Marc Weidenbaum's Blog, page 92

Sound Ledger

40,000: Number of flights aimed to be reduced by a Dutch government plan (to 460,000 annually, from 500,000), now under appeal, to limit noise at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport 

40: Percent increase estimated of people utilizing voice technology in the next 12 months

3: Current size, in gigabytes, of the largest language model in the excellent speech-to-text app MacWhisper (which I learned about via Om Malik’s newsletter)

Illusion

I love how the two dozen anonymous buttons are both suspended in midair and bonded to metal — afloat amid the simulation of airy space rendered by glass, and yet screwed tight into the metal casing. Evening light facilitates the manner by which the inside stairwell and balconies merge with the reflection of the park across the car-lined street. The vertical buttons suggest a towering structure, but there are just a few floors, each lined with residences. Like the reflection, the doorbells offer up an illusion.

On Repeat: Ambient, Aphex, Chaos

I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ Another great performance by Andrew Tasselmyer, using an iPad. I picked up the app he employs here to glitchy effect (one with the great name LO-FI-AF). I love how the beat emerges from the opening ambient drone.

▰ Another solid Aphex Twin transcription from Simon Farintosh. This one is “Raglan Holon” off Drukqs, reworked for solo eight-string classical guitar.

▰ Lorenz Weber has a new album, Zeiten, due out in mid-August. Half of it is online for preview currently. It’s elegant, quiet music — one track, “return,” a held tone like an angelic chorus heard through a dense fog; another, “spring,” like an ever so slowly played piano while open windows let in birdsong.

https://lorenzweber.bandcamp.com/album/zeiten

▰ There’s utter chaos, and then there’s chaos that keeps stumbling but never quite collapses. C. Reider (aka Vuzhmusic) commits the latter expertly with “071923.”

Scratch Pad: Paper, Deadloch, YubiKey

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad, during the preceding week. These days that mostly means Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others, including Bluesky (disquiet.bsky.social), which remains behind a beta firewall at the moment, and Threads (threads.net/@dsqt). 

▰ I looked at my little paper notebook and caught myself briefly thinking, “I should take a look at it. Maybe there are new notes in there.”

▰ Just when I was thinking that the role of sound is kinda ordinary (if fun!) in the video game Moving Out, I had the unique (virtual) pleasure of noisily pulling a piano across a suburban lawn.

▰ I was watching Deadloch, a fun Australian TV series, and at some point in the third episode the camera moves to a previously unseen indoor art installation. I said out loud, jokingly, “Now that’s my scene.” And a second later the screen caption read, “[ambient whale song plays].”

▰ Ooh, the YubiKey made a fantastic noise when I pulled it from my laptop’s USB-C port — a kind of frigid gasp. I’ve had the device for a year. I’m used to the glitchspeak string of random letters that sometimes happens when you brush it, but this phenomenon was totally new to me.

▰ Few things say “I actually give a crap” when it comes to music technology (hardware and soft) than a proper and regularly updated manual

▰ The post for the latest Disquiet Junto music community composition prompt goes out, I get some work done, I have a dim sum for lunch with a friend, I come back to my desk, and there are already four tracks — two each from Germany and Italy. Can’t wait to hear what’s next.

Please Knock

This may be the preferred option anyhow.

Disquiet Junto Project 0603: Animated Suspension

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, 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. (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, July 24, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 20, 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 0603: Animated Suspension 
The Assignment: Record a piece of music that suggests something floating in air.

Step 1: Consider various music techniques you might employ to suggest (or imitate, or insinuate) that something is floating in air.

Step 2: Select one of the techniques you considered in Step 1 and experiment with it a bit.

Step 3: Record a piece of music built around the technique you focused on in Step 2.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0603” (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 “disquiet0603” (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-0603-animated-suspension/

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. How long can something stay aloft?

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, July 24, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, June 20, 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 603rd weekly Disquiet Junto project, Animated Suspension (The Assignment: Record a piece of music that suggests something floating in air), at: https://disquiet.com/0602/

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-0603-animated-suspension/

Infrastructure Is Beautiful

Command Z

Starship Organ

Went to Saint Mary atop Cathedral Hill here in San Francisco on Sunday for the weekly 4pm Musical Meditations, which meant listening to this starship of an organ fill the enormous interior space for us and maybe 17 other people, not counting the young organist, his teacher, the church’s guard, and some apparent janitorial staff. The sound was massive and consuming, the colors and tones rich and thick, thorough and luxurious.

On Repeat: Live Minimalism, Foley Volcano

Been a while since I did one of these. Brief mentions (optimally each Sunday) of some of my favorite listening from the week prior:

▰ The Polish keyboardist Hania Rani performs live with a large ensemble (Ziemowit Klimek, Wojciech Warmijak, Adam Jełowick, Kacper Krupa, Jarosław Kawałek) in the sunlit courtyard of a nearly 350-year-old building in Paris. She’s a consummate performer, with her own blend of pop-informed minimalism and muted neo-classical.

▰ Davide Bernardi sets drones in luscious, gleaming motion with a small set of devices.

▰ The Christoph Möckel Trio is named for its founding saxophonist, and also features Oliver Lutz, on six-string bass, and Moritz Baumgärtner, drums. This would be great modern, composed chamber jazz unplugged, but what pushes it over the edge is how both Möckel and Lutz employ a battery of guitar pedals to treat their instruments. The set is barely 18 minutes long. Take the whole thing in.

▰ Another great Aphex Twin transcription performed by classical guitarist Simon Farintosh: “Rhubarb” off Selected Ambient Works Volume II. When a cover really works, especially one purposefully trailing in the wake of the original, I wonder how much I’m mentally “hearing” the original while listening to the new take. It’s like a very good version doubly benefits by echoing the source material in the mind’s ear.

▰ There’s white noise, brown noise, and pink noise, among many other noises. My current favorite is molten red noise. (I checked in with the videographer, after discussing the video with my friend Mahlen Morris, and confirmed that in fact the audio was added after the fact. Still, it’s quite evocative.)