Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 368
August 15, 2015
“Six-String Buddha”
I set out to make my own version of a Buddha Machine loop: a short phrase that loops over and over, yet is “ambient” enough that it can settle into the background. This one-minute track was recorded on my electric guitar, with no effects except for a little delay that’s built into my amplifier. I used the guitar’s volume knob to remove any sense of the attack when I hit the string: I hit the string with the volume at 0, and only then began to turn the knob up slowly to 10. I also nudged the volume control from 10 back down to 0 to accelerate the end of the tone, but sometimes I let it fade out on its own. The whole thing is comprised entirely of single extended notes, probably 20 separate instances in total. I lost count. There is no evidence of the accrual process in this recording. That is, no notes are added as it proceeds. I didn’t hit “record” until the full set was layered and complete, and then I just let it play on repeat. The looper is the introductory-level Ditto from TC Electronics. The amp is a Roland Micro Bass Cube. I used a Zoom H4N to record it, with the mic about a foot from the amp. I edited it in Audacity simply to trim the length and introduce a gentle fade-in and fade-out at the beginning and end. The guitar is a 2005 Fender Stratocaster (made in Corona, California) that I bought for myself last week as a birthday present, after playing ukulele for five years.
Thanks to Disquiet Junto regular Rupert Lally for advice on the volume control, advice that contributed to the development of this project.
This was recorded for the 189th weekly Disquiet Junto project. Though I created the Junto series and moderate the projects each week, this is only, I believe, the second or third project I’ve actually contributed a track to.
More on this 189th Disquiet Junto project (“Create a dense stack of attack-free tonal material from one audio source”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/08/13/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
August 13, 2015
Disquiet Junto Project 0189: Tone Layer
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.
This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 13, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 17, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0189: Tone Layer
Create a dense stack of attack-free tonal material from one audio source.
This project involves layering loops, or a loop of layers. It’s preferable that you do so with live looping, allowing the layers to accrue in real time. However, if live looping is not a capacity of yours, then feel free, certainly, to layer them in Audacity or by some other means.
These are the steps:
Step 1: Choose an instrument that can create extended tones.
Step 2: Record a short loop of a single held tone on that instrument. Use a volume pedal or other tool to eliminate the attack at the start of the tone.
Step 3: Create many more such loops, all with the same instrument, and layer them atop the original loop.
Step 4: Record a document of these layered loops lasting approximately 1 minute.
Step 5: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 13, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 17, 2015.
Length: The length of your finished work should be roughly one minute.
Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, 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 include the term “disquiet0189-tonelayer” in the title of your track, and 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 189th Disquiet Junto project (“Create a dense stack of attack-free tonal material from one audio source”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/08/13/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
Image associated with this project by Nicholas D., and used thanks to a Creative Commons license:
August 12, 2015
An Archival (1999) Road Excursion from Emma Hendrix
The word “rhythmanalysis” is from the work of Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), who explored — and forgive my poor paraphrasing, as I’m still learning about the topic — the role of rhythm in the social construction of urban environments. The theme of “rhythmanalysis” provided a structure to an exhibit earlier this year at Simon Fraser University, reflecting on a half century of artistic activity at the school. The exhibit, Through a Window: Visual Art and SFU 1965-2015, was in the Audain Gallery and Teck Gallery at SFU between June 3 and August 1. It is archived on the school’s website and SoundCloud page.
One of the earlier works in the overview is by Emma Hendrix, “Horizon,” dating from 1999. The piece mixes found audio of transportation sounds into a rhythmic excursion: the underlying churn of a bus en route, the beeping of a signal, the enclosed acoustics of vehicular space.
Writes Hendrix of the piece:
The title of this work refers to the imperceptible and unacknowledged loss of the acoustic horizon within the urban sonic environment. Horizon was completed in 1999 in SFU’s Sonic Research Studio using analog tape loops of field recordings taken along the Hastings corridor, bus route #135, between Commercial Drive and SFU’s Burnaby Mountain campus. Soundmarks that comprise this work evoke the university/city commute and the deserted, last bus’ nightly departure from campus.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/sfugalleries. More from Hendrix at twitter.com/Irezicle and emmahendrix.com. More from the Simon Fraser University Galleries at sfu.ca.
