Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 462

Cello + Raspberry Pi

With the bow pulled slowly enough to be mistaken for a tai chi posture, and enough overtones to fill the rafters of a small barn, Ooray embarked on a solo performance earlier this month at Valentine’s in Portland, Oregon. He’s posted the resulting audio, and it’s highly recommended. It’s less a piece than a suite, a series of semi-independent approaches to the electronically mediated cello that is the core of his musical practice. The opening portion is more echo than transformation, layers of drones aiding and abetting each other. The second introduces a pulsing piano figure. Then comes a more feedback-laden drone, amid which he plays a maudlin solo that slowly takes on an orchestral aura. And finally, there’s a portion with a broken beat and a glitchy feel to it, the bow pouncing on the strings like a playful cat, and the whole thing glistening to something at times almost rave-like in its exuberance. In a brief note accompanying the track, Laderas mentions that this was his first outing with his attempt to include Raspberry Pi, a tiny computer that is fast gaining popularity for its modular opportunities.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/ooray. More on/from Ooray, aka Ted Laderas, at 15people.net.

Disquiet Junto Project 0060: Audiobio(graphy)

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.

If you have ever participated, or ever thought of participating, in a Disquiet Junto project, I highly encourage you to consider doing this one. Thanks.

This assignment was made in the mid-afternoon, California time, on Thursday, February 21, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, February 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 0060: Audiobio(graphy)

This week’s project is primarily a spoken-word one, which makes it a first for the Disquiet Junto. Here is a short description of how to do the project, and below that is some additional background:

SoundCloud, the service that provides much of the infrastructure for the Disquiet Junto, has begun a new community-organized project titled “Audiobiography.” I was part of the group of SoundCloud users who were invited to help develop this “audiobio” concept.

Here are the steps:

1: Record an audio track in which you describe — in your own words and voice — who you are and what you explore in your music/sound. Feel free to simply describe this work, or to go a step further and, in addition to your words, to include samples of your recordings. Please keep the track to approximately 90 seconds in length.

2: Name the track “Audiobiography” with your name, as such “Audiobiography: Jane Doe.” Add a description.

3: Tag the track “audiobio” and “disquiet0060-audiobio” and upload.

4: If you have the Spotlight feature in SoundCloud, pin the sound to the top of your profile. You can also add the sound to your profile’s description under your Advanced Settings.

. . .

Background: Those above instructions are a slight revision of the official documented plans for the Audiobiography project, but this lightly revised project still fits within the restraints of the official project. The official project’s home page is here, where there are translations into numerous languages:

http://blog.soundcloud.com/2013/02/06...

It didn’t take long after the Disquiet Junto got going for individual members to feel a sense of camaraderie with each other. Partially this is because various participants knew other participants, if only through their music, in advance of joining up. As time has gone on, members of the Junto have collaborated online and met up offline in person. Anyone who has had an extended email correspondence with an individual whom they later met, finally, in person for the first time knows how much that in-person meeting can transform and deepen subsequent communication. A lot of this has to do with simply witnessing what someone is like beyond how they present themselves online — and a lot of that has to do with what they say, not just the words but how they speak, how they communicate, what their voice sounds like. This SoundCloud “Audiobiography” project is an opportunity for Junto members to hear each others’ voices, often for the first time. My hope is that it will further deepen the sense of community among Disquiet Junto members and, more broadly, SoundCloud users.

Deadline: Monday, February 25, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your finished work should be approximately 90 seconds in length.

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 “disquiet0060-audiobio” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track (also be sure to tag the track “audiobio”).

Download: Consider setting your track in a manner 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 #60th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/02/21/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

More details on the SoundCloud “audiobiography” project at:

http://blog.soundcloud.com/2013/02/06...

Image up top found via photo via satanslaundromat.com.

