Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 44
August 22, 2024
Disquiet Junto Project 0660: Louis Blues St.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
Disquiet Junto Project 0660: Louis Blues St.
The Assignment: Break a public domain song into parts and reorganize them.
Step 1: Download either the original or the “denoised” version of this 1922 recording of the classic “St. Louis Blues.”
Step 2: Listen through the song, and familiarize yourself with its tempo and structure.
Step 3: Break the track into segments. While you may be inclined toward tiny granular slivers, consider emphasizing bars or phrases. Experiment with segments of equal length and of varying lengths.
Step 4: Take the segments resulting from Step 3 and make a new track out of them.
Background: More on the source track here:
https://archive.org/details/78_st-louis-blues_ted-lewis-and-his-band-handy_gbia0268157b
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0660” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.
Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0660-louis-blues-st/
Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: Monday, August 26, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.
About: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 660th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Louis Blues St. — The Assignment: Break a public domain song into parts and reorganize them — at https://disquiet.com/0659/
Background: More on the source track here:
https://archive.org/details/78_st-louis-blues_ted-lewis-and-his-band-handy_gbia0268157b
August 21, 2024
Sneak Peek
Of tomorrow’s Disquiet Junto project
August 20, 2024
Change
Whenever I drive by here, I find myself imagining it’s a music store that John Cage founded
August 19, 2024
Scale
Bird on a wire, orchestral arrangement
August 18, 2024
August 17, 2024
Scratch Pad: ISP, Symbol, Books
I do this manually at the end of each week: collating most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I also find knowing I will revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
Writing-wise, I again had a quite productive week, which may be reflected in my simultaneously limited amount of social media posting:
▰ The internet fiber company: “Your home system will use a somewhat unusual cable that is very fragile and transmits via light.”
Me: “Oh, yeah, there’s a couple of those in my modular synthesizer.”
▰ The international symbol for fries only:
▰ Weirdly I only finished reading one book this week, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, despite being in the middle of several books. I should finish reading True Grit by Charles Portis today, and Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time soon after.
August 16, 2024
August 15, 2024
Disquiet Junto Project 0659: Reading the Body
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
Disquiet Junto Project 0659: Reading the Body
The Assignment: Interpret the markings on the back of a cello as a graphic score.
Step 1: Study the natural markings on the back of the cello as depicted in the project’s cover image. Observe how they can seem to resemble music notes on staff paper, albeit in an abstract way. Here’s a larger version of the full photo:
https://disquiet.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/0659-image-back-scaled.jpeg
Step 2: Think about how the image, or a detail or segment of it, might be read as a score of graphic notation.
Step 3: Record a piece of music applying what you came up with in Step 1 and Step 2 above. Certainly consider using cello or other string sounds, but in the end the choice is yours.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0659” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.
Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0659-reading-the-body/
Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: Monday, August 19, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.
About: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 659th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Reading the Body — The Assignment: Interpret the markings on the back of a cello as a graphic score — at https://disquiet.com/0659/
August 14, 2024
Classical GAS
Classical music depiction of gear acquisition syndrome
August 13, 2024
Listening from the Past
This is from The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. In this scene, a time traveler from 1847 is being entertained by a government employee who has been tasked with minding him during his transition to the early 21st century. The woman is part of the department from which the book takes its title. And yes, I’m enjoying the novel very much. I love the idea that hearing something immediately a second time is deemed disrespectful by the man from the past.
