with some interstitial comments from other Junto Slack members.
mtnviewmark [7:33 PM]
Randomness is the topic of the day
SO – Once, a long time ago, in a land before MIDI, I studied electronic music.
(This is early 1980s)
One of the assignments in the electronic music class taught by Ivan Tcherepnin was to make a realization of Cage’s Variations I
If you don’t know this piece, it involves taking a square piece of paper with splattered ink drops on it, and overlaying it with five pieces of acetate, on each of which is a single line. The idea is the dots represent musical events. You then overly the first acetate sheet, and measure the distance from each dot to the line- the closer it is the sooner in the piece the note occurs, the further, the later. Then you repeat with the second line, only here distance from the line gives the pitch of the event. Third is volume, fourth is duration, and fifth gives timbre.
So essentially you generate a random collection of musical events (perhaps notes), from this very random process… and then you play it. On whatever instrument(s) you want.
So – every year the dozen students in the course would do this. Some would tape splice carefully. Others would turn knobs on the modular synth to match events. And so on… And it was always interesting the day the assignments were played where we’d listen to these dozen realizations of a “random” piece.
[Strikes me like Cage was writing us a Junto…. eh?]
After having done this myself, my first year. In a subsequent year (I was at this point not in the class, just studying 1-on-1 with Ivan), I decided that I would “get at the heart of this piece” by automating the randomness: I programmed an Apple ][ (pre-Mac, folks!), to make the spatters, draw the lines, do the measurements, assemble the notes, play the tones (covering occurance, pitch, duration, and volume), and output CV to a modular synth (for timbre), which processed the whole output.
Essentially, you hit play, and…. it’d played a 90 second Variation I realization. Press it again, and you got another.
…
It so happened this year that we were to be treated to a very special experience: A week or two after the class did Variations I, Ivan arranged for John Cage to come visit and talk with the class.
!!!!!!!!
Over the course of the afternoon, Cage talked with us, and listened to us – and at some point the class played their Variations I realizations and there was wonderful discussion.
But then…. Ivan had also arranged that after the class was over, Cage would spend an hour or so with just me, in the small side studio I now used for my computer and synth work.
Of course, I was brimming to tell him, and play him, my automatic Variations I program. I explained how it worked, what it did… and how I loved that “by listening to variation after variation, as the randomness played out across the space, eventually the listener would come to hear the essence of the piece, the composition would show through the randomness.”
To me, this was obviously wonderful – indeed a key to randomness in music: We want to add variation, with some degree of unpredictability, to elicit a kind of feeling in the music – whether it is just tiny sample & hold added to our percussion patches to make the drums sound less mechanical, or it is random melodies choosen by Markov chain – this is a kind of controlled-unpredictable algorithmic composition.
Ahhhhh…. and I had done it for this great work, Variations I by the great master, John Cage.
(can you see where this is going….?)
……
marc.weidenbaum [7:53 PM]
@mtnviewmark: I think so, but I hope I’m wrong.
mtnviewmark [7:54 PM]
Cage listened, and in his incredibly thoughtful, quiet tone, being the great teacher who doesn’t aim to teach, but is just before their students….
qdot [7:54 PM]
braces himself.
mtnviewmark [7:54 PM]
…pointed out that I had completely missed the point of the piece, and my realization was just wrong.
For his aim, in employing randomness, was not to employ a controlled chaos in service to his composition. But to get away from it being his composition. To remove his ego from his composition as much as possible [his direct phrasing].
He did not want a different set of random notes on each repetition. He wanted exactly the set of notes the randomness determined when the performer prepared the work. He wanted the audience to listen to that exact musical line. To hear it, for what it is, not for what he composed.
natetrier [7:58 PM]
So the preparation was crucial, in his perception. Almost like a ritual. Interesting.
mtnviewmark [7:58 PM]
Yes – and needed so that it wasn’t him we were all applauding at the end. But the experience.
I can’t begin to tell you how profound this hour with Cage was for me.
For not only did I now begin to understand what his work was truely about.
But I began to think about what was my work about, for me, what was I doing, and why.
And it was an incredible expansion of my understanding of what it could mean to make music.
