Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 452

Peak Organ (MP3)

The peak, or peak out, used to be the sound that signaled that a signal had gone a little out of control. That the peak has moved from signifying emergency to being a grace note has been a fascinating transition. Once upon a time, when something peaked out, it had risen above a comfortable threshold and yielded an unintended effect. In time, those unintended effects became purposeful affect, a subset of a broad realm of feedback techniques employed with artistic intent. Today a peaked-out sound can be the aural equivalent of a lens flare: a sonic skeuomorph. In the hands of Nobuto Suda, as heard on “Improvisation on the organ for Quiet wonder #1,” the sound that flares up is experienced like a reflection in a blissfully still pool:

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/nobutosuda1101. More from Suda at nobutosuda.org. Thanks to the excellent listener who goes by Roamin (roamin.ca) for having drawn my attention to this track by reposting it on Soundcloud.

“Project for an Apartment Building”

Out late last month from Pan•American was the album Cloud Room, Glass Room on the label Kranky. As a promotion, Kranky has posted one track, “Project for an Apartment Building,” for free download (MP3). Ostensibly it is a single download, but the piece of music is so dense with activity that it could count as multiple simultaneous listens. There is the undulating bass line, which in the context of instrumental electronic music has enough buoyancy and hazy aura to count as a composition unto itself. There is a sing-song lull that comes and goes. There is a rough field recording, or something akin to one, that sounds like the scrapings of someone undertaking a hesitant journey. There is rattly percussion, and a sonar pulse, and so much more — so much, in fact, it is remarkable just how circular, if not static, the track ends up presenting it self as. (For those who don’t read this site often, “static” is a compliment.) That percussive element is likely due to the presence of Steven Hess, who is now a full member of Pan•American, along with founder Mark Nelson. Also, Bobby Donne (who, like Nelson, is a former member of Labradford), guests on some tracks.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/kranky. On the record, “Project for an Apartment Building” is the album’s sixth of seven tracks. More on Cloud Room, Glass Room at brainwashed.com

Air Organ Drone (MP3)

Kris Sujata, who records as Valiska, got his hands on a Bontempi organ, and put it to drone use. The organ is distinguished by its sound-production process, which involves air being played through reeds. Valiska’s take on it is deeply tonal. The occasional modulations serve less as melodic formulations than as shifts intended to focus the ear on what has preceded and what will succeed. It is like shifting from plateau to plateau and getting a new sense of the vista with each change in elevation. Texturally, this is a maximalist sound, dense with overtones, and downright rivetting.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/valiska. More from Valiska, who’s based in Calgary, Canada, at valiska.com and twitter.com/thevaliska.

Caroline Park’s Piano Turing Test (MP3)

The sounds in Caroline Park‘s “field” are that of a piano stretched to the breaking point. That is not the instrument itself, but its tones. And that is not in the real, physical world so much as in an abstract zone, where space bends and algorithms are allowed bountiful time to work their fractal, generative beauty. Tones flare and thread, splinter and regroup, dwindle and emerge. At times it sounds like a jumbo jet has suddenly appeared overhead, but the sounds get gentle, even genteel, at other times. It isn’t just in the realm of metaphor that the piano is unreal. In fact, Park’s source instrument is the MIDI piano. Her aim is, in part, to work that simulacrum until it passes a kind of textural Turing test. As an accompanying liner note puts it: “executing human, repetitive strokes as an imperfect, but constant signal.” That effort is made on a MIDI device, so in fact there is a “human” element directly involved with the performance (the recording was made live), but the source of the playing is only half the equation MP3. There is still the MIDI sound itself, which Park has warped and twisted until it sounds like the tack piano on your neighbor’s side of an aging plaster wall has had a rough night.

Download audio file (field.mp3)

Track originally posted for free download at the devinsarno.com/absenceofwax netlabel. Get the AIFF or Ogg, in addition to the MP3, at the release’s archive.org page. More on Park at blanksound.org.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

Saw the breezy destruction that is Iron Man 3. More of an ensemble film than the earlier ones. ->



The instinct to listen to a drone below this delicate music I’m listening to in order to drown out café chatter. ->



Splendid. RT @SethSHorowitz: @disquiet The right sound is attentional armor. ->



The color visualizations of novels ( http://t.co/P4Nwvp92I5 ) make a good parallel to @christofmigone's Martian Chronicles sound study. ->



"It is Megadeth, not Megadeath." Correction in the New York Times for its obituary for Slayer guitarist. ->



Morning trio for refrigerator drone, wind, and passing automobiles. ->



Made a set of third Disquiet Junto project, expanded glass harp: http://t.co/3DrpFGhGnj. Almost all the original 35 tracks are still online. ->



Not sure if @anydo lets existing users hook up new ones with accounts, but if someone could sign me up I'd like a peek. Thanks. ->



