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.

search: "iron chef of music"

6-String IDM: The Top 10 Posts & Searches of May 2012

[ June 1, 2012 / Department: field notes / Leave a comment ]

Among the top 10 most popular posts of the past month, May 2012, out of a total of 28 posts, all but two were drawn from the daily recommended free downloads of the site’s Downstream section: (1) XYZR_KX plays Autechre on guitar, (2) Mark Browne dips his tech in boiling water, (3) Schrödinger’s Dog recognizes the fax machine as a dubstep muse, (4) Rawore plays around, (5) Hey Exit adds a touch of the electronic to his guitar, (6) Greg Surges employs SoundCloud as a sketchbook, (7) Phillip Wilkerson records the Floridian quotidian (i.e., birds), and (8) Federico Durand‘s album preview serves as a composition unto itself.

The two remaining most popular posts were sets of automated Saturday collections of the previous week’s twitter.com/disquiet posts, from (9) May 5 and (10) May 12.

The most popular searches on the site during the month of May were: aaron, distinction, pessoa, mixes, alan morse davies, cicada, crewest, darkly, garde, intone, iron chef of music, lique, mallet, monolake, n4tural, neilwiernik, selun, sharing, sol rezza, stasisfield.

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Tangents: Lethem/Cage, Kracfive Gaming, iOS Updates

News, quick links, good reads

[ April 28, 2012 / Department: field notes / Leave a comment ]

4’33 Neoteny: Jonathan Lethem gave the tenth State of Cinema address at the 55th San Francisco Film Festival on April 21, and wired.it posted a bootleg of the audio. The sprawling lecture, which is highly recommended, is very much a novelist welcoming film to post-relevancy. Of course, Lethem turns matters of relevancy on their head, employing the concept of “neoteny,” in which juvenile traits surface in adult behavior (that is a poor paraphrase). In the process of outlining his thinking, he attributes neotenic qualities to John Cage’s 4’33″, describing it as the sounds a child might accomplish before even beginning to learn to play piano. Lethem’s latest book is a study of Talking Heads’ Fear of Music, which was produced by Brian Eno (continuumbooks.com).

Ball, Game: The name Noah Sasso will be familiar to longtime readers of Disquiet.com due to his having been a founding member of the Kracfive collective (kracfive.com), whose Iron Chef of Music was a big presence on this site for many years, and was an influence on the development of the Disquiet Junto. Like many electronic-music practitioners, Sasso has an active role in game development, and his new project, BaraBariBall, will debut at the NYU Game Center’s Third Annual No Quarter Exhibition (nyu.edu) on May 18. He’s posted this video trailer (at vimeo.com) for the game. It has that perfect mix of pixel elegance and stellar fluid motion, like watching basketball through mosaic sunglasses:

Sasso says it was developed for Windows and Mac but has no current planned public release. More on Sasso at strangeflavor.net and soundcloud.com/strangeflavor.

App Updates (iOS Edition): Tabletop, a virtual music studio with device emulators, has improved the manner in which one swaps between devices. … Animoog has debuted a SoundSet by Richard Devine in its in-app storefront. … The Buddha Machine app has been updated to include sounds from the Buddha Machine 3.

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Lisbon & Comments: The Top 10 Posts & Searches of February 2012

Lisbon remixed, two songs for 2/22, open comments, and other reader favorites

[ March 1, 2012 / Department: field notes / Leave a comment ]

The most popular post of February 2012, out of 28 total posts for the month, was (1) the announcement of a new Disquiet-commissioned project, LX(RMX) / Lisbon Remixed, in which eight musicians under sixteen names remixed the sounds of urban Lisbon. The project was a collaboration with artist Jorge Colombo.

Also among the 10 most popular posts were (2) an overview of the fifth in the ongoing Disquiet Junto series, this one involving adding sounds to a pre-existing documentary recording of everyday noise, (3) an announcement that this site no longer requires a comment to be approved by a moderator before being published, and (4) liner notes that I wrote for a two-song project by musicians Corey Allen and Marcus Fischer.

Three of the site’s daily Downstream MP3 recommendations made the top 10: (5) one on the persistence of the wind chime in instrumental hip-hop, (6) another on the drone-industrial complex, and (7) a third on music for koto, pitch pipe, and samplers.

