Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 342
April 2, 2016
Playing a Tape Cassette by Hand
This little device, called the HC-TT, is a “human controlled tape transport.” It plays standard tape cassettes with no motor, no automation. The only power is a turn of that large knob. The knob moves backward and forward, allowing for gestural effects, as demoed in this Instagram from the account of the manufacturer, the Brooklyn-based Landscape:
A video posted by Landscape (@landscape_hc_tt) on Mar 11, 2016 at 11:46am PST
In this next example, it’s paired with a looping machine, the Elektron Octatrack:
A video posted by Landscape (@landscape_hc_tt) on Feb 11, 2016 at 2:48pm PST
There’s a large set of audio examples at Landscape’s SoundCloud account, drawing from flamenco, hip-hop, business self-help, and other sound sources:
The tape cassette has proved to be a useful tool for musicians in recent years to inexpensively release physical documents of their recordings. It’s also prevalent as an instrument, for such things as old-school tape echo and looping, thanks to both reclaimed reel-to-reel systems and cassettes. The HC-TT brings a modern, gadget-maker ingenuity to the medium.
More on the HC-TT at hc-tt.com. It ships with a power supply and “one randomly selected old cassette tape.”
March 31, 2016
What Sound Looks Like
Seems legit.
Nothing says SUPER QUIET like bold all caps on a small, industrial-strength armada.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
Disquiet Junto Project 0222: Bounded Foundation
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, March 31, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 4, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0222: Bounded Foundation
The Assignment: Compose a piece for contemporary dance — with a “soft top” and a “shifting bottom.”
This is the second project we’re doing with artist and engineer Paolo Salvagione for an extended piece of choreography he’s working on. The result of the project is intended for potential use as a sonic backdrop for the dance performance, and also as a form of research into the materials and ideas being explored by Salvagione and the dancers. (Audio produced for this Junto project will not be used by Salvagione without its composer’s permission.)
Step 1: You will be creating a short, roughly four-minute piece of music. First, take into consideration the setting. Visualize that the piece would be performed by a young solo female dancer. She is dancing in a large space. The sounds of this Junto are the only sounds accompanying her movement.
Step 2: Your piece should have two perceived “levels.” The “top” level should be soft and cloud-like. The “bottom” level should be firm but ever-shifting.
Step 3: Make a piece of sound/music roughly four minutes long that meets the criteria of 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 morning, California time, on Thursday, March 31, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, April 4, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, though between two and five 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 “disquiet0222-boundedfoundation.” Also use “disquiet0222-boundedfoundation” 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 222nd weekly Disquiet Junto project (Compose a piece for contemporary dance — with a “soft top” and a “shifting bottom”) 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 at:
The image associated with this project is by Tom Gill and is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
March 27, 2016
Looped and Delayed Viola
Jeanann Dara plays viola and she works in electronic music, two directions that often combine toward appealingly unfamiliar ends. “RSVN” is a live performance for looped and delayed samples of her viola. It isn’t just the strings, bowed slowly or plucked concertedly for maximum tension, that make their way through her battery of technology — though squiggles and flurries and truncated snippets are the core of the piece. So, too, are the slaps against the wood, and tiny little fractures of happenstance sound.
The result is a rhythmic meditation on the tonality inherent in her instrument. To hear bits of the viola on repeat is to hear the organic turned into a machine, as nuances are frozen into employment as compositional elements.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/jeananndara. More from Jeanann Dara, who’s based in Brooklyn, New York, at jeananndara.com and at twitter.com.
March 26, 2016
All the More Beautiful for That Absence
Barely two minutes long, this little sliver of chamber ambient music by Martin Colborn, “New Seven,” threads a few handfuls of notes on a piano amid a lingering mass of soft strings. The sustain on the strings comes thanks to the ebow, which allows for a kind of infinite vibration. The result brings to mind the song-less rural music of Boxhead Ensemble, as phrase after phrase slowly emerges, each with a hint of resolution, and each then dissolving into the ambience. There is no melody, just traces of what might have been, and it’s all the more beautiful for that absence. As of this writing Colborn only has about 10 followers on SoundCloud. He should have many more.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/martin-colborn.
March 25, 2016
DJ Krush at Dawn
This short performance video captures DJ Krush doing a solo turntable-and-laptop set at the site of the Zōjō-ji Temple in his native Tokyo, Japan. The footage captures not just the turntablism itself, but Krush walking to the temple and setting up his equipment. As the sun slowly rises, the seeming black and white of the setting lets in hints of blue and Krush’s music gains depth and complexity. Fittingly his raw audio includes wooden flutes, finding a commonality with the ancient traditions of the venue. Simple beats are layered amid echoing effects. As a sonic artifact, the video documents not just the sound of his performance but the sound of his preparation: cables being snapped into place, equipment being arranged. The multi-camera shoot moves easily back and forth between framing Krush’s stage setup and providing extended glimpses of his fingers in action. Later, in the open-air setting, bird calls provide an uncanny parallel to Krush’s own vinyl manipulation.