August 11, 2015
A Climatic Chorus
Classical composer Marti Epstein has produced a series of choral pieces, each of which takes as its theme a different weather pattern. The quintet of segments includes “Snow,” “Heat,” “Tornado,” and “Rain.” The second movement in this micro-suite is “Mist,” which layers, true to its climatic conceit, vocal utterances in a shifting, gentle, lightly flowing manner. They combine with a cello, here played by Rhonda Rider. The vocalists are the Master Singers of Lexington. The text, not that my ear can make out the words, is credited to Jonathan Eichman. According to the “works list” on her website, martiepstein.com, it dates back to 2009.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/marti-epstein.
August 10, 2015
Guerrilla Audio = Two Fleeting Tracks Per Month
Simon Fisher Turner has started a new music series through the Touch Editions website, touch33.net. Titled Guerrilla Audio, it is an experiment in short lifespans for sonic objects. The tracks are to be posted twice per month, just about every 14 days or so. Once those 14 days are over, the audio will be removed. Of course the tracks will live on on people’s hard drives, and be shared in perpetuity. As an archive, however, the Guerrilla Audio subsite will exist solely as a list of what has been posted, not the expired audio itself.
The first entry in the series, “Guerrilla 1,” has been up since August 1, which means, as of this writing, only another four days or so until it comes down. The seven-minute track features Turner along with Klara Lewis and Rainier Lericolais. The first half of it is an unmediated, acoustic recording of a live performance on everyday objects, in this case metal poles. Then comes a variety of different settings, some more seemingly “electric” than others, most notably due to shimmering signals and a certain kind of digital resonance — though that could just be the sonics of the washing machines he mentions in this brief liner note that provides a cursory summary of what’s going on:
Location: Mende, France, Summer 2015
Iron Bannister
3 iron poles, played by Klara Lewis, Rainier Lericolais & SFT
Poles edits by SFT
Washing machine in Laundrette (nightime)
Restaurant atmosphere (before performance)
3 more iron pole edits
The promise of a universal library and the prevalence of streaming services collude to give the impression that everything is out there, and always will be. It’s likewise arguable that the idea of a “limited edition” release is redundant, since all manufactured items are, in essence, limited. Turner’s Guerrilla Audio project wanders the space between those two concepts, initiating a willful temporary state, and then seeing where it leads.
Track originally posted for free download at touch33.net. More from Turner at simonfisherturner.com and twitter.com/ivft.
August 7, 2015
New Basinski + Chartier Collaboration
The Important Records label has posted an excerpt from a new album-length collaboration between the accomplished minimal sound explorers William Basinski and Richard Chartier. The collection, Divertissement, follows the duo’s Untitled 1-3 album from 2004 and single-track Aurora Liminalis from 2013, both of which were released on Line, which Chartier himself runs. The new record has two tracks, and this 12-minute excerpt ends suddenly, the cutoff quite a contrast to the evocative music that precedes it. The track mixes human voices and insectoid percusssive particulate amid a thick and quickly shifting drone, lending the work a considerable sense of depth, place, and motion.
The accompanying liner note gives some background: “The duo utilize electronics, piano, tape-loops and short wave radio to evoke a dense atmosphere suggesting hundreds of years of history rising up from the depths of a reverberating cathedral. Subtle, buried and intense murmurs of melody morph through this deeply consuming and slowly evolving composition in two parts.”
It’s been a busy year for Basinski, best known for his haunting Disintegration Loops. He released The Deluge in May and Cascade in April.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/importantrecords. More from Chartier at 3particles.com and Basinski at
mmlxii.com.