Rounding out the top 10 most popular posts of the month: (8) the list of the 10 most popular posts of the preceding month, and (9, 10) two of the automated Saturday repostings of twitter.com/disquiet.

The most popular searches of the month were: harold budd live, junto, souns, autechre, bars, Buddha Machine, rjdj, dubstep, Maximin, virant, would-be messiahs, amon tobin, astralwerks, curated, flyer, gareth dickson, grouper, iron chef of music, mashup, mixtapes

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The Disquiet Junto Project List

Association for communal music/sound-making on Soundcloud.com. [Update: July 20, 2012]

[ January 27, 2012 / Department: projects / Comments: 5 ]

The Disquiet Junto is a group I founded on Soundcloud.com. The purpose of the group is to use constraints to stoke creativity. Each Thursday evening I post a clearly defined compositional assignment, and members of the Junto are to complete the assignment by 11:59pm the following Monday. The initial Junto assignment was made on January 5, 2012, the first Thursday of the new year.

The inspirations for the group’s existence are numerous. There are the weekly Beat Battles sponsored by Stonesthrow, and also hosted at Soundcloud.com, in which dozens if not hundreds of participants craft instrumental hip-hop beats from a shared sample. There is the tradition of Oulipo, whose embrace of creative constraints is personified by one of its co-founders, the author Raymond Queneau. Several comics artists with whom I have worked, including Matt Madden, have bonded under the banner of Oubapo, and there is, in fact, a related musical tradition, which goes by Oumupo. (I was reminded that the Iron Chef of Music projects at kracfive.com were also an influence on my thinking. They were for many years a big part of the Downstream department here.)

The word “junto” comes from the name of a society that Benjamin Franklin formed in Philadelphia during the early 1700s as “a structured forum of mutual improvement.” In Franklin’s honor, the third Disquiet Junto project explored the glass harp, an instrument he experimented with in the development of what he christened the armonica.

The idea for the Junto arose after the completion of a Disquiet project at the end of December 2011. That project, Instagr/am/bient, was more loosely curated than other such projects I had commissioned, beginning in 2006 with Our Lives in the Bush of Diquiet. Instagr/am/bient proved quite popular, with over 20,000 listens and almost 4,000 downloads in its first month, and this success suggested to me that I experiment with an even looser format — the irony being that this “looser” format is, in fact, dedicated to constraint. Much to my surprise, the very first Junto project resulted, in four days, in 56 original pieces of music by as many musicians. The assignment was to record the sound of ice cubes in a glass and to make something musical of that recording.

If for the musicians involved, the Disquiet Junto is an experiment in creative constraints, for me it is as much an experiment in what I would describe as “community organizing as a form of curation.”

Visit the group — and, better yet, sign up and participate — at soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto. There’s also an email announcement list for the group. If you would like to be added to the suscription list, you can join up here: tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto.

This page serves as an index of the assignments. They are listed here in reverse chronological order. The tag for each assignment links to either a post on Disquiet.com about the project, or to a search return on Soundcloud that yields the tracks in that project:

69: disquiet0068-deriv The Assignment: Make music from field recordings of earth, water, air, and fire. Start: 2013.04.25 … End: 2013.04.29

68: disquiet0068-deriv The Assignment: Combine three songs from the first release of the new deriv.cc netlabel. Start: 2013.04.18 … End: 2013.04.22

67: disquiet0067-odysseymachine The Assignment: Compose music for a phrase from Homer’s The Odyssey. Start: 2013.04.11 … End: 2013.04.15

66: disquiet0066-nonofi The Assignment: Collaborate posthumously with the late Jeffrey (Nofi) Melton. Start: 2013.04.04 … End: 2013.04.08

65: disquiet0065-pianoverlay The Assignment: Compose music atop a randomly assigned segment of a pre-existing track by Jared Brickman. Start: 2013.03.28 … End: 2013.04.01

64: disquiet0064-halflive The Assignment: Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound. Start: 2013.03.21 … End: 2013.03.25

63: disquiet0063-gregorianorianian The Assignment: Make a new piece of music based on an echo-laden re-recording of Gregorian chant. Start: 2013.03.14 … End: 2013.03.18

62: disquiet0062-lifeofsine The Assignment: Make music using just three sine waves. Start: 2013.03.07 … End: 2013.03.11

61: disquiet0061-textinstagrambient The Assignment: Record a single for which the cover would be the image suggested by a @textinstagram tweet. Start: 2013.02.28 … End: 2013.03.04

