Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 441
November 24, 2013
RIP, Drocsid
RIP, Drocsid, an electronic musician whose death from cardiac arrest was announced on his SoundCloud.com page, where tribute recordings are piling up. Among them is this three-part affair, opening with field recordings of bird song. Those nature sounds slowly glitch their way into a remote piano piece, which about halfway through the track’s four-plus minute running time kicks up to a nonetheless still quite downtempo procession: spare percussion, synthetic woodwind with celtic aura, and, at times, a rousing if sonically sublimated cry. It is a touching piece, all the more so for the way it is part of a collective act of public grieving that has resulted in the production of these audio hommages.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/doesnotmatter.
November 23, 2013
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
Houston, we have a problem: on my phone/tablet, magazines hog more drive space than do video games. ->
Very much on my mind. MT @ioflow: idea for @djunto #0101: something in or inspired by binary. ->
Time-Life Books #computers #digitalnostalgia http://t.co/LpS4JVf8Q1 ->
Pretty nifty getting Crystal Method to score Almost Human. ->
Audio of Boston Symphony Orchestra on Nov 22, 1963, as conductor Erich Leinsdorf announces JFK assassination: http://t.co/AewiArRvoh ->
Via Almost Human: Segway & Blade Runner exist in the future; phones are longer; the Karl Urban model upgrades earlier Robert Forster model. ->
Score-oriented Netflix viewers will want to know that The American and Only God Forgives are both streaming now. ->
So, does everyone with an iTunes account get that One Direction pre-order email? Why in this day and age spam the world? ->
I've been on Android since the G1. I dig it. But this whole "the new OS is here but isn't here" thing has gotta get sorted. #kitkat #4point4 ->
The Powerball ads with a red ball among many white balls? Maybe it's the maudlin "California Dreamin'" but I always think: cancer cell. ->
Finally really blocking out a little time to learn Pd. ->
Assumed something might be buggy, maybe even crash regularly, in OS X Mavericks. Never thought it'd be, of all things, Preview. ->
Thought Ealy's Almost Human character is a DRM (not DRN) and the whole thing a metaphor for intersection of code and law. Well, not really. ->
Lengthy conversation with our 3-year-old, who wants to sing "The Antelope Song." Eventually it becomes clear this is "Home on the Range." ->
Excited about the new Arnold Lobel exhibit at @Jewseum. I remain convinced that Frog is John Cage and Toad is Morton Feldman. ->
Tuesday noon siren in San Francisco: http://t.co/FrVmKgO1Mx ->
Hopeful for a Crystal Method album of its Almost Human cues, no track longer than 15 seconds. ->
selvie: 2014 word of the year, taking picture of your jeans ->
celvie: 2015 word of the year, taking picture of your DNA ->
cellvie: 2016 word of the year, taking picture of your tiny apartment ->
sylvie: 2017 word of the year, taking picture of your favorite tree ->
salivie: 2018 word of the year, taking picture of your tongue ->
tsilfie: 2019 word of the year, taking picture of your favorite esoteric Star Wars wikipedia page ->
Hadn't turned my iPad on in awhile. There are 75 app updates. ->
Today in sound class, one of my favorite lectures: music and social networks; making stuff together separately; "ambient participation." ->
The brief Boing Boing link/article about Madrigal's solid piece on Eggers' novel has more comments than the original post. Fascinating. ->
(San Francisco side note.) Whoever thought up the Muni 5L, I'd like to buy you a beer. ->
I love playing Kanye West and King Crimson in klass. ->
This week's Disquiet Junto project is the 99th weekly. It will be about video games. ->
Great blog entry by @CityLightsBooks on the Oulipo events of a week or so back, including the Junto workshop: http://t.co/VVVivLwQV3 ->
Music from airports: http://t.co/S4BYjmwrZ2. A sonic portrait by Monolake. ->
I'll be listening to this new Damu the Fudgemunk instrumental hip-hop set on @REDEFrecords all day: http://t.co/Z6sv3yhgPZ ->
Is "Mechanical Turk" problematic the way "welsh" and "gypped" are? Or does it get a pass because it's about an instance not an ethnicity? ->
Today will mark 99 weekly Disquiet Junto projects in a row. Amazing. Thanks to all the participants and listeners! http://t.co/NaHsmprKac ->