August 6, 2015
What Sound Looks Like
A doorbell doesn’t always trigger a sound that the person hitting the button can hear. At a large apartment complex, it may trigger a tone many floors up, many walls past, many steps deep into the building. And those concerns don’t begin to factor in street noise and weather. How does the visitor know that the doorbell has done its job? How are we socialized to not hit it again and again when we don’t hear the bell ring? In this specific case, an additional sound element entirely is referenced: The visitors only know they have been welcomed into the building when a tiny click is provided by the lock mechanism. It’s like a mechanical intercom, an especially lofi and succinct Morse Code, a simple binary operation in which the silence of a null return means “Go away.”
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
Disquiet Junto Project 0188: Complex Complex
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.
This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 6, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 10, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0188: Complex Complex
Take a provided track and make it more complex.
This project was proposed by Guy Birkin and Jay Bodley (aka Sun Hammer). It extends the thinking that went into their album Complexification, released by the record label Entr’acte. (There’s more background on album below the project description.)
These are the steps for this project:
Step 1: Pick one of the two tracks at the following URL: https://goo.gl/tN4Oit.
Step 2: Modify that one track in any way, using as much or little of it as you like, to make a new piece that sounds “more complex” than the original. You may add other sounds. (Note: You are free to use any definition or measure of “complexity.” You should be sure to describe your process and how it “increases” the complexity of the original track.)
Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 4: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 6, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 10, 2015.
Background: The album Complexification by Guy Birkin and Sun Hammer “explores musical complexity through a collaborative process based on a set of rules.” Those rules involved the two musicians swapping successive copies of a track in order to make it progressively more “complex.” For their purposes, they defined “complexity” as follows: “In this project, complexity is understood in terms of the quantity and variety of musical elements or patterns. The result is two parallel threads of music, each representing a progression of increasing complexity.”
Length: The length of your finished work is up to you.
Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, 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 include the term “disquiet0188-complexcomplex” in the title of your track, and 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 188th Disquiet Junto project (“Take a provided track and make it more complex”) at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/08/06/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
Image associated with this project from the notes that accompany the album Complexification (Entr’acte), by Guy Birkin and Sun Hammer, and on which project is based.
More on Complexification:
August 5, 2015
King Britt Goes Way Out
When King Britt ditches 4/4 for the outer realms, he goes way out. Case in point, this nearly 15-minute live piece titled “Trigger,” which floats around in a spacious zone. The piece closes on an anxious note, but spends much of its passing in a sing-song haze. There’s a foundational little riff that sounds like old-school ambient Aphex Twin, a little rhythmic-melodic head-nodder that becomes part of the background as the track proceeds.
For the gearheads in the house, Britt lists the equipment with which he performed it in the accompanying note (Korg Mono/Poly, Roland JX3P, Critter & Guitari Pocket Piano, Moogerfooger, and Ableton Live “triggering softsynths as the foundation for the piece”).
That said, the track’s title is not a reference to the short signal that is a part of audio synthesis. “Trigger,” he writes, “is a response to all the corrupt police killing unarmed citizens of the world. This is a warning.”
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/kingbritt. More from Britt, who is based in Philadelphia, at kingbritt.com.
August 4, 2015
Adherence as Mask for Avoidance
The slender techno of an untitled piece by Starsmoke is a simple beat set on repeat and lightly ornamented for the duration. As it moves headlong into the future — well, toward its 4:34 end time, which will then trigger the listener to set it on loop — it never veers from the lightly tweaked boom-chika boom-chika at its core. But adherence to time isn’t entirely what’s going on. Here, seeming adherence is a mask for artful, concerted avoidance. What makes the untitled track worthy of a listen, and worthy of a title for that matter, is how it plays with that underlying rhythm as it proceeds: nudging small grace beats, hinting at backward masking, suggesting turntable effects, dropping segments to yield illusions of syncopation. It’s quite a treat.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/starsmoke. More from Starsmoke, who apparently splits time between Colorado and Wyoming, at instagram.com/spshl_K.
