Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 388
February 16, 2015
Beats Within Beats
This track, “hb22,” by Hideyuki Kuromiya is best experienced on repeat. It’s a beat, intended for looping and layering. So many fine elements comprise the beat: the quick little inhale, the bits of surface noise, the up’n’down of the wood-block–like percussion, the pause every few repeats, the little glitch within that pause. And within each of those elements are more elements. The voice has its own meter, an up’n’down that parallels the main beat. The little glitch within that pause is followed by a textured thud, a bit like a little rewind, or a needle hitting vinyl. With each repeat the beats within the beats become more and more clear, and then there are the beats within those. Dig in.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/kuromiya-hideyuki. More from Kuromiya, who is based in Tokyo, Japan, at twitter.com/hideyukitchen.
via instagram.com/dsqt
A video posted by Marc Weidenbaum (@dsqt) on Feb 15, 2015 at 3:08pm PST
Adding simple gestural control to my modular synth activity. #eurorack
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
February 15, 2015
Kate Carr Makes Do
Kate Carr’s six-minute arrangement of transformed field recordings and pre-existing material has a self-explanatory name. It is titled, in full, “I Made This Song from Wind, Hunting Signs and Music I Secretly Recorded.” The “song-ness” of it relies on a gentle swell, a sedately ominous sway that suggests Angelo Badalamenti on an especially somber day. It merges with white noise foundation and is occasionally embellished with bug noise and distant sounds, clangs and static.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/katecarr. Carr runs the Flaming Pines record label and travels a lot. More from her at gleamingsilverribbon.wordpress.com and twitter.com/flamingpines.
February 14, 2015
Two Chords and the Ghostly Truth
In this dolorous little bit of electro-pop minimalism, just two alternating notes, Old Clone sums up a simple scenario: “the loneliest ghost spends valentines day wishing it’s dead heart no longer felt love for the living.” The piece appears between the two dreamy, super slow songs that constitute Sang the Lonely Ghost on Valentines Day. It’s quite lovely how two simple, briefly held notes can capture the sort of world-weary homespun techno fictions of a Kid Koala or a Douglas Dare, and Old Clone has managed it. Get the full set, streaming below, at soundcloud.com/oldclone.
More from Old Clone, based in Denton, Texas, at oldclone.bandcamp.com.
via instagram.com/dsqt
My San Jose Museum of Art installation, seen through Alan Rath’s Thumper V.
Cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.
February 13, 2015
Valentine’s Day Is for the Birds
Michelle Fournet writes regularly about bioacoustics at her oregonstate.edu blog, where she has, among other things, recounted a trip to Antarctica on a Korean ice breaker to recover an ocean-bottom hydrophone. (I mentioned this a couple months ago in my This Week in Sound email newsletter.) She shares the blog with several other people, who have covered such topics as constructive uses of social media in the sciences and, with good regularity, “Sound Bites” highlights from their field of study. Today Fournet took the opportunity to share field recordings of love songs from red-winged blackbirds and the high Arctic male bearded seal, whose repertoire she correctly describes as “strange” — both in its alien otherness, and in its emotive familiarity
Right now, as of this typing, the Oregon State Research Collective for Applied Acoustics has all of two followers for its SoundCloud account. Let’s try to fix that.
Tracks originally posted at oregonstate.edu and soundcloud.com/oregonstate_labs.
February 12, 2015
Disquiet Junto Project 0163: Layering Minutes After Midnight
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at Disquiet.com, 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.
Tracks will be added to this set for the duration of the project:
This assignment was made in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, February 12, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, February 16, 2015.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0163: Layering Silence After Midnight
The Assignment: Create a new late-night ambience with sounds from a handful of pre-existing field recordings.
This project is the second in what will be an ongoing occasional series that focus on late-night ambience. Collectively these nocturnal endeavors are being called “One Minute Past Midnight.” No one’s work will be repurposed without their permission, and it’s appreciated if you post your track with a Creative Commons license that allows for non-commercial reuse and sharing.
The steps for this project are as follows:
Step 1: Revisit project #0160 from January 22, 2015, in which field recordings were made of the sound one minute past midnight:
Step 2: Locate segments that are especially quiet and meditative — and confirm that they are available for creative reuse. Many should have a Creative Commons license stating such, and if you’re not sure just check with the responsible Junto participant.
Step 3: Using segments from three different tracks from the January 22 project, create a new work of sound that layers the pre-existing material into something new, something nocturnal. Keep the length of your final piece to one minute
Step 4: Upload the finished track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.
Step 5: Be sure to include link/mentions regarding the source tracks.
Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This assignment was made in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, February 12, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, February 16, 2015.
Length: The length of your finished work should be one minute.
Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and 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 “disquiet0163-layeringminutes” 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 163rd Disquiet Junto project — “Create a new late-night ambience with sounds from a handful of pre-existing field recordings” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/02/12/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 Matthias Ripp, used via Creative Commons license:
February 11, 2015
Digital Tape Manipulation
It’s arguable the extent to which it is necessary, even helpful, to understand how sausage is made in order to actually appreciate sausage. Sausage may be a poor metaphor, in fact, since its production process can be especially icky, as production processes go. Whether or not one listens to film director commentaries or reads interviews with novelists, perhaps the question is less a binary one and more a qualitative one, less a matter of whether or not it’s a good idea, and more a matter of just how that sausage making is presented. A list of ingredients is far different from a recipe that unfolds a dish’s cultural history. In any case, I am by no means a musician, and instead engage with musicians, through interviews and conversations, and through collaborative projects. Among the main reasons I have developed a hands-on interest with modular synthesizers this past year has been to understand better the origins of electronic music, as well as the productions of musicians I admire today. Al Hill, who goes by Sundog70, has posted a short piece on his SoundCloud account called “Phonogenic #1.” It doesn’t hurt to understand that the name comes from Phonogene, as noted in the track’s hashtags, and that Phonogene is a synthesizer module that enables effects along the lines of old-school tape manipulation. The results are often dreamy, backward-masked, and haunting, all of which is certainly in effect here, along with burbling textural elements and gracious moments of high shimmer.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/sundog70. Sundog70/Hill is based in Brighton, England.
