Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 343
March 21, 2016
What the Creators of the Monome Sound Like as Live Performers
The developers of the Monome have shepherded not just a series of refined devices, including their namesake grid and a growing number of synthesizer modules, but a community that makes music with them and software for them.
That Monome community largely gathers at llllllll.co, a discussion site, but occasionally there are opportunities to meet up in person. About a month back, on February 19, Monome’s Kelli Cain and Brian Crabtree, who are based in upstate New York, performed as a duo at a tiny shop in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond neighborhood. The audio for that set is now available as a free download from shop’s SoundCloud account (soundcloud.com/betterforliving).
I was at the show, and can confirm the audio captures the songs well. It’s a series of gentle, folktronic pieces, each with a trance-like quality. Certainly there in the mix are the soft looping synthesizer sounds often associated with the Monome, but there’s also a sweet vocal thread, the pair harmonizing like adjunct members of Low or of Iron and Wine. The acoustic shaker heard early on in this half-hour set is one of several that come out of Cain’s work in ceramics (see: kellicain.com).
At the show Crabtree had several of the shakers on the table. He’d shake one for awhile, and then pass it to someone in the audience to continue the pattern. Each person became an extension of what Crabtree had started, but then altered it a little, whether through the conscious decision to contribute a musical idea, or simply because their sense of rhythm differed from his. Either way, the passing around of the shakers was a masterful example of the real (that is, physical) world reflecting something intrinsic to electronic culture (looping), all occurring in the context of a makeshift community (in this case the few dozen attendees).
Here are two shots I took at the time and that I posted the day after the show at llllllll.co:
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/betterforliving. More on the Monome, Cain, and Crabtree at monome.org.
March 17, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0220: Rhythmic Arrhythmic
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 morning, California time, on Thursday, March 17, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 21, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0220: Rhythmic Arrhythmic
The Assignment: Make overtly rhythmic music from short loops of overtly arrhythmic source audio, following instructions from Dennis DeSantis.
Dennis DeSantis adapted this week’s project from the chapter “Implied Rhythm in Short Loops” from his excellent book Making Music: 74 Creative Strategies for Electronic Music Producers. The project explores how rhythm emerges from almost any audio material if short fragments of it are repeated incessantly enough.
Step 1: Find or make an audio recording of the arrhythmic material of your choice and gradually reduce its loop length until rhythmic patterns begin to emerge.
Tip: This usually works well with loops that are no longer than about two seconds.
Tip: Good sources include: existing music, field recordings, and recordings of speech.
Tip: “Bad” or uneven loops can often yield the most interesting results. Don’t necessarily aim for loops with clean boundaries or that are aligned to zero-crossings.
Step 2: Use the inherent rhythm in these short loops as the basis for a piece of new music in which the “discovered” rhythm is clearly audible.
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 in the morning, California time, on Thursday, March 17, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 21, 2016.
Length: The length is up to you, though between two and four 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 “disquiet0220-rhythmicarrhythmic.” Also use “disquiet0220-rhythmicarrhythmic” 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 220th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Make overtly rhythmic music from short loops of overtly arrhythmic source audio, following instructions from Dennis DeSantis”) 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 Junto member Will Benton (web.willbenton.com), a computer scientist based in Madison, Wisconsin.
March 15, 2016
Gesturally Rhythmic Ambient Music
ebb and flow by stabilo (speaker gain teardrop) / Gallery Six
Ebb and Flow is a split EP of gesturally rhythmic ambient music built from field recordings and other noise sources. It doesn’t have a beat, per se, but it draws percussion into the mix. Half of the EP is by Stabilo and the other half is by Gallery Six. Both Stabilo (aka Yasutica Horibe, of the band Speaker Gain Teardrop) and Gallery Six (aka Hidekazu Imashige) are based in Hiroshima, Japan. The highlight of Ebb and Flow is “Endurance,” which balances a twinkling percussive element, like a vibraphone being played by tiny rubber balls, amid water drops and a thick sonic fog. Gallery Six’s “Vapor” is more textural than its title may suggest — it’s like the sound of a thousand pachinko machines playing from deep in some flooded cistern. There are four tracks in all, and the full set is highly recommended.
The EP is available for free download at stabilo-loadbang.bandcamp.com. More from Stabilo at speakergainteardrop.com. More from Gallery Six at gallerysix.tumblr.com.