.@daniel_rehn @davidoreilly @pixlpa The Machine has my number. I had been intending today to request, via Twitter, its credit-sequence font. in reply to daniel_rehn ->



Belatedly made the connection that Yoko Ono had done interpretation for Kobo Abe, who had worked with her first husband, Toshi Ichiyanagi. ->



So, Iron Man 3 lacks Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man” but it has Fashion Police, which has Kelly Osbourne, not that she’s in the movie. #confused ->



Mistakenly thought installing the simple approach of todo.txt on my OS X laptop would be simpler. ->



This restaurant's sound system is like one of those YouTube channels that has retained only the bass line of radio his. ->



“Listening to radio waves / Underneath the covers.” I may interview Underworld’s Karl Hyde this week. Lemme know if you have questions. ->



Fun care package in the mail today from @SoundCloud. #sccommunity #stickers #tshirt http://t.co/9wsVOY85OP ->



I have seriously dug teaching this sound course this semester. ->



Work is afoot on a Disquiet (.com) forum. Good to have place for @djunto folk to talk shop. Also: book/record/app discussions. ->



Daniel Asia’s essays are like Jurassic Park classical music fan fiction. I hope to live long enough to discern our era’s myopias. ->



Fun fact. On @soundcloud, William Basinski follows just three people, one of them being Giorgio Moroder. http://t.co/ulQ8H2CUyr ->



This coming week's Disquiet Junto project, the 71st, is going to be majorly different from this week's. Can't wait to announce it. ->



RIP, composer Steve Martland (b. 1959). His Factory/Catalyst stuff was heavy rotation for me. via @robinrimbaud ->



Dear Musician on Label with SoundCloud Account: If the label posts music by you and you repost it, then it’s part of your feed. Magic! ->



Ah, put them in a set and spotlight the set. MT @arbeemonkey: @disquiet only thing is that you cannot place them in your spotlight. ->



I do wonder about that, too. MT @arbeemonkey: @disquiet I find it counter productive to have the same track on both artist and musician's SC ->



I was up even earlier than usual today. The Tuesday noon siren feels a long way off. ->



Ah, there it is. The Tuesday noon siren, right on time, echoing through a clear day. Now waiting for Mothra to land. ->



“We’re standing inside an external hard drive made up of people and paper.” That line and credits glitch made the latest Person of Interest. ->



“Shoofly don’t bother me / Go bother somebody else.” #honestnurseryrhyme courtesy of my 2.7-year-old. ->



You reacquaint yourself with project management services, and again realize that for a solo project a few spreadsheets are all you need. ->



Great interview with Karl Hyde just now, a half hour about fragments, sounds, songs, and urban life. ->



If you are interested in helping test run (participate in) the in-progress Disquiet forum/board, shoot me a note. Cc @djunto ->



Twitter really wants me to follow Gaslamp Killer and Joyce Carol Oates. ->



OK, we've got a dozen-plus people already signed up to test out the Disquiet (.com) discussion forum. Looking forward to this. ->



Today's sound class: equipment sales (Edison -> Dr. Dre); student presentations on competitive horse-carriage calls, sounds inherent in wine ->



Hoping it's archived. MT @qDot: Wishing I could be at CCRMA to see Robert Henke speak. At least it's being streamed! http://t.co/gQL2VApiPv ->



In a "How does Twitter know to recommend people I listened to yesterday on SoundCloud but don't even follow there?" mood. ->



There are only four references to the 12 Tone Funk Orchestra in Google. ->



Participation in this week's @djunto would benefit from the possession of a Vimeo account. ->



We've got over two dozen people signed up to test run the Disquiet discussion/forum section. Looking forward to this. ->



The company @crashplan provided excellent customer support. ->



#IDMforensics ->



This week's @djunto project is special. We make music for trailer for an independent film that is currently filming. Fascinating subject. ->



Any @djunto people in/near New Haven, Connecticut? I'll be there for my college reunion in a few weeks. ->



I am so excited about this week's Disquiet Junto project. Launches in a moment. #musicfortrailer ->



This week @djunto makes music for trailer of @SenseTheWind documentary about blind sailors: http://t.co/XjWrMj8rJr http://t.co/YLiHqD8rmz ->



Major thanks to @SenseTheWind director Christine Knowlton for letting the @djunto collective try its hand at music for her film’s trailer. ->



Blind sailors. Subject of a documentary we make music for this weekend. First track: http://t.co/ZFVOFJxjbw Film: http://t.co/CFGn3mqpMm ->



Noon bells. Traffic. Birds. ->



What joke made Brian Eno, Laurie Anderson, David Byrne, and Michael Stipe laugh this much? http://t.co/S3wgQo4yGc. Via @TheKitchen_NYC gala, ->



Southland cancelled. The only U.S. drama that had the guts to not use a score. ->



Is there a popular movie within the Planet of the Apes where apes go to a planet ruled by horses? ->

Music for Restaurants for Museums

Back in 2010, for much of the year, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art ran an exhibit titled Let Them Eat LACMA, curated by Fallen Fruit. Food served as a means to sift through the museum’s massive collection, and LACMA engaged artists to produce new work. Among them was Yann Novak, who on the final day of the exhibit, November 7, was among 50 artists who descended on LACMA for a festival. Novak’s piece, a 20-minute music performance, was done in coordination with Robert Crouch and Sublamp. Under the rubric of Music for Restaurants, he played a lush background tone, like a bell ringing in slow motion.