The Athletic Machine (MP3)

The pulsing synthesizer heard amid a field recording of athletic activity brings to mind, of course, Vangelis’ Chariots of Fire film score. The music in that 1981 movie located and cemented parallels between mechanical sound and the human machine — it was to running what Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn,” less than a decade earlier, had been to driving. In Ronny Nibletts’ 11-minute “Sports Hall Athletics,” the sounds of exertion are a little less exalted — he lists the source event as an ordinary “indoor athletics meet” — but the effect is vigorous, these slight variations in synthesized rhythmic tones amid huffing, motion, and the occasional whistle.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/ronny-nibblets. Ronny Nibblets is Andy Vaughan, based out of Holmfirth, Britain.

Guitar Detonation (MP3)

Peter Hamlin, aka the Holocene, is, by his own description, making music “all about super volcanoes and asteroid impact craters.” The track he’s posted thus far, “Yellowstone Caldera,” is piercing if slow-paced feedback that gives way to bluesy guitar phrases and broken radio signals. It’s all blissfully zoned-out yet surreptitiously eager to peak in a manner that would test most speaker systems.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/peterhamlin. More from Hamlin, who is based in London, at parentcore.tumblr.com, tapehissnoise.tumblr.com
theholocene.bandcamp.com.

Stems: Phone Tinkering, MRI Beatboxing, Ambient Journalism …

¶ The deadline for signing the White House petition to “Make Unlocking Cell Phones Legal” is February 23. This is a serious issue that relates to many subjects of importance to this site: creative reuse, terms of service, intellectual property, and the right to tinker, among others. Please give it a read and consider weighing in: petitions.whitehouse.gov.

¶ Fascinating if brief interview with Jeff Kolar over at rhizome.org about the correlations between radio and dance, about forms that might be thought to correspond with the disembodied and the body. The interview was done in response to a collaboration Kolar has undertaken with performer/choreographer Jennifer Monson and lighting designer Joe Levasseur. Kolar performed at the 2012 Chicago Disquiet Junto concert, and founded the Radius broadcast, a frequent source of entries in this site’s Downstream coverage.

¶ We talk a lot about sonification, the aural parallel to data visualization, but the flipside is important to: the application of big data to sound. Interesting Q&A at forbes.com about its API, with smart contrast drawn to how it compares with that of Echo Nest.

¶ Beat boxing, an MRI, and learning about the physiology of language: bbc.co.uk

¶ Not sure I’ve mentioned this. Thanks to my newly upgraded SoundCloud account (courtesy of the service’s Heroes program), both the Instagr/am/bient (with music from 25 musicians, including Marcus Fischer and Ted Laderas) and LX(RMX) (with music by Steve Roden, Scanner, and six others) compilations are available for free download.

¶ This mockup of the forthcoming HTC One mobile phone seems to suggest it has stereo speakers. Note the grill pattern on top and bottom: androidandme.com.

¶ Pitchfork is streaming the new Matmos album, The Marriage of True Minds, for the next few days: pitchfork.com.

¶ Joon Oluchi Lee was Roddy Schrock’s partner in the second of the pieces that Schrock performed at the apexart Disquiet Junto show back in November. Over at his lipstickeater.blogspot.com blog Lee talks more about his development of the piece. Video here: apexart.org.

¶ John Kannenberg has posted his first download at johnkannenberg.bandcamp.com, Live at ZKM Medienmuseum | 11​.​11​.​12, a “live site-specific performance of electronically manipulated field recordings of other museum sounds.” Two bucks.

¶ The Verge tech/gadget website has been doing some interesting things with its design of late, notably the inclusion at the top of Sam Byford’s interview with Craig Mod (“What is a book in the age of the iPad?”) of the ambient noise of the Tokyo, Japan, location where they had their conversation. Byford, in the comments, notes what he recorded the noise, and presumably the interview, on: “I got a Sony TX-50 on fire sale, which turned out to be perfect for what I need it for. Super thin and convenient.” (Via Evan Cordes, aka pheezy.com.) … In a related note, “Chronicling the Trip: From Pixels to Paper” by Stephanie Rosenbloom in the New York Times includes this observation: “No app is as foolproof as my Moleskine notebook. But they can make multimedia memories with details like miles traveled and ambient sounds heard along the way, whether they’re church bells in Florence or Pacific loons in Alaska.” Needless to say, the idea of journalists and travelers making sound recordings on a regular basis, whether professional or casual, is a welcome one.