"Guy manning the sound board for a performance": http://t.co/72UHoChrxR. Guttenfelder's North Korea Instagram photos: http://t.co/blqGfYG8MY ->
Taking time off Damu the Fudgemunk for 12 hip-hop instrumentals by L'Orange from underneath his album with Stik Figa: http://t.co/lGWHkXabeF ->
Chang's Beatles mix has 41k listens. His account has 138 followers. Short tail of NYT embed: https://t.co/GOSSXbcObz http://t.co/iLNYZ7xagl ->
I need an app recommendation: an iOS 6 app that can do TTS (text to speech) from ePub. (On Android I use the great FBReader.) #prettyplease ->
From interview I did in 1998. Me: "This is Marc Weidenbaum and I'm with http://t.co/pPaBYPrpOg." Philip Glass: "What is that?" ->
Cassette from 1998. Great pair of interviews (Philip Glass, David Holmes) within two weeks, both on working in film: http://t.co/X4xCwhqVco ->
Needed to bust this out today when I realized I wouldn't be at the office and needed to review archival interviews. http://t.co/wTfJRIjYkL ->
News alert: the 99th Disquiet Junto will involve, like, notes and stuff. Yeah, notes. ->
Project 99 in @djunto ( http://t.co/D44FGiOJ5I ) explores Xbox One startup sound. Informed by a @kirkhamilton post: http://t.co/lgCUPlZyu0. ->
Looking forward to premiere of final season of Nikita. A favorite sound moment from last year: http://t.co/KjHfrPvAGY ->
At 41,000 streams of his White Album layers, Rutherford Chang had just 138 SoundCloud followers. With nearly 69,000, he's up merely 36 more. ->
November 21, 2013
Disquiet Junto Project 0099: In the Key of X
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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 assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 21, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, November 25, 2013, as the deadline.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0099: In the Key of X
This project investigates video game sound — not the sound of video games, but the sound of game consoles themselves. The newly released Xbox One has its own distinct startup melody of just three notes: first an E, then a G, then a D. The project this week is to imagine those notes being the core of an original piece of music: What if the theme of the Xbox One were a song, and a lo-fi one at that?
The project instruction is as follows: Record a piece of music with an 8-bit flavor. It should begin with a replication of that same three-note Xbox One pattern (E G D), repeated several times, and then veer off into whatever direction you desire. As the track goes along, feel free to add common video game sounds like explosions, karate chops, crowd noises, engines revving and so forth. Try to keep the whole thing under 90 seconds.
Deadline: Monday, November 25, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your track’s length should be between 30 seconds and 90 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: Include the term “disquiet0099-EthenGthenD” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: Please consider employing a license that allows for attributed, commerce-free remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
More on this 99th Disquiet Junto project (Compose an 8-bit melody based on the “E G D” startup sound of the Xbox One) at:
http://disquiet.com/2013/11/21/disqui...
Background: This project was informed by a post on Kotaku.com by Kirk Hamilton:
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Associated image found via:
November 20, 2013
Music from Airports
Writes Monolake: “This is a stereo mix down of a ‘sonic postcard’ of the Airport in Rennes, France, created for an eight channel multichannel diffusion at that airport on October 8 2012 as a commissioned work for Electroni(k) Festival. All sounds captured at that (quite small) airport, with some layering and processing applied and real time mixing and filtering during the concert.” The track, uploaded to Monolake’s SoundCloud account, begins with everyday travel noises, from multilingual spoken announcements to the ringing of alerts to the tense buzz of baggage checks, and slowly navigates the airport. As time progresses, source audio gives way to transformation: the sound of a carousel stretched like a rubber band, an electronic signal tweaked by a light glitch, a pre-recorded voice forced into a slight stutter.