Video originally posted at youtube.com. More on the set at thump.vice.com. The video was directed by Toshihiko Morosawa. More from Krush at sus81.jp/djkrush.
March 24, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0221: Morning 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.
Tracks will be added to this playlist for the four-day duration of the 0221 project:
This project was posted at noon, California time, on Thursday, March 24, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 28, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0221: Morning Music
The Assignment: Compose something — quiet, peaceful, refreshing — you’d want to wake up to.
Step 1: You’ll be making music that you’d want to wake up to — music you’d like to imagine other people would want to wake up to. This isn’t “shock alert” music. It’s quiet, peaceful, refreshing.
Step 2: Compose and record something that accomplishes the goal set by Step 1.
Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
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 at noon, California time, on Thursday, March 24, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 28, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, though between two and five 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 “disquiet0221-morningmusic.” Also use “disquiet0221-morningmusic” 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 221st weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Compose something — quiet, peaceful, refreshing — you’d want to wake up to”) 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 at:
The photo associated with this project is by Alf Eaton, used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
March 23, 2016
Lesley Flanigan Sings to the Machine
In advance of the album’s release, Lesley Flanigan has posted one track off Hedera for streaming. “Can Barely Feel My Feet” is a layering of her voice, the soft, insistent, prayer-like vowels starting off as a handful of parallel processes but then gathering in denser and denser substructures. At times the intonations bead against each other, the slight variations creating hushed, genteel moiré patterns.
By the end, all that remains is the moiré, a buzzing electronic field where once there was were human voices. The album is due out April 8. The main track on the album, the title piece, has yet to be provided for streaming, but there’s a segment of it in this video, in which Flanigan’s electronically processed vocals are heard against a rhythm provided, apparently, by a malfunctioning tape deck.
Track originally posted at lesleyflanigan.bandcamp.com. More on Hedera at physicaleditions.com. More from Flanigan, who is based in New York, at lesleyflanigan.com.
March 22, 2016
Why We Listen
Major thanks to Marc Kate of the Why We Listen podcast for having included me in its ever growing catalog of conversations. My entry, released a few days ago, is the 35th in Kate’s Why We Listen series. Previous participants include many folks I admire, including Morgan Packard, Richard Chartier, Cara Rose DeFabio, Erik Davis, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Holly Herndon, Leyland Kirby, Bob Ostertag, Geeta Dayal, and Keith Hennessy.
For each episode of Why We Listen, Kate asks the guest to bring three pieces of music, and then you sit in his studio and listen to them together and talk about them. I selected a piece of turntablism sound art by Maria Chavez, “Kids- TRIAL 18 (Unfinished),” a work of classical minimalism by Madeleine Cocolas, “I Can See You Whisper,” and an Aphex Twin rarity “Avril 14th reversed music not audio.”
A direct link to the MP3 file is here: whywelisten.marckate.com. The iTunes link is here: itunes.apple.com. More on the episode at whywelisten.wordpress.com.
I’m Talking About Sound + Film at the Disposable Film Festival
“Eyes are forgiving, ears less so. Eyes want to be seduced. Ears are sensitive to incongruity, discontinuity, artifice. How can sound reinforce narrative? How can sound be narrative? How can sound design serve as score? We’ll explore the past and the technologically enabled promise of film sound.”
That’s the opening of — and abstract for — a talk I’ve been invited to give at the Disposable Film Festival this coming April 8 in San Francisco from 4pm to 5:30pm. The title of the talk is “Sound + Vision: A Master Class with Marc Weidenbaum.” It’ll be at Bay Area Video Coalition, whose address is 2727 Mariposa Street, San Francisco, CA 94110.
I’ll be talking about usefully adventurous examples of creative employment of sound in film and about new technologically mediated opportunities. The audience is likely to include a higher than average percentage of people interested in making films, so I’ll also be outlining a variety of creative prompts to spur original sonic experimentation in the service of narrative.
As examples I’ll be drawing on work I’ve done in music supervision and sound design on the new science fiction film Youth, directed by Brett Marty, and on the documentary The Children Next Door, directed by Doug Block.
You can register to attend the talk here: attendease.com.
The full festival lineup is here: disposablefilm.com.