March 14, 2016
Sustained Chamber Ambient Music
“Liberation Suite” was the first track to appear at the SoundCloud page of Borosilicate Purl, an ambient duo out of Michigan. Three more tracks have appeared in the past day, but as of yesterday “Liberation” stood alone. It makes for a strong start. It’s a beautiful work of sustained chamber ambient music. Strings maintain a running, cloud-bank placidity, while organ-like tones begin to fill out the body of the piece. At times it brings to mind the song-less country music of the Boxhead Ensemble, at others the amplified zithers of Laraaji, and at others still the more introspective guitar performances of Adrian Belew. The ambition of Borosilicate Purl is clear in how the apparent sparseness of the work belies its emotional heft, and how it utilizes over 10 full minutes to get where it’s going.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/borosilicate-purl. Borosilicate Purl is the duo of Michael Rice and Jeffrey Niemeier. They are based in Grand Rapids, Michigan
March 13, 2016
What Sound Looks Like
Most doorbells that haven’t been replaced or repainted in years speak volumes about disregard. Despite their explicit invitation to say hello, to push that button, to connect face to face with another human being, they seem more like symbols of seclusion. With most well-worn doorbells, it’s as if the elements, not the touch of countless fingers, had diminished their luster. But some, like this one, do seem to capture the occasions of many visits, welcome ones by friends and family. There’s a uniformity to the scratches, and a resilient solidity to the device itself, that suggest a doorway that continues to see frequent activity, rather than one that serves a shut in as a blockade from the outside world.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
A Fantasia of Dank Spaces
It’s unclear if Subspace Unit, based in Porto, Portugal, is a side moniker of the prolific musician João Ricardo, who mainly records under the name OCP, or if Subspace is some sort of label or, perhaps, collective that packages other people’s tracks. Either way, the first Subspace upload is an OCP piece (found via an OCP repost) of a rainy-day dub titled, simple, “E.” It echoes as it evaporates, dense waveforms fracturing as they escape the rhythm, the overall sound design getting more and more psychedelic as it proceeds. It’s a fantasia of dank spaces.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/subspaceunit. More from OCP/Ricardo at joaoricardo.org.
March 12, 2016
This Is the Starship Ambience You’ve Been Looking For
If the hotel you’re staying in doesn’t have quite the spaceship-quality, hermetic, time-slowing HVAC system you’re accustomed to, you still have the option to augment your sonic reality. In most hyper-developed cities, temporary stay means submitting to climate control so optimized for depersonalization that it serves to emphasize just how much you are a visitor, just how much you are not part of the place you call, for a brief spell, something akin to home. If the building lacks that welcome, saturating drone, you could do worse than to pipe “Another Carefree Day on the Nostromo” by Boson Spin into your capsule. At 20 minutes in length, it is packed with a fearful stasis, a forbidding hollowness that moans with the exhaust of some massive engine whose traveling velocity approaches the speed of light while, in a literally cosmic sense, it is barely moving at all.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/boson_spin, in all its Alien glory. Boson Spin is Stan Magendanz of Brisbane, Australia. More at bosonspin.bandcamp.com.
What Sound Looks Like
The sign used to read “No Dial Tone,” in case that wasn’t self-evident. I like to think that had it provided a dial tone, the general public might be able to make use of it.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
March 11, 2016
Rimbaud Scores Ryman
As mentioned here back in early February, upon the death of Denise Duval, the electronic musician Scanner is an especially apt choice for scoring radio dramas. Much of his early electronic music involved lending scores to real-life conversations plucked — well, sampled, really — from the ether. Commissioned scores allow him to apply that experience and those techniques to more formalized narratives. That February entry was about Scanner’s take on the Cocteau play La Voix Humaine, the opera of which starred Duval in its first incarnation. More recently, Scanner provided the score to a BBC Radio 4 story by science fiction author Geoff Ryman. The Ryman story, “No Point Talking,” isn’t currently online (bbc.co.uk), but Scanner (aka Robin Rimbaud) has posted nearly 11 minutes of the score, a cooly atmospheric outing, with plenty of echoing synthesizers, though the main thread is a sequence of what sounds like electric guitar. Around the seven-minute mark, unintelligible voices intrude, passing as if by the window of the studio where Scanner is recording. The voices play an interesting third-party role. They are neither speaking parts from Ryman’s story, nor are they score. They are human presence as score, voices as sound design. And after they fade, the guitar proceeds forward, bending until it comes to resemble another voice of sorts: the call of seagulls.
Here’s the BBC’s description of Ryman’s tale:
Award-winning sci-fi writer Geoff Ryman’s new story for the BBC, imagining a future world where California has been split in two, each half with very different political outlooks.
His conservative hero finds himself in a place he doesn’t like or understand, where everything he holds dear is challenged: relations between men and women, and even the very definitions of ‘he’ and ‘her’.
This story was written as Geoff was investigating the portrayal of gender in utopian science fiction, as part of BBC Radio 4’s Utopia season. That documentary which accompanies ‘No Point Talking’ is called ‘Herland’.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/scanner. More from Scanner, who is based in London, at scannerdot.com.
March 10, 2016
Disquiet Junto Project 0219: Breath Dance
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 early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, March 10, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 14, 2016.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0219: Breath Dance
The Assignment: Working with artist Paolo Salvagione, create the audio backdrop for a piece of choreography utilizing only the sound of soft breaths.
The artist and engineer Paolo Salvagione is currently working on an extended piece of choreography. This Junto project is the first of likely several that might serve as sonic backdrops 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 five-minute piece of quiet 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. The sounds should be quiet — they should suggest quietness, peace — yet also work, when amplified, at a volume loud enough to fill the space.
Step 2: Using the sound of soft breaths, make a piece of sound/music roughly five minutes long that meets the criteria of 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 10, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 14, 2016.
Length: The length should be roughly five minutes.
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 “disquiet0219-breathdance.” Also use “disquiet0219-breathdance” 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 219th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Working with artist Paolo Salvagione, create the audio backdrop for a piece of choreography utilizing only the sound of soft breaths”) 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 Junto is by dancer Kristen Bell, who is part of this Salvagione project.