While the work lacks the trenchant rhythmic grid of Monolake’s minimal techno, it has a familiar flavor. The sounds become both ominous in a claustrophobic sense, and yet enticing in the level of ingenious detail brought to bear on them.
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/monolake. More on the Elektroni[k] undertaking at electroni-k.org. More from Henke/Monolake at monolake.de.
November 19, 2013
Drone Chorus in Search of a Verse
Darius Greene recognizes the brevity and simplicity of “Dreamskin,” his recently uploaded track on SoundCloud. After a short burst of crowd noise, a gently plinking keyboard and drone combination proceed. In their tandem shimmer, those elements never quite veer from their steady pace. It’s like a chorus in search of a song, set on repeat in the hopes that someone might swoop in and provides a verse. The crowd noise never quite goes away, either. It lingers in the background, lightly nudged toward white noise. Greene describes it as being “meant as a short passing freebie. Also free as kind of a stem for anyone to remix or use in some other creative way.”
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/dariusgreene. More from Greene, who is based in Austin, Texas, at dariusgreene.com.
November 18, 2013
A Premix Quartet
If the rampant release schedule of contemporary electronic musicians leaves you overwhelmed and befuddled, buried in an embarrassment of riches, then add Chris Herbert to your favorites list. Because for better and worse, Herbert has a modest discography in his wake, dating back to the album Mezzotint on Kranky in 2006. He leaves you wanting, not overwhelmed. Still, a forthcoming album, titled Constants, due out in February 2014, is being led into by an unusal premix, a quartet of reworkings of source material that will be heard again when the full-length comes out. The premix set is titled Wintex-Cimex ’83, and it’s being made available for free download throughout December by Lawrence English’s fine Room 40 label. Here, below, is one of the four tracks, the rough tinsel of “Soft Quasars.” Herbert has been quoted as saying that the collective work takes as its theme “radar, dying stars, aeronautics, ailing short waves flickering in the troposphere, the ghost of JG Ballard.”
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/room40. Get the full set of four tracks at room40.org. More from Herbert at chrisherbert.net and twitter.com/cjherbert.
November 16, 2013
Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet
Detail of projection of one of today's Oulipo sound projects. #oumupo #sfai http://t.co/DP3EfwnKkT ->
Realizing the typography on slides I use in teaching looks exactly like the photocopied typography on concert posters I made in college. ->
Did 4 pieces in Oulipo sound workshop: listening, woven audiobiography, subtractive composition, song form (name/room tone as source audio). ->
Oulipian parents: my wife & I relay-read Little House to our 3-year-old, never experiencing it in full ourselves, mentally filling in gaps. ->
So good. MT @EdieBushwick: @disquiet Do you m an H ad d to Gr n Appl books shortly for th v ning's r ading of work by th lat G org s P r c? ->
Yow, already 37 tracks in the week's Disquiet Junto project: http://t.co/LTj2ivvc92. Proof that I'm a poor judge of what will/won't work. ->
When Dave Eggers, in The Circle, describes the weather as cloudless I briefly think it's a comment about the Internet being down. ->
"Email that enhances your tech lifestyle." Email taglines that encourage you to unsubscribe. ->
This most recent Disquiet Junto project, #97, the one that ended last night, had 10 first-time participants. That's excellent. ->
For this coming Thursday's Disquiet Junto we're going to do a project from this past weekend's Oulipo sound workshop. ->
Tuesday noon siren in San Francisco: http://t.co/FrVmKgO1Mx ->
RIP, John Tavener (69), composer: http://t.co/AOXwuIe3et. (His piece Ikon of Light is a personal favorite.) ->
Rdio seems to know me a lot better than Netflix does, and I've been cohabitating with Netflix a lot longer. ->
▶ The late John Tavener's Ikon of Light: http://t.co/BRC8TyBwSs. Don't let the quiet opening trick you into setting the volume too high. ->
