Recent interview with me at freemusicarchive.org on Creative Commons, Disquiet Junto, and more • Projects: Instagr/am/bient + LX(RMX): Lisbon Remixed • Key Topics: #sound-art, #classical, #generative • How to Submit for Review • Elsewhere: Twitter (Disquiet + Junto), SoundCloud (Disquiet + Junto).

Listening to art. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Disquiet Junto Project 0073: Faulty Notation

The Assignment: Read a map of the San Andreas Fault as if it were a graphic notation score.

[ May 23, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

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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 project was developed with Geoff Manaugh of BLDG BLOG as part of a course he taught in spring 2013 at Columbia University’s graduate school of architecture about the San Andreas Fault. Participants in this Junto project will interpret an individually assigned segment of a map of the fault as if it were a graphic notation score. The image up top is an example of such a map segment. Note: Do not base your piece on the above image; it is simply provided as an example. The project instructions appear below.

If this all goes according to plan, we may develop a free iOS app of the resulting music, in which users can touch the map to trigger the associated recording, and learn more about the San Andreas Fault, graphic notation, BLDG BLOG, the Disquiet Junto, and related topics.

The browser-based map-dispersal code was developed by Ken Mistove (kenzak.com). Additional design assistance from Boon Design (boondesign.com).

This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, May 23, 2013, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, May 27, as the deadline.

Below are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto). This is the map legend referenced in the instructions:

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Disquiet Junto Project 0073: Faulty Notation

This week’s project is about earthquakes. Each participant will receive a distinct section of a map of the San Andreas Fault. The section will be interpreted as a graphic notation score. The resulting music will, in the words of Geoff Manaugh of BLDG BLOG, “explore the sonic properties of the San Andreas Fault.”

There are 4 steps to this project:

Step 1: To be assigned a segment of the map, go to the following URL. You will be asked to enter your SoundCloud user name, and then to enter your email address. You will receive via that email address a file, approximately 1MB in size, containing your map segment:

http://kenzak.com/disquiet/disquiet0073.html

Step 2: Study the map segment closely. Develop an approach by which you interpret the map segment as a graphic notation score. The goal is for you to “read” the image as if it were presented as a piece of notated music. Read the image from left to right. Pay particular attention to solid black lines, which represent fault lines. For additional guidance and inspiration, you may refer to the map legend at the following URL. The extent to which you take the legend into consideration is entirely up to you:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/23/disquiet0073-faultynotation/

Step 3: Record an original piece of music based on Step 2. It should be between two and six minutes in length. You can use any instrumentation you choose, except the human voice. (Note: Do not use any source material to which you do not yourself outright possess the copyright. This is highly important, because we may look into developing a free iOS app of the resulting recordings.)

Step 4: When posting your track, 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.

Deadline: Monday, May 27, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your track should have a duration of between two and six minutes.

Title/Tag: Include the term “disquiet0073-faultynotation” 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:

More on this 73rd Disquiet Junto project, which involves reading a map of the San Andreas Fault as if it were a graphic notation score, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/23/disquiet0073-faultynotation/

This project was conducted as part of a course of study led by Geoff Manaugh (BLDG BLOG). More on his research at:

http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2013/01/san-andreas-architecture-for-fault.html

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

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Duet for Harmonica and Computer (MP3)

A slow spatial work by Joo Won Park

[ May 22, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

“Harmonica30″ is a duet by Joo Won Park for harmonica and computer. Notes are slowly intoned on the harmonica, and those sounds in turn trigger a series of halo effects.

The halos range from what could be compared to old-school Wurlitzer organ to something more along the lines of pixelated wind. In Park’s telling the shifts are as much about spacial experimentation as about harmonic development. Or, perhaps more to the point, they are about harmonic development as spatial development. This is from a brief note that accompanies the track on its SoundCloud page:

“The computer part is algorithmically generated so that the timing and the dynamics of the accompanying part varies from one performance to another. The harmonica sound gradually moves to a larger room as the piece progresses.”

