Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 80
October 26, 2023
Disquiet Junto Project 0617: Haunt Scape
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five days to upload a track in response to the assignment. 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. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, October 30, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 26, 2023.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
These following instructions went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).
Disquiet Junto Project 0617: Haunt Scape
The Assignment: Halloween is coming up. Do your thing.
There is just one step to this project: Halloween is nearly here, so make some haunted sounds for people to play for trick-or-treaters.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0617” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0617” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0617-haunt-scape/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, October 30, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 26, 2023.
Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to 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. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 617th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Haunt Scape (The Assignment: Halloween is coming up. Do your thing), at: https://disquiet.com/0617/
The cover image (enlarged, type added) is from Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skull#/media/File:3d_CT_scan_animation.gif
That image is credited to Arielinson and used thanks to a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0617-haunt-scape/
October 25, 2023
New York’s Alright
I just returned home to San Francisco after 11 days in New York, much of it on Long Island with extended family, and a third of the trip in the city proper — hotel in Manhattan, wanderings through Brooklyn and Queens. I got as far north as 155th Street, in order to catch a fantastic concert of choral music at the massive Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine. I am currently in my tiny office getting work done while listening to (and occasionally taking a peek at) an uncut, multi-hour recording out a window onto the city. (Some straightforward sleuthing seems to confirm it was shot — roughly southward-facing — on 52nd Street between Broadway and 8th Avenue, perchance not far from where I stayed. I walked close by a few days earlier on my way to Hell’s Kitchen for dinner.) The experience is oddly centering, maybe even assisting by taking the edge off the brain-melting jet lag I’ve experienced since my return Monday night. I recommend tuning in at the 27-minute mark to hear a street musician’s saxophone echo upward, bouncing off of — and in turn softening — the city’s hard surfaces. I listened to it on headphones for quite a while. However, it really took root — really came alive — when I unplugged my ears and let the sounds fill the room: the honking, the chatter of passersby, the air traffic, the congealed hum of urban life in the single densest city in the United States, and that saxophone. This is room sound, and it makes sense in a room: the audio of one place transported to — superimposed atop — another.
October 24, 2023
In Person
This is on the wall in the men’s room at my favorite Greek restaurant in my hometown where I’ve been eating since I was in high school, maybe junior high
Various Voices
This was a good evening, 70 minutes straight
October 23, 2023
“In One Place (Second Attempt)”
I recorded this in an apartment I was staying at in New York. It was early in the day. I was the only one up. I had another hour before my solitude was scheduled to be interrupted. The building’s HVAC each night disturbed my sleep, but as with a nightmare, those same sounds were tranquil, even beautiful, come morning. I had attempted another 30-second recording before this one. While it was underway I noted several disappointing disturbances — creaks and pops, the aural detritus of a building waking up. Apart from them I heard an extraordinary spatial drone, a manifestation of overtones, a symbiosis of modern domestic infrastructure and a room of high ceilings, a hard floor, and a wall of glass at one end. When the first attempt ended, I took a slow, deep breath and hit record. I knew in the moment that it would work out well. There is something of Schrödinger’s cat to the act of field recording. A place is many places when you listen to it over time, but when you hit record, it gets clarified (reduced, flattened, distilled) to one specific environment. This can feel like an exertion of influence when you undertake the recording process consciously, when you have situated yourself in the moment. I felt a kind of authorship as the second recording was underway. It was precisely what I had heard beneath the extraneous noises the first time. After 30 seconds had elapsed, I ceased recording. I had a sense it had worked out, a sense confirmed many hours later, when I listened back for the first time, on the flight home. Just minutes after this recording ended, the room went suddenly silent. The air conditioning system had reached a point — whether barometric or calendrical — that caused it to shut off. Minutes later, the lawnmowers began their prowling. I had been even more fortunate than I’d known when I hit record that second time.