There may not be spiders on Mars but the track "Dalby and Marko" from Max Richter's score to The Last Days on Mars sounds like there are. ->
Favorite form of listening is from headphones in the pocket of my jacket on the floor of my office after forgetting to pause my MP3 player. ->
So, "Beskhu3epnm" is misspelled (as "Beskhu3upnm") on @Rdio's track listing for Aphex Twin's Drukqs album, right? ->
Feels like the shared, unusual double L of Ben Neill and Phill Niblock gives them some sorta ambient kinship. ->
Actually looking forward to SHIELD, rather than just looking forward to looking forward to SHIELD. ->
"Which non-expression is this?" SHIELD is figuring things out. ->
Reworkings by Scanner of music of the late John Tavener for a collaboration that will never be: http://t.co/KGAQgbSYzI ->
Today in the class I teach on sound in the media landscape (week 10 of 15): What does sound looks like? ->
Just recognizing how inherently Oulipian the .txt format is. ->
"Did you mean: nag a ram" — what Google displays if you search for "anagram" ->
There's something beautiful about the potential energy inherent in a new video-game console controller photographed on a table. ->
Music to listen to music to listen to music to. ->
Realizing reason I like James Newton Howard's Parkland score is it sounds at times like a John Hassell / Amon Tobin mixtape. ->
Today in sound class, student presentations on the sounds of department stores (paging @notrobwalker) and on headphone recommendations. ->
Proud day. I fixed Aphex Twin track misspelling on @rdio. MT @RdioHelp: Thanks for letting us know! We've fixed it: http://t.co/hxvMuPWHW6 ->
Sentence I type variations on a lot: "Despite the New Orleans area code, it is my number in San Francisco, where I live." ->
Would swear that when HR is revealed to Carter on Person of Interest the music briefly sounds like the Emperor's Theme from Star Wars. ->
So the primary reason Kit Kat isn't yet available for the Nexus 4 is to nudge us all for a few extra days to consider the Nexus 5, right? ->
There's a lovely little markdown artifact in my Aphex Twin book, which I'm particularly happy about. ->
The chapter titles from my forthcoming Aphex Twin book in the 33 1/3 series on Selected Ambient Works Volume II: http://t.co/fwDe9GX5ff ->
Considered it. Have essay on why I didn't. MT @liminalcity: @disquiet was kind of hoping each chapter just had a texture instead of a title ->
.@liminalcity Adding images was an option but I decided a book in text about sound would constrain itself to text. in reply to liminalcity ->
The 98th weekly @djunto project is a "woven audiobiography" based on project from the @dlb-led Oulipo events held last week in San Francisco ->
For this week's Disquiet Junto project you'll need a die and a mic. ->
Was Felicity's "Tahiti" joke in last night's Arrow episode a shot across SHIELD's bow? ->
This week's project was a nice reason to post a picture of Raymond Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes. ->
Excited that Pauline Oliveros's listed among the 2014 Whitney Biennial artists. Parsing for other sounds of interest: http://t.co/d7td8qHXmS ->
RIP, saxophonist Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre (77) of the AACP. ->
Anyone recall @DougCoupland on writing a character unlike yourself, putting in envelope for some time, then discovering it is like yourself? ->
Reasons to love the present: Jimmy Page has remixed Notorious B.I.G.'s "Hypnotize": http://t.co/xZuSldTOYc. Includes glitch drum solo. ->
Previous eldritch-school hip-hop tweet's link via @ethanhein ->
Advice for Disquiet Junto participants who find projects don't "sound like their music": http://t.co/JKpZa1ZFxA. In brief: make new account. ->
Excellent. RT @dirtydemos: Gonna attempt to get back on the @djunto horse this week. It's been a while. ->
November 15, 2013
Disquiet Junto Disambiguation
The F.A.Q. (frequently asked questions) document for the Disquiet Junto has been updated to respond to a not uncommon inquiry. The full document is here, but this is the text of the addition:
Q: I’m excited to participate, but I don’t want listeners to confuse my Disquiet Junto projects with my “real” music/sound work. Any suggestions?