There’s also a video on YouTube of the harmonica performance, which allows the processing gap, the space between what is physically played and what is heard, to be more apparent:

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In an interview at thekey.xpn.org, Park talked about what “computer music” means to him:

“I think of it as trying to do something that’s unique with the computer, rather than imitating human performance. I try to make music that a computer can do better than a human, or that is too bothersome for a human to make. And I’m interested in creating a duo between the computer and me. A lot of times, I don’t know what the computer will spit out. When I make music on the stage, there is no pre-recorded sound. What I play goes straight to the computer, and the computer processes and changes what I play. The process the computer goes through is intentionally made so that the outcome is different every time.”

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/joowon. Thanks to Jane Shin for recommending that I check out Park’s work. More from Joo Won Park at joowonpark.net.

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Reading Between the Remixes (MP3)

A Heathered Pearls rendition of Solar Year's "Lines"

[ May 21, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

Remixes are a great way to hear the original in new context. It is perhaps as close as we can get — at least in advance of Google Earmuffs — to hearing through someone else’s ears. And if listening to multiple remixes of one song bring out elements in that original work that you might not have previously paid attention to, listening to multiple remixes by one artist of multiple other artists brings out common elements, giving you a sense of what the remixer listens for.

As in yesterday’s featured track here, a Heathered Pearls remix of an slow industrial rock song by Dirty Beaches, a Pearls reworking of electronic pop likewise emphasizes the lush spaciousness that in the original is merely one element among many. The original in this case is “Lines” by Solar Year. It is slow-motion electronica with echoes of Erasure and Depeche Mode. Gone in the Pearls edit is the robot shuffle and the aching angelic vocal, and in their place is pure sound bed, a shifting cumulus of soft tones.

For comparison, there’s a video of the original version, off the album Waverly, due out in late June, here:

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/ceremony. Heathered Pearls is Jakub Alexander. Solar Year is David Ertel (that’s his voice) and Ben Borden. More on Solar Year at onesolaryear.com and the releasing record label, ceremonyrecordings.com.

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Decanting Dirty Beaches’ Embalmed Spirit (MP3)

A rework by Heathered Pearls

[ May 20, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

Heathered Pearls was exactly the right remixer for the Dirty Beaches song “Casino Lisboa.” The original, off the new album Drifters/Love Is the Devil, is like some latter-day, slow-motion amalgam of the Cramps and Consolidated, a world-weary dirge vocal amid the clank of self-consciously routinized industrial rock. In the Heathered Pearls edit (referred to somewhat casually as “Heathered Pearls’ dead time rework”), it is as if the track is being revisited in the memory of its remixer. Slivers of the vocal repeat like a song can when caught in the gears of the lizard brain. It ekes out a sense of forward momentum, but really just gets caught in its own circuitous loop. The result loses none of the embalmed spirit of the original, if anything emphasizing it. It does lose some choice moments from the source material, including a brief excursion into a guitar solo that sounds more like the wind brushing a metal fence, but the trade off is worth it.

Here is the original “Casino Lisboa,” in the form of its mesmerizing video:

Remix originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/heathered-pearls. Heathered Pearls is Jakub Alexander. Dirty Beaches is Alex Zhang Hungtai. More from Hungtai/Beaches at dirtybeaches.blogspot.com.

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Duane Eddy Meets Robert Moog (MP3)

A dense guitar spectacle from Babel Ensemble

[ May 19, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

The opening strum is pure Duane Eddy, the deep swelling rumble that summons up vast empty geographic spaces, but the way the tremulous tone continues to reverberate sounds more like something out of Robert Moog’s workshop. That wavering in Babel Ensemble’s “MD13Xc2″ is thick, robust, and on a short cycle, and as it proceeds it veers back and forth between melodic component and rhythm. Slowly the guitar overlays gain collective density. They don’t obscure each other so much as lend increasing depth — the original tones sound further away, as if with each step the guitarist leaves early chords churning in place in the ever-receding distance.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/babel_ensemble. Babel Ensemble is a project of Jakob Rehlinger, who is based in Toronto, Canada. Thanks to the excellent listener who goes by Roamin (roamin.ca for having drawn my attention to this track by reposting it on Soundcloud.

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