Scratch Pad: [ambient], Practice, Sound Art
I do this manually at the end of each week: collating 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.
▰ [ambient noise] [ambient noise] [indistinct chatter] [indistinct chatter] [background noise] [indistinct chatter] [ambient noise]
^ verbatim how a speech-to-text app “transcribed” a brief field recording I submitted (I’d intended to submit a different audio recording)
▰ After practicing guitar in the morning, you recognize that the hum of your amp is sorta soothing, so you just leave it on as you return to work
▰ Timed my walk to the supermarket to late afternoon in part because, on a day as clear and warm as this one, I expected to hear music students practicing through open windows. There’s usually a smattering of trumpets, pianos, and violins. But not a peep.
▰ There are a lot of sounds I love in urban life, key in recent years being the skateboard. I’m not sure if skateboarding’s more popular than it used to be here in San Francisco, or if wheels got louder, but I hear it more, pay attention to it more, and have come to cherish it.
▰ I’ve got a concert review, a book review, and a fun short piece about Ornette Coleman due out soon(ish)
▰ I’ve been practicing the basic* “spider walk” (plus some variations) on guitar every day. Something about it sounded familiar. Then I recognized that the first two lines are the first two bars of “Blue Monk” by Thelonious Monk.
*four frets in a row, then the next string higher
▰ I think often of a sound art exhibit I visited in London in 2019. I walked around the location and then went to the desk where the gallery-requisite woman in a black dress sat. I asked, trying not to seem stupid, where the sound was. She plugged something in. The sound started.
▰ What kind of a Friday is it? I found myself staring for a while at half of a “U” in a document on the left of my screen, and wondering why it was cut off. Turns out it was a “J”.
▰ Going through my inbox and slurping down /yum codes on Bandcamp. Forgive me if you sent me something and I’m only just getting around to it. The sheer amount of music is sort of insane. I’m not complaining. I’m down for the insanity, but that doesn’t make it any less insane.
After I posted the /yum comment, a friend — a composer, no less — asked what it is, and I replied: On Bandcamp.com, which is the main way many musicians sell their recordings, they can provide a free download to press (and other interested parties), and it is called a “yum” code. When you receive such a code, you then go to bandcamp.com/yum and enter the code. Then you can download the files, or access via your bandcamp library. If you write about music and/or record music for sale as downloads, a lot of time can involve /yum codes.