A: Certainly. Variations on this question have been raised by many participants in the Disquiet Junto projects. Someone who makes minimal techno or singer-songwriter music or chamber music might not want listeners to their SoundCloud accounts have the listening experience broken up by remixed Thomas Edison cylinder or autobiographical spoken word recordings or any other number of incongruous project-derived tracks. The best option may be to create a separate SoundCloud account for your Junto projects.
Full F.A.Q. here.
A Cloud Fitted with an Iron Scaffold
If noise music is ambient music turned up loud, then shoegaze is ambient music with a beat. Not just any beat, mind you, but a beat that emerges from the ebb and flow of the underlying drone, a beat that recognizes the rhythmic content in the flow of the drone and that latches onto it, building a hard lattice that supports the seemingly ethereal initial audio. It traces that underlying form, a cloud fitted with an iron scaffold. This is what happens in “Prologue: In Recollection and Amazement,” the first track off the new album from Westy Reflector, titled Transient Lines and available at bandcamp.com. The initial glisten, with hints of Robert Fripp’s tape loops, hovers like a thick cloud, builds a pulse that then reveals itself as proper drums, playing along in stereophonic splendor. What makes this more than a matter of accrual, of layering, is that the glisten itself has a reveal — slowly, for if anything this track embraces its placid approximation of momentum, the hazy original sound acknowledges that it is produced on guitar, and more familiar chiming, ringing, strummed chords kick in.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/thereflectors. More from Westy Reflector at westyreflector.net.
November 14, 2013
Disquiet Junto Project 0098: Woven Audiobiography
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 assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 7, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, November 11, 2013, as the deadline.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0098: Woven Audiobiography
The steps for this week’s project are as follows:
Step A: Choose a number from 1 through 6. You can roll a die or use an online number generator, or come to a decision on your own.
Step B: Write a 100-word text beginning with one of the following phrases, depending on the number you selected. Where there are brackets fill them in with the appropriate information.
“I was born in [ ] and I like …”
“My name is [ ] and I was thinking …”
“This morning I had a sense that …”
“Try as I might, the same thing …”
“The last book I read was [] and …”
“On a Sunday morning I usually …”
Step C: Write a 90-word text beginning with the same phrase.
Step D: Write an 80-word text beginning with the same phrase.
Step E: Record yourself reading the three texts as three separate tracks. Record each at the same pace. Speak slowly and take an extended pause after any period.
Step F: Layer the three tracks into one track. They should all begin at the same point and the first few words should, more or less, overlap to the point of being indistinguishable.
Step G: Take a couple passed through audio, lightly balancing relative volume levels to emphasize key phrases or, for that matter, to enhance the low-key cacophony.
Step H: If you desire to, weave in one tonal element, though not so loud as to overpower the speaking.
Deadline: Monday, November 18, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
Length: Your track’s length will be determined by the longest of your three recordings.
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: Include the term “disquiet0098-wovenaudiobio” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
Download: Please consider employing a license that allows for attributed, commerce-free remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
More on this 98th Disquiet Junto project, in which three original spoken texts are combined into one track, at:
http://disquiet.com/2013/11/14/disqui...
More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...
Background: This week’s project originated as part of the Oulipo Sound Workshop that was included in the Subtle Channels series of events held in San Francisco earlier this month (November 2013). The three-hour workshop provided an opportunity to explore the role that Oulipo literary constraints play in the restricted rules of the weekly Disquiet Junto projects. There were four projects that day, including a listening exercise, a word-based one based similar to last week’s Junto project, and a subtractive one along the lines of the 7th Disquiet Junto project from back in February 2012. The fourth was a simpler version of this week’s Junto.
Above image, from Raymond Queneau’s Cent Mille Milliards de Poèmes, found via the stellar goto80.com.