There is a short bit of video from the event at youtube.com:

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/yann-novak. More from Novak at yannnovak.com. More on the event at eatlacma.org. More on Fallen Fruit, the collaborative art project of David Burns, Matias Viegener, and Austin Young, at fallenfruit.org.

Disquiet Junto Project 0071: Wind Music

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 week’s Disquiet Junto project is our first to employ video. It’s long been on my mind to do a video project, in which the participants would provide a score to pre-existing footage. I am sure this won’t be the last.

This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 9, 2013, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, May 13, as the deadline.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0071: Wind Music

This week’s project is straightforward. It is an exercise in scoring for video. The video is one minute and four seconds long. It is the trailer to a film now in development. The title of the film is Sense the Wind and the director is Christine Knowlton. The subject of the film is blind sailors. The fact that film is about people for whom hearing is especially important made it very attractive. The director is excited to hear, and see, what we come up with. As her @SenseTheWind Twitter feed states of the film: “Blind sailors race across open water, learning not to fear what they cannot see — on boats or on land.”

The source video is here. It has all the audio, but no music:

http://vimeo.com/65429113

Rules: The only restriction is that you should not employ any copyright-protected audio (i.e., source material), because the intent is for the director to select one of the tracks, potentially, to serve as the backing music for the trailer. And yes, you may certainly employ audio from the trailer as source material for your music.

Considerations: When working on this project, it is encouraged that you map out the trailer in advance of scoring, and take into consideration emotional/narrative beats, and the way its momentum builds.

Video Upload: If you have time, please also add your finished music to the trailer and upload the video to Vimeo (or another service of your choosing). Given the time involved, should you chose to upload the video, there is no firm deadline, though it would be nice if you could get it done by Wednesday, May 15, two days after the music is due.

Deadline: Monday, May 13, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your track will be equal to or less than the length of the trailer, which is four seconds over one minute.

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 “disquiet0071-windmusic” 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:

I give the director permission to use my music in the trailer for the film Sense the Wind for promotional purposes.

More on this 71st Disquiet Junto project, which involves creating a backing score for the trailer to the film Sense the Wind, about competitive blind sailing, directed by Christine Knowlton, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/09/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet...

More on the film at

http://www.sensethewind.com/

Ashley Paul’s “Soak the Ocean,” During & After (MP3s)

There are few pleasures like hearing the song removed from a song. After Pete Swanson has finished with Ashley Paul‘s “Soak the Ocean,” what is left is like the skin of a snake after the snake has gone on to shadier pastures. The original song is a mix of gestural near-microsonic composition and lightly layered vocals, more intoned than sung. It is a pleasure on its own, Paul’s tremulous voice moving amid the fragile plectrum geometries of the accompaniment. True to the snakeless-skin image, Swanson has largely excised the vocal — the inhabitant has moved on — and left the instrumental bed, which he has in turn made more motoric. There are hints of her voice, a syllable allowed to repeat here and there, a phrase even less robust than the ethereal original, more a vestige, a memory, of the song than a new rendering of it. The beat gains momentum as the track proceeds, memories left behind, as it moves forward into a deeper, richer, harsher, welcoming noise.

For comparison, this is the original version, from the Paul album Line The Clouds, which came out on REL Records in late March:

Swanson was half of Yellow Swans (the other half having been Gabriel Mindel Saloman), whose Going Places was one of my favorite commercial albums of 2010. The magazine xlr8r.com covered the remix back in February. More from Ashley Paul at ashleypaul.net. More from Pete Swanson at twitter.com/pete_swans.

Scanning the Radio Waves (MP3)

Jesse Eric Schmidt does not use the scan button on his radio to search for something to listen to. He uses the scan button to compose something to be listened to, something that collectively he has called a “rhythmic modular inventory” of what is on at that moment, the moment that is in fact an expanse of contiguous moments, the chance moments that occur between the start and end of his performance. The result is something that emphasizes the ephemeral nature of a radio signal. Much radio scanning by casual listeners has to do with finding a song worth lingering on — and in the vast majority of cases, that means to have temporary access to something that one knows is firmly available elsewhere: on YouTube, encased in a CD, in a box of 7″ singles at the back of one’s closet. Schmidt never lingers for long, instead allowing each audio element to commune with what preceded it and with what one anticipates will come next, each chess move enacted with the white noise signature of radio static.