60: disquiet0060-audiobio The Assignment: Record something about yourself and your music/sound in your own words and voice Start: 2013.02.21 … End: 2013.02.25

59: disquiet0059-vwls The Assignment: Make music from three randomly assigned vowels. Start: 2013.02.14 … End: 2013.02.18

58: disquiet0058-endlesscommons The Assignment: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Endless Ascent netlabel. Start: 2013.02.07 … End: 2013.02.11

57: disquiet0057-phonemetransmit The Assignment: Use sounds from the Phonetics Lab Archive at UCLA to depict emotions. Start: 2013.01.31 … End: 2013.02.04

56: disquiet0056-matteroftime The Assignment: Use sounds from the Phonetics Lab Archive at UCLA to depict emotions. Start: 2013.01.24 … End: 2013.01.28

55: disquiet0055-twoscrews The Assignment: Combine two Nils Frahm solo piano pieces into one. Start: 2013.01.17 … End: 2013.01.21

54: disquiet0054-audiotextual The Assignment: Create an original musical score for the day’s news. Start: 2013.01.10 … End: 2013.01.14

53: disquiet0053-ice2013 The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it (redux). Start: 2013.01.03 … End: 2013.01.07

52: Disquiet0052-bumpcc The Assignment: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Bump Foot netlabel. Start: 2012.12.27 … End: 2012.12.31

51: Disquiet0051-audiojournal The Assignment: Create a 2012 audio diary with a dozen five-second segments. Start: 2012.12.20 … End: 2012.12.24

50: Disquiet0050-morsebeat The Assignment: Encode a word or phrase in Morse Code and employ that as a track’s rhythm. Start: 2012.12.13 … End: 2012.12.17

49: Disquiet0049-deckduet The Assignment: Make a track, 50% of which is the sound of a tape cassette deck in motion. Start: 2012.12.06 … End: 2012.12.10

48: Disquiet0048-libertederive Celebrate the Creative Commons license that allows for derivative works by remixing music from the Three Legs Duck netlabel. Start: 2012.11.29 … End: 2012.12.03

47: Disquiet0047-partymuted Turn the muffled voices of a distant party into the foundation of a recording. Start: 2012.11.23 … End: 2012.11.26

46: Disquiet0046-silentballot Investigate a recording of the voting process for its “sonic fingerprint.” Start: 2012.11.15 … End: 2012.11.19

45: Disquiet0045-sherlocksawyer Combine material from the public domain adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Tom Sawyer. Start: 2012.11.08 … End: 2012.11.12

44: Disquiet0044-sandy2012 Transition from storm to calm using field recordings from Sandy 2012 Start: 2012.11.01 … End: 2012.11.05

43: Disquiet0043-dazzledmachine Make mechanical roars from the sound of a retail space. Start: 2012.10.25 … End: 2012.10.29

42: Disquiet0042-naivemelody Use your oldest and newest instruments in recording an original track. Start: 2012.10.18 … End: 2012.10.22

41: Disquiet0041-dirtyminimalism Produce an original piece of music that fits the genre “dirty minimalism.” Start: 2012.10.11 … End: 2012.10.15

40: Disquiet0040-kirschnerplus1 Turn a Kenneth Kirschner piano/viola duet into a trio. Start: 2012.10.04 … End: 2012.10.08

39: Disquiet0039-remixingnowaki Combine three tracks from the Nowaki netlabel into one. Start: 2012.09.27 … End: 2012.10.01

38: Disquiet0038-asrealasitgets2 Create from scratch what appears to be a field recording of a large department store. Start: 2012.09.20 … End: 2012.09.27

37: Disquiet0037-asrealasitgets1 Record sound from a large retail space, preferably a department store. Start: 2012.09.13 … End: 2012.09.17

36: Disquiet0036-cstillconcerto Turning something “classical” into something “abstract expressionist,” in tribute to Clyfford Still. Start: 2012.09.06 … End: 2012.09.10

35: Disquiet0035-becksongreader Make music from a sample page of Beck’s Song Reader sheet music. Start: 2012.08.30 … End: 2012.09.03

34: Disquiet0034-theradius Use the theme song of the Radius broadcast as the source of an original composition. Start: 2012.08.23 … End: 2012.08.27