I hope the story helps bring that expansion in some small way to you.
Peace.
marc.weidenbaum [8:03 PM]
That is really great. Thanks, @mtnviewmark.
qdot [8:03 PM]
Wow. :smile:
mtnviewmark [8:04 PM]
Most welcome! So glad to have finally found a community, lo these many years out of college, who are into thinking so much about music. Thank you again, @marc.weidenbaum!
qdot [8:04 PM]
And I mean, I consider you energetic /now/. I can’t imagine back then, as opposed to quiet, reserved Cage. :slightlysmilingface:
marc.weidenbaum [8:04 PM]
I have to ask, did he inquire at all about the effort you put into your realization, the employment of that early Apple?
mtnviewmark [8:05 PM]
He was quite interested in the means of preparation, he was genuinely interested in any means to make music.
We also talked about some of my other algorithmic works and I played some for him – I think he liked using anything to come to music.
leerosevere [8:11 PM]
Great story! It reminds me of his love of employing the I Ching method for composing almost anything. I would love to read a book of personal Cage stories.
mtnviewmark [8:12 PM]
I was using Forth on an Apple ][, after meeting with David Behrman in NYC (his loft studio was like a wonderland to me at the time – to be living in a warehouse loft in NYC surrounded by analog music devices all day…..) I’m pretty sure that Cage knew of Behrman’s work at the time.
Dave Wilson had built for me this giant interface board for the Apple ][ – something like 16 CVs out, 8 CVs in, and I think 12 triggers in each direction
it was a monster – but it enabled us to interconnect the Apple ][ to the Serge Modular .
marc.weidenbaum [8:15 PM]
So cool. So very cool.
mtnviewmark [8:17 PM]
But I admit the impact of that discussion, and implications for my philosophy of music, overshadowed anything else we talked about.
mtnviewmark [8:27 PM]
@leerosevere: I had found a book on the I Ching as an 11 year old in the bottom of a box of contents from a county auction. Dutifully cut yarrow stalks and followed it. Imagine my surprise in college discovering musical works made with it!
jicamasalad [11:08 PM]
@mtnviewmark: Thanks for sharing that beautifully Cage-ian episode – I can’t begin to imagine what a treasured experience that must be for you. I’ll throw in my (second-hand) Cage moment because it speaks to the same heart of his art: A good friend worked on the union stage crew at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall in the early 1990’s; there was to be a performance by Merce Cunningham’s group with a new work by Cage employing something along the lines of 50 or so loudspeakers on the stage. My friend, being well aware of Cage’s music and methods, wanted to make sure everything was set up just right, and summoned the courage to approach the master as the speakers were being brought in. “Excuse me, Mr. Cage,” he said, “do you have a stage plan, layout or instructions for how these 50 speakers should be set up for the performance?” JC turned with his characteristic kind and open smile and said: “It makes absolutely no difference whatsoever.” !! I think of that nearly every time I get myself stuck on some detail or other….
June 21, 2016
A Pixel Fire
The musician working from the traumaduo/spacebox720 account on YouTube apologizes at the opening of this video for the “brutal digital audioclipping” — his exact words — that occurs in the track. The clipping is especially evident right after the nine-minute mark, when a harsh rupture, a pixel fire, briefly invades the previously placid, lightly padded space. That sonic fire quickly recedes, and the patient, soft music, gently percussive music proceeds. The clipping there is as much an echo as it is a rupture, bringing to mind a quieter fissure at the three-minute mark, and other punctuations that occur over the course of the piece. I note this video not only for its listening pleasure, but for the format of the performance presentation. It appears as three images: one large, two small, each showing a different perspective on the instrumentation, allowing him to move freely among the tools and almost always have his actions captured. (Such a format has been on my mind for a possible project, and then I stumbled on this employment while searching for music that uses devices by the musician-designer Meng Qi, who’s based in Beijing, China). In addition there are computer-generated images that lend some science-fiction drama to the undertaking.
Video originally posted at youtube.com. It’s the latest piece I’ve added to my ongoing YouTube playlist of fine “Ambient Performances.”