Track originally posted for free download at theradius.us. More from Schmidt at jesseericschmidt.com. The image below is a grid of his varied activities:

Cues: Sound Motion, Book Audio, Dr. Eno, …

◼ Sound Motion: Three videos of materials responding to sound:

First up, mercury: “The higher the frequency the more ‘nodes’ will appear along the outer edge of the mercury,” via io9.com:

Second, what a speaker looks like when a 61 Hz tone plays at 60 frames per second, via laughingsquid.com, via Max La Rivière-Hedrick:

Third, “Non-Newtonian fluid meets subwoofer,” an experiment by Natasha Carlin (a student this semester in the class on sound I teach at the Academy of Art in San Francisco):

Note: the project was for an earlier class Carlin took, but she used as part of a student presentation in our class.

◼ Generative Fiction: This is a paragraph from early on in the novel You, written by Austin Grossman (Soon I Will Be Invincible). The novel is set in the world of video-game development. The paragraph is told from the point of view of the book’s main character and narrator. He’s a newb game designer who at this moment in the story, toward the end of chapter seven, is trying to sort out a bug in the software. The paragraph also seems to work as a playful metaphor for composers working in generative environments:

They could have been minor coincidences. I knew by now that a simulation-heavy game was unpredictable. A monster could wander too close to a torch and catch on fire; then it would go into its panic-run mode and anything else it bumped into might catch. Or a harmless goblin might nudge a rock, which then rolls and hits another creature just hard enough to inflict one hit point of damage, which then triggers a combat reaction, and next thing you know there’s an unscheduled goblin riot. The blessing and curse of simulation-driven engines was that although you could design the system, the world ran by itself, and accidents happened.

More on the novel at austingrossman.dreamhosters.com.

◼ Reading Sound: This immediately movied to the top of my to-read list: Justin St. Clair‘s Sound and Aural Media in Postmodern Literature: Novel Listening, just out from Routledge. From the description:

This study examines postmodern literature— including works by Kurt Vonnegut, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo, Philip K. Dick, Ishmael Reed, and Thomas Pynchon —arguing that one of the formal logics of postmodern fiction is heterophonia: a pluralism of sound. The postmodern novel not only bears earwitness to a crucial period in American aural history, but it also offers a critique of the American soundscape by rebroadcasting extant technological discourses. Working chronologically through four audio transmission technologies of the twentieth century (the player piano, radio, television audio, and Muzak installations), St. Clair charts the tendency of ever-proliferating audio streams to become increasingly subsumed as background sound.

More from St. Clair at soundculturestudies.net. He’s an assistant professor of English at the University of South Alabama.

◼ Sound Matter: The publisher Noch bills itself as having a focus on “expanded listening.” Its first volume, What Matters Now? (What Can’t You Hear?), features 16 new writings (ranging from music criticism to short fiction, from visual poetry to art writing) by Cheryl Tipp, Chiara Guidi, David Toop, Francesco Tenaglia, Helena Hunter, Ivan Carozzi, James Wilkes, Luciano Chessa, Mike Cooper, Patrick Farmer, Salomé Voegelin, Sandra Jasper, Simone Bertuzzi, Stefano Scalich, Steve Roden, Tone Gellein. It’s edited by Noch founders Daniela Cascella and Paolo Inverni. Details at nochpublishing.com.

◼ Dr. Eno: The BBC has some audio (one minute and six seconds) of Brian Eno’s The Quiet Room, an audio-visual healing installation at the Montefiore Hospital in Hove, England: bbc.co.uk. It is very Thursday Afternoon. That’s a good thing. … While on the subject, the Soundcheck show from WNYC has been interviewing musicians about their guilty pleasures; Eno provides a welcome context to his answer: “I’m not really embarrassed about any of my tastes.” (Latter link thanks to Mike Rhode.)

◼ More Children: Nice little review by the Seattle Stranger‘s David Schmader of The Children Next Door, for which I did sound design with composer Taylor Deupree, at thestranger.com: “it’s a masterpiece — smart, tough, fearless, and miraculously compact.” Directed by Doug Block, produced by Lynda A. Hansen. The film is playing there at the Seattle True Independent Film Festival 2013.

◼ One Liners: Keep an ear out for cicadas. ◼ There’s now a page on Google+ for a fledgling Disquiet.com presence: gplus.to/disquiet. ◼ Various Microsoft content projects apparently have an “electronic dance music” component (adweek.com). ◼ 19 musicians made tracks from just two tones and three beats in the 70th Disquiet Junto project, which ended last night.