Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 419
July 2, 2014
SOUND RESEARCH LOG: Plants Listen and Then Produce Chemical Repellents
Found via delhidailynews.com:
We already know that some plants can respond to sound. But the question which has aroused curiosity in everyone’s mind is that why would a plant develop the ability to hear. A new study has suggested that it is because they want to defend themselves against predators.
The whole thing is worth reading in full. Here’s another detail:
Some earlier studies on plants and sounds have found that in rice there are two genes which can switch on in response to music and clear tones. We also know that corn roots will lean toward vibrations of a specific frequency.
Access to the originating paper at the journal Oecologia (at springer.com). Here’s the abstract:
Plant germination and growth can be influenced by sound, but the ecological significance of these responses is unclear. We asked whether acoustic energy generated by the feeding of insect herbivores was detected by plants. We report that the vibrations caused by insect feeding can elicit chemical defenses. Arabidopsis thaliana (L.) rosettes pre-treated with the vibrations caused by caterpillar feeding had higher levels of glucosinolate and anthocyanin defenses when subsequently fed upon by Pieris rapae (L.) caterpillars than did untreated plants. The plants also discriminated between the vibrations caused by chewing and those caused by wind or insect song. Plants thus respond to herbivore-generated vibrations in a selective and ecologically meaningful way. A vibration signaling pathway would complement the known signaling pathways that rely on volatile, electrical, or phloem-borne signals. We suggest that vibration may represent a new long distance signaling mechanism in plant–insect interactions that contributes to systemic induction of chemical defenses.
June 30, 2014
The Drone & the Drone
Radio Free Ul-quoma is the somewhat imposing name under which Andrew Gladstone-Heighton of Gateshead, England, posts his material at his soundcloud.com account. Perhaps the “Ul-quoma” part is intended as a reference to Ul Qoma, the twin city of Besźel in China Miéville’s great novel The City & the City. Gladstone-Heighton’s most recently uploaded track, “Codeine,” is a rich, slow-motion wave of what appears to be guitar-based improvisation and tonal exploration. There is a foregrounded chordal guitar whorl, like Glenn Branca cooling down at home after a night of intense guitar-multitudes frenzy, or Lou Reed testing out a newly arrived effects pedal with dual the intent of clearing pigeons off the roof. Emanating from that rough noise is a sonic after-image, a combination of dense echoes and hazy feedback. It’s the heavy metal equivalent of chamber music, a fuzz etude.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/radiofreeul-quoma. Come upon thanks to a repost in the SoundCloud stream of Jmmy Kpple.
June 29, 2014
Drone Month at AudioMo
There’s a month-long audio challenge in June called AudioMo (more at twitter.com/AudioMo and audiomo.net). The intention appears to be to get music-makers making music, along the lines of National Novel Writing Month and February Album Writing Month. Here’s a description of AudioMo from its website:
AudioMo is a month long audio challenge, normally held in November. In 2013 just to spice things up it was held in July.
In 2014 and the future the month of AudioMo will be June. Yep June will be the home of AudioMo.
All you do is record audio every day during the month. Tweet the link to that audio and add #AudioMo hashtag.
Yep it really is that simple.
AudioMo started as an audio challenge for the month of November over 5 years ago. This site is the official source of all things AudioMo.
Thank you in advance if you are taking on the AudioMo challenge.
Among the participants is the SoundCloud member sklawlor, who has been uploading a series of daily drones, that latest of which is quite intense and engaging. Hovering and plaintive, it’s slow-moving yet rich with details and tension:
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/sklawlor. The name sklawlor is that of Scott Lawlor from Corinth (presumably in Mississippi), United States.
June 28, 2014
Reworking “Radiophonic Satie”
Larry Johnson has again done me the honor of reworking something I posted, in this case my ukulele-modular piece “Radiophonic Satie,” which he has extended into a stretched ambience of unearthly qualities. He calls it a “Halo Remix,” a choice that I interpret to mean he’s taken my project description at its word and made good on my intent. The note accompany my original piece explains how the ukulele is being treated by the modular synthesis in a manner intended to “introduce a varying, random range of sonic responses to — halos around, reflections of — the inbound signal.” Here’s what Johnson made of it. I found it quite lovely, at several times the length of the original, and marvel at how despite the aggressive attenuation key moments, such as the sonic lens flare at 2:34, are still recognizable:
Originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/l-a-j-1.
June 27, 2014
Tangents: Visualizing Reich, Seinfeld x Conet, Tortoise Nostalgia, …
Tangents is an occasional collection of short, lightly annotated mentions of sound-related activities.
Stunning Phase: Alexander Chen has posted at pianophase.com this visualizaton of Steve Reich’s 1967 composition “Piano Phase.” It’s not just a lovely rendering of the original, but it connects to the notion of a graphic score, and also assists in appreciation of the nuances of the piece by making its subtle shifts comprehensible in a complementary medium.
This follows Chen’s visualization of J.S. Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 – Prelude and of the New York City subway system.