New Discogs.com Podcast

This makes so much sense it’s strange to think it’s just starting, but the age-old Discogs.com website, a communally produced discography engine, has begun a podcast series. It inaugurates with Luke Vibert, whose Throbbing Pouch Wagon Christ album was a central text in early-1990s British electronica. Discogs reports it was recorded “February 9th, 2013 at the Vinyl Pimp record shop in Hackney Wick (London, UK) to celebrate Chinese New Year.”

And an enterprising commenter going by srael Muñoz on Facebook, where Discogs announced the mix, appears to have posted a detailed track list, which lists Vibert’s own music, plus Kraftwerk, a very early Aphex Twin track, 808 State, and much more:

Drum Machine – Drum Machine
Fearless Four – F4000
Tic & Toc – Hey Jay (Is It True What They Say?)
DJ Bass Boy – Mo Better Bass
Success-N-Effect – Roll It Up (Remix)(Bass Kickin Beats)
Masters At Work – Papa Beats
Earth Leakage Trip – No Idea
Ubik – Bass Generation
Kraftwerk – It’s More Fun To Compute
808 State – Flow Coma (Remix by AFX)
Luke Vibert – Homewerk
Meat Beat Manifesto – I Am Electro (D.H.S. Remix)
The Blapps Posse – Don’t Hold Back!
Bassix – Close Encounters
LFO – LFO
Dimensional Holofonic Sound – #9 Bad Acid
Double 99 – R.I.P. Groove
Scott Garcia – A London Thing
Zig-Zag EP
House Of Gypsies – Samba
Progetto Tribale – Bongo Midi
Blake Baxter – Fuck You Up
Nebula II – Seance
Automation – Espionage (Remix)
Urban Shakedown – Do it Now!
Urban Shakedown – Some Justice
Friends, Lovers & Family – The Lift
Televox – Poborsk
3 Phase feat. Dr. Motte – Der Klang Der Familie
L.A.M. – Hostile Bacteria
The Aphex Twin – Digeridoo (Live In Cornwall 1990)
Aphex Twin – Polynomial-C
The Brothers Grimm – Exodus (The Lion Awakes)
Rufige Kru – Terminator II
Aphex Twin – Fenix Funk 5
DJ Gunshot – Soundboy

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/discogs.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

February 10 is the birthday of both @carlstone and @robert_henke. I think this should be some sort of electronic holiday. ->



Not that anyone should look at a screen on a beautiful San Francisco day such as this, but who are Richmond District tweeters I should know? ->



Kinda missed Dilla Day due to tending to my then-semi-ailing kid, but by chance had listened to Dilla anyhow. Kids like Donuts. ->



Is there any way to get iBooks-style continuous scrolling in FBReader? ->



How perfect that the first entry in our remix project of Endless Ascent netlabel is, per chance, by @Icarus_Descent: http://t.co/lSzme8ob ->



"Aardvark—Fiction." #loc ->



Visual remnant of what Chinese New Year sounded like: http://t.co/FJCtr51p ->



Impromptu Craigslist road trip. Crate digging. http://t.co/99YiJfBB ->



I already miss looking forward to Steven Soderbergh films. ->



Scored four 12"s at Craigslist crate dig: Art of Noise's Gunn, Ice T's Rich & Famous, INXS' What You Need, Geto Boys' Mind Playing Tricks. ->



Thank you for making my week. RT @PennSound: Christian Hawkey took silences from 45 readings by Ashbery on PennSound: http://t.co/0VWV4mzZ ->



Audio recording I made today during Chinese New Year celebrations in the Tenderloin: https://t.co/eOzlnkGy ->



Realized that old Ice-T 12" I snagged today of "Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous" isn't the original but, better yet, a DJ Premier remix. ->



Mostly for @robsheff @christianbok @tomcomitta: The silences of John Ashbery. What the poet says when he says nothing: http://t.co/uvkXdEgV ->



Afternoon score on day I watch my 2.5-year-old: foreground is toddler's light snoring; background is neighbor's leaf blower. ->



Almost 20 tracks reworking various releases from the Endless Ascent netlabel: https://t.co/GJH0W5sv Cc @djunto ->



Thanks! MT @SoundCloud: @djunto is an open communal soundmaking group. Hear latest project celebrating Creative Commons http://t.co/yilizcp9 ->



Dear Anyone: I rarely tweet health whines but my poor little kid's pink eye is the primary reason I haven't replied to your email/post/tweet ->



Arnold Lobel's kids book Frog & Toad Are Friends works well with Frog in John Cage's voice & Toad in Morton Feldman's. #noiseparent #protip ->



Not surprised that Kraftwerk bio author pops up on a Resonance FM podcast. Just surprised it was on the cycling show: http://t.co/DaVsVZJ3 ->



Sound of the library where I'm getting some work done: https://t.co/w3J0jEf9 ->



Even more addicted to Thomas Newman's Side Effects score than I'd expected to be. "Houston Free Meds" in particular. ->



Side Effects reminds me of first time I took note of Thomas Newman's name, due to percussive classical performance in movie Men Don't Leave. ->



Not into reality TV but would watch doc about Android/Apple fanboys who battle in blog comments. Inconvenient Troll? Troll to the Dark Side? ->



Caleb Kelly (aka @caleb_k), author of Cracked Media: The Sound of Malfunction, has a new blog: http://t.co/DNACA4LF. ->



Theme of this week's Disquiet Junto (@djunto) project is sonic autobiography. Starts Thursday. It's #59 in the ongoing series. ->



4 hours ago I posted the sound of a room where I sat alone in the library: https://t.co/w3J0jEf9. 120 listens later, I sure feel less alone. ->



Ooh, a remix (by @happypuppyrecs) of my library HVAC drone recording: https://t.co/wPN4gtp3. #dronesofdrones ->



My Nexus 4 hasn't gotten 4.2.2 yet, no. Thanks for askin'. ->



Reading story collections by Paolo Bacigalupi and Kelly Link. Beautiful, but so florid I may read a catalog about concrete when I'm done. ->



2nd class today of my weekly @academy_of_art sound course: dead celebrities, oral history, audio ecology, listening exercise, synesthesia ->



Information flows through this: http://t.co/N6Bh8JXx ->



The autobiography @djunto project has been delayed a week. This week's involves the human voice and requires a die (i.e., singular of dice). ->



Paolo Bacigalupi's short story “The People of Sand and Slag" is not something you want to have finished reading just before lunch. ->



Same thing's happening now with Stonesthrow as with Touch Radio, where the podcast shows on RSS before the web page. Weird. ->



Google's TTS (text to speech) is radically reducing my mobile music intake in favor of blog posts and ebooks. ->



I didn't post special Valentine's Day music on Disquiet (.com) today. I just, as always, posted music that I love. ->



The 59th Disquiet Junto (@djunto) project begins momentarily. It requires a single die and your mouth. ->



The 59th @djunto project is now live at http://t.co/a4zJ5Mlw + http://t.co/XdREURGZ #vowels #choral #drone #random #dice ->



Excellent. Got access to my Twitter archive. Looking forward to digging in. Cc @lhalff ->



"Reading the Settings options." 19 Jun 07 #twitterarchive #firsttweet ->



"The air conditioning has stopped. All the better to hear my hard drive whir." 21 Jun 07 #twitterarchive ->



I have mentioned HVAC 31 times (well, now 31) on Twitter. #twitterarchive ->



I have mentioned Pink Floyd five times and pink eye once since joining Twitter. #twitterarchive ->



Based on this graph 2010 is the year I really got underway on Twitter though I joined back in mid-2007. http://t.co/lday3jRD ->



I was on Twitter 339 days before using the word "ambient." #twitterarchive ->



I was on Twitter 109 days before using the word "noise." #twitterarchive ->



Greene on Zero Hour, Carter on Falling Skies, Corday on Dr. Who and Arrow. How did ER take over TV science fiction? ->