33: Disquiet0033-turntable Make music with a turntable but without vinyl. Start: 2012.08.16 … End: 2012.08.20

32: Disquiet0032-sonicvote Treat a chart of U.S. presidential-election polling data as graphic notation. Start: 2012.08.09 … End: 2012.08.13

31: Disquiet0031-onomatch Make music from a recording that is initially considered to be silent. Start: 2012.08.02 … End: 2012.08.06

30: Disquiet0030-nonsilent Make music from a recording that is initially considered to be silent. Start: 2012.07.26 … End: 2012.07.30

29: Disquiet0029-countzero Make music from running water, inspired by William Gibson’s novel Count Zero. Start: 2012.07.19 … End: 2012.07.23

28: Disquiet0028-netlabel Remix one of two tracks of a recent netlabel release. Start: 2012.07.12 … End: 2012.07.16

27: Disquiet0027-texting Make a track by turning the instructions text into sound. Start: 2012.07.05 … End: 2012.07.09

26: Disquiet0026-composting Record the music to a PSA using sounds sampled from your garbage bin. Start: 2012.06.28 … End: 2012.07.02

25: Disquiet0025-skedsong Turn one or two sets of sonic alerts (project 24) into a song. Start: 2012.06.21 … End: 2012.06.25

24: Disquiet0024-alertsuite Make a set of four functional sounds for email, IM, and other alerts. Start: 2012.06.14 … End: 2012.06.18

23: Disquiet0023-palindrone Make an extended drone structured as a palindrome. Start: 2012.06.07 … End: 2012.06.11

22: Disquiet0022-sonicdecay Record an instrument. Then degrade the recording, and make something of the result. Start: 2012.05.31 … End: 2012.06.04

21: Disquiet0021-4seasons Create a piece with one field recording representing each of the four seasons. Start: 2012.05.24 … End: 2012.05.28

20: Disquiet0020-nodebeat Make a piece of music with the NodeBeat app and one other instrument. Start: 2012.05.17 … End: 2012.05.21

19: Disquiet0019-rojiura Treat the provided photograph as a graphically notated score. Start: 2012.05.10 … End: 2012.05.14

18: Disquiet0018-3×3 Make a three minute track from three sounds, alternating their relative prominence. Start: 2012.05.03 … End: 2012.05.07

17: Disquiet0017-transition Make a seamless transition between an original field recording and a provided, preexisting track. Start: 2012.04.26 … End: 2012.04.30

16: Disquiet0016-backforeground Take samples of sandpaper and dice. Make a track with one as foreground and other as background. Start: 2012.04.19 … End: 2012.04.23

15: Disquiet0015-rgbinteract Create sounds from colors, and make them interact with each other. Start: 2012.04.12 … End: 2012.04.16

14: Disquiet0014-oumupo Do a sonic-narrative version of Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story. Start: 2012.04.05 … End: 2012.04.09

13: Disquiet0013-wildup Make new music from a multitrack recording of a Shostakovich symphony. Start: 2012.03.29 … End: 2012.04.02

12: Disquiet0012-cutpaste Use “cut and paste” to combine two 1928 recordings of rural music. Start: 2012.03.22 … End: 2012.03.26

11: Disquiet0011-motoring Record an everyday mechanical rhythm, and make something of it. Start: 2012.03.15 … End: 2012.03.19

10: Disquiet0010-reflect Remix one of the previous Junto project tracks. Start: 2012.03.08 … End: 2012.03.12

09: Disquiet0009-avian Create a cross-species collaboration between bird song and acoustic guitar. Start: 2012.03.01 … End: 2012.03.05

08: Disquiet0008-voice Rework a spoken-word recording of Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. Start: 2012.02.23 … End: 2012.02.27

07: Disquiet0007-subtract Create by removing material from an existing field recording. Start: 2012.02.16 … End: 2012.02.20

06: Disquiet0006-cylinder Remix three archival Edison cylinder recordings. Start: 2012.02.09 … End: 2012.02.13

05: Disquiet0005-layer Add sounds to a pre-existing field recording of everyday life. Start: 2012.02.02 … End: 2012.02.06

04: Disquiet0004-mfischer Remix the Marcus Fischer piece “Nearly There.” Start: 2012.01.26 … End: 2012.01.30

03: Disquiet0003-glass Record a live performance for “expanded glass harp.” Start: 2012.01.19 … End: 2012.01.23

02: Disquiet