Remixing the Supercut: A Vimeo account that goes by Certain Pictures has posted this video. It is a stiched-together compilation of instances in the sitcom Seinfeld where no people are seen. Atop it is layered recordings from The Conet Project, mysterious numbers stations sending unexplained coded messages:
Here is the source video, by LJ Frezza, which retains the intersitial soundtrack audio from the series:
Via thestranger.com.
Pre-Post: Over at redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine there’s a great aural history of the debut album of Tortoise, Tortoise. A memorable comment by band member Bundy K. Brown. He’s refering to Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters, released the following year.
I don’t think any rock bands or indie rock bands put out a remix record before we did [1995’s companion album to their debut, Rhythms, Resolutions & Clusters]. If I’m going to claim anything that Tortoise did, we brought that whole idea of it being cool to have these electronic dudes tear it apart and redo it. I remember even approaching [Steve] Albini to do a remix on the remix record and he was like, “What the fuck are you talking about?” And he was one of the most talented recording engineers I know, a master of tape editing. He knew all of this stuff that guys had to do to become competent remixers in the era before samplers. He’s really great at all those things but his whole perspective was, “Remix? What are you talking about? The record’s the record.” And I was like, “No it’s not. We’re on the verge of the 21st century here.”
No Age: The Grammy Awards have changed a genre’s name (via echoes.org). What had been the Pop Instrumental Album Category is now the Contemporary Instrumental Album. As John Diliberto writes: “it makes one wonder if the ‘New Age’ category isn’t redundant, if not superfluous.”
Period Piece: In a piece at thequietus.com on Mark Fisher’s new book Ghosts of My Life, Paul Wolinski quotes with apparent approval the following Fisher statement: “the period from roughly 2003 to the present will be recognised – not in the far distant future, but very soon – as the worst period for (popular) culture since the 1950s.” Is this a commonly held belief? Are these commonly held beliefs? First, that the period that’s given us some of the best television ever and has seen great expanses in comics, not to mention the rise of participatory popular culture from Twitter to Tumblr to SoundCloud, is “the worst period for (popular) culture since the 1950s”? And on top of that, is this a commonly held belief that the 1950s, which gave us the height of jazz labels like Blue Note, some of the greatest recordings of Billie Holiday, essentially the full career of Buddy Holly, not to mention the Beat Generation, and insane amounts of classic science fiction — these same 1950s are seen as a particularly dire void in the history of popular culture? I’ve been sentient during the 1970s (Little River Band), the 1980s (REO Speedwagon), the 1990s (Celine Dion — now, thanks to Carl Wilson, symbolic of the complex notion of “taste”), the 2000 oughts (Nickelback), and these ongoing 2010s (Miley Cyrus), and I don’t recall a period when people didn’t loudly proclaim it to be the worst in culture, popular and otherwise. I perhaps too often don’t comment on things I find specious, but I’m registering this material for my own outboard memory because notions of an exhausted culture are often tied to contemplations of remix culture, vast streaming archives, and other aspects of life in the era of widespread digital media.
Brazil Communication: This musician Asvfucks (no full name given) from São Paulo, Brazil, already has almost 1,000 followers on SoundCloud, so folks are paying attention. Up to some interesting stuff. I’m trying to sort out how much of the source audio is sampled, and if any was originally recorded: soundcloud.com/asvfuks.
Bay View: The Soundwave Festival is coming to San Francisco, and it looks tremendous: soundwavesf.com. Runs July 10 through September 28. … Speaking of San Francisco events, Matmos is playing at the San Francisco Art Institute on June 28.
Got Those Junto Blues
The winning entry — well, one of two tying winning entries — in a blues-song cover challenge launched by Kurt Anderson’s Studio 360 radio show was the work of a Disquiet Junto regular, and the result of a Disquiet Junto project.
Back on May 8, Studio 360 announced its “1914 Blues Challenge,” in which listeners would create covers of the W.C. Handy blues classic “The Yellow Dog Blues,” which turns 100 this year. And today the show announced the winners, as chosen by guest judge Chocolate Genius, aka Marc Anthony Thompson. Thompson couldn’t decide between two entries, one of them by Junto regular Westy Reflector, aka Dave Westreich. The other winner was Kelly Pratt, who records as Bright Moments.
Here’s the Studio 360 announcement:
And here’s Westy Reflector’s cover:
Challenges like the blues cover initiated by Studio 360 have a lot in common with the Disquiet Junto: open calls based around a specific prompt. I’m always on the lookout for an external project that seems like it would be fun to put forward to the Junto, especially a project where the Junto’s interest in abstract sound might provide some unique contributions. This particular Studio 360 project seemed especially appropriate because of the sense in which the blues was never fully about composition as an end, but about a rich community of shared source material. The blues, like other forms of folk music, is a source of inspiration for the Creative Commons, and this seemed like a good time to make that connection. That connection is emphasized in the Studio 360 broadcast, when it’s mentioned how in the blues “lyrics are passed form person to person, generation to generation.”