Was reading about "secure USB debugging" in Android 4.2.2. Does this conflict at all with @idisplayapp's USB connect? http://t.co/4YkA5rgV ->



Ooh, already a work in this week's "choral drones from vowels" @djunto project: https://t.co/rXhRUfyq by @xyzr_kx ->



We should approximate holding "yay," "die." MT @Nonwrestler: @disquiet 2 dipthongs there (A, I); physically impossible to hold as "constant" ->



Current choral drone @djunto project has been, inevitably, picked up by one of those automated paper.li news aggregators on military drones. ->



Useful reminder about how to type "smart" quotes in OS X: http://t.co/5VscWMpa ->



"It’s hard to hear the words over the noise of weapons, vehicles and Marco Beltrami’s bludgeoning score" (A.O. Scott on the new Die Hard.) ->



Beautiful. MT @echosonic: New for @djunto: Miroitant de l'eau [disquiet0059-vwls] by @echosonic via @soundcloud https://t.co/Ezqz6oAh ->



Apparently "watermarked" means "so complicated to download that you never actually get to listen to it." ->



Someone will assign Jonathan Lethem to review the new Glenn Frankel book on The Searchers, right? ->

Korean Piano Solo (MP3)

This lushly yet lightly flowing solo piano piece by Sima Kim was recorded live at Nui., a hostel and bar/lounge in the Kuramae area of Tokyo, Japan. In a manner, the track seems to have been doubly improvised — not only composed while performed, but also not pre-scheduled. It was recorded on February 11, a day after Kim’s brief recent Toyko tour ended, per the flyer above.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/sima-kim. Kim was born in South Korea and raised in Europe. More from him (albeit in Korean, primarily) at simakim.tumblr.com and twitter.com/sima_kim.

Disquiet Junto Project 0059: Vowel Choral Drone

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 early evening, California time, on Thursday, February 14, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, February 18, 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 0059: Vowel Choral Drone

This week’s project involves the human voice. You will create a choral drone from three samples that you will create with your own voice. This project requires a single die, or the digital equivalent.

Here are the steps in the project:

Step 1: Roll a die three times (or three dice once) to determine which vowels you will use. Depending on your luck, you may end up with two or even three of the same vowel.

1 = A (“a” as in “yay”)

2 = E (“e” as in “bee”)

3 = I (“i” as in “die”)

4 = O (“o” as in “yo”)

5 = U (“u” as in “you”)

6 = Y (“y” as in “Sylvia”)

If you don’t have access to a die, you can use various digital equivalents. This link, for example, will roll three dice simultaneously:

http://www.random.org/dice/?num=3

Step 2: For each vowel that you have been assigned by the dice, record a 10-second sample of you holding that vowel as a constant tone (volume, timbre, note, etc.).

Step 3: Create a choral drone that utilizes only these three sources of audio. You can treat them with effects lightly, but they should be recognizable as the human voice throughout the duration of track.

Deadline: Monday, February 18, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your finished work should be between 2 and 5 minutes in length.

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 “disquiet0059-vwls” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: Consider setting your track in a manner 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 59th Disquiet Junto project at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/02/14/disqui...

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Image up top from phonetics.ucla.edu.

The Ghosts of Union Station

Christopher McFall’s Quivering into your blood night radio takes as its subject the movements and echoes of a Kansas City train depot called Union Station, an old landmark whose halls have long been attractive to him. The result is a deeply reverberant music that melds rhythmic drones and more recognizable field recordings, ranging from what appear to be snippets of archaic, jazz-era pop standards, to the motions of individuals within the grand hall. Writes McFall of his focus on Union Station:

I’ve often felt that the echo within the space from the musical backdrop comes across as rather haunting when combined with the sounds of visitors moving about throughout the terminal. So, this environment has served as the foundation for constructing this release.

Tracks originally posted for free download at impulsivehabitat.com, where it is available as both MP3 and FLAC.