October 22, 2023
Terms
Apparently this sign is not an item
October 21, 2023
Scratch Pad: Bandcamp, SoundCloud, Silences
I do this manually at the end of each week: collating (and sometimes lightly editing) most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I take weekends off social media.
▰ Morning duet for refrigerator hum and lawn mower
▰ The occasional instance when a music publicist sends an album and you explain that you purchased it a couple days earlier
▰ Whatever the word is for being both utterly mystified and not remotely surprised, that is my state of mind after yesterday’s news about Bandcamp’s direction following its sale to yet another company
▰ I’m sorry if you followed me recently on SoundCloud and make exactly the sort of music I might listen to and I didn’t follow you back but SoundCloud still has its follow limit set to 2,000, and provides no real tool to whittle the dead accounts one already follows. I do bookmark some newer accounts.
▰ This week’s Disquiet Junto music community project was informed by my current Duolingo efforts, specifically trying to sort out the difference, in German, between “leise” and “ruhig.”
▰ The haiku of the “notable deaths” on Wikipedia from the few couple days:
“Moldovan pan pipes player”
“New Zealand aviation entrepreneur”
“Dutch darts player”
“Romanian freestyle wrestler”
October 20, 2023
Some Other Guitarists
Rolling Stone this week published a now widely discussed list of “The 250 Greatest Guitarists of All Time,” and while I have little interest in debating its merits, I will use the opportunity to mention some other guitarist deserving of inclusion. (Also, it was great to see Yvette Young in there so prominently. She spoke in my sound class a few years ago — back when I was still teaching it — about her social media activity. Minor point, but I think she connected even more with younger fans on Instagram than on YouTube, as stated in the RS coverage, but I could be mistaken.) I think the following aren’t in the Rolling Stone listicle, but the website’s advertisements were playing weird with my web browser, so maybe I missed some of ’em. At first I didn’t see Adrian Belew, for example, but he is, of course, in there. I’ve included a bit of punctuation for emphasis:
Not new at all:
Derek Bailey
Elliot Easton !!!
Fred Frith
Henry Kaiser
Robert Lloyd !!
Elliot Randall !
Elliot Sharp
Not new, but not “old” either:
Eivind Aarset
Christian Fennesz
Ben Monder
Slightly “more new” than the above:
Julian Lage !
Sarah Lipstate
Ava Mendoza !
Jamie Stillway
October 19, 2023
Disquiet Junto Project 0616: Definition Jam
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five days to upload a track in response to the assignment. 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. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, October 23, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 19, 2023.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
These following instructions went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto).
Disquiet Junto Project 0616: Definition Jam
The Assignment: Explore, in music, the nuanced differences between two closely related words.
Step 1: Think of two words in any single language of your choosing that mean “quiet.” For example, in English you might choose from “quiet,” “silence,” “hush,” and “tranquil,” among others. (Alternate: You could choose any base word for this project. “Quiet” is simply a recommendation. You might, instead, choose two words that mean “noise,” or something else entirely. Given the nature of this project, it may be best to choose a word related to sound.)
Step 2: Spend time coming to understand the nuanced differences between the definitions of the two words you selected in Step 1.
Step 3: Think about how you can render, through sound, the two different definitions, based on the thinking that you developed in Step 2.
Step 4: Record a piece of music that begins with the sonic rendition of one word and morphs slowly into the other.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0616” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0616” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of a project playlist.
Step 3: Upload your tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0616-definition-jam/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #DisquietJunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to marc@disquiet.com for Slack inclusion.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, October 23, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 19, 2023.
Upload: When participating in this project, be sure to 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. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.
Download: It is always best to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 616th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Definition Jam (The Assignment: Explore, in music, the nuanced differences between two closely related words), at: https://disquiet.com/0616/
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0616-definition-jam/
October 18, 2023
About Last Night
The evening’s concert venue was, um, fairly large — at Saint John the Divine in Manhattan (concert details: stjohndivine.org).