And I just learned today, as well, that a month ago on John Schaefer’s Soundcheck radio show, two more Junto entries from the “Yellow Dog” project were commended, versions by Tom Anderson and Ethan Hein. Here’s the broadcast, from May 28:
Here’s Tom Anderson’s version:
Here’s Ethan Hein’s version:
And here is the full Junto project, which was number 125:
June 26, 2014
Disquiet Junto Project 0130: Filtered Melody
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.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.
This project was published in the evening, California time, on Thursday, June 26, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, June 30, 2014, as the deadline.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (sign up at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0130: Filtered Melody
These are the steps for this week’s project:
Step 1: Create a short melodic phrase, between three and six seconds in length, and loop it for between one minute and two minutes. The phrase can be created from scratch or extracted from a pre-existing source.
Step 2: Create an original composition only by filtering in various ways the loop. You can influence the sound as you wish. Just don’t introduce any additional external sounds. The goal is to produce a sense of compositional development without actually altering the melody.
Step 3: Upload the track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud, following the directions below.
Deadline: Monday, June 30, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: The length of your finished work will be between one and two minutes.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0130-filteredmelody″ 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 130th Disquiet Junto project — “Create a composition by altering an ongoing loop” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/06/26/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
June 19, 2014
Disquiet Junto Project 0129: Sonic Emoji
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.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.
This project was published in the evening, California time, on Thursday, June 19, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, June 23, 2014, as the deadline.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (sign up at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0129: Sonic Emoji
Emoji are compact electronic visual symbols for various things, ranging from objects to ideas to emotions. This week an announcement was made by the Unicode Consortium that 240 new emoji are due to be introduced. We will, in this project, devise sonic complements to those same objects, ideas, and emotions. The sounds should bear the hallmarks of emoji: concision, self-evidence, a willful genericness, and humor.
Here are the steps:
Step 1: Download the PDF emoji chart from the following URL:
http://cdn0.vox-cdn.com/assets/462979...
Step 2: Look at the document. Note the items that are highlighted. Those are the 240 new emoji.
Step 3: Using a random selection process of your own devising, decide upon 5 of the 240 new emoji.
Step 4: Create short (less than three seconds each) sonic equivalents for each of your 5 emoji. Do not use any words in these sounds.
Step 5: Record a single track containing each of these 5 sonic emoji. Repeat each one 3 times. Include a brief pause between each repetition.
Step 6: Upload the track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud, following the directions below. Be sure to list the subjects of the 5 emoji in the notes associated with your track.
Deadline: Monday, June 23, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: The length of your finished work will likely between 20 seconds and 60 seconds.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0129-sonicemoji″ 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 129th Disquiet Junto project — “Create tones to match five of the new emoji” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/06/19/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 via:
June 16, 2014
“Radiophonic Satie”
This is a recording of fake, Radiophonic space-age Satie that I attempted with a combination of my ukulele and the modular synthesis kit I’ve been slowly experimenting with. The short version is I’m trying to use the modular synth as a realtime processing unit, taking in the sound of the ukulele and making something of it. The thing I’m especially trying to do here is to use the system to introduce a varying, random range of sonic responses to — halos around, reflections of — the inbound signal, so that the overall sound with each echoing ring of an individual note has its own flavor.
The best part, for me, of this experiment was getting a sense of sympathy with the machine, getting a sense of what it was responding to, what it was capable of responding to, and capable of expressing, and then playing at a pace that complemented those capacities. Anyhow, I had a good time working on this. The photo associated with this track shows the patch. And one point of clarification: I didn’t touch the modular synthesizer once while recording this. Any alterations in the sound as the recording proceeds were the direct result of the patch functioning on its own.
For folks following the development of my setup, the bottom row are modules I own and the top row are loaners from a friend.
June 12, 2014
Disquiet Junto Project 0128: One Year Ago
Each Thursday at the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.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.
This project was published in the early evening, California time, on Thursday, June 12, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, June 16, 2014, as the deadline.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (sign up at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0128: One Year Ago
We just these past few weeks launched a new online forum for discussion by members of the Disquiet Junto (at disquiet.com/forums). So, it seems fitting to engage in a project that involves us hearing each others’ actual voices — and, thanks to the vantage provided by passing time, to hear our own.
These are the steps:
Step 1: Locate some text that you wrote one year ago. It might be a tweet, a Facebook post, an excerpt from an email, a review of a product on Amazon.com, a shopping list, a diary entry, the day’s events in a calendar. (You can interpret “today” in the first step to mean June 16, or the date that you do this project.)
Step 2: Record yourself reading the text aloud.
Step 3: Compose a short piece of music that accompanies the recording of you reading the text. Have the piece open with at least five seconds of sound before your voice kicks in and have at least five seconds of sound at the end after you speak your final syllable.
Deadline: Monday, June 16, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: The length of your finished work will be determined by the text you select, likely between 30 seconds and two minutes.
Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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.
Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0128-ayearago″ 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 128th Disquiet Junto project — “Write a score to accompany a short piece of text you wrote a year ago today” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2014/06/12/disqui...
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
Photo associated with this project originally by Dustin Ground, used via Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0) license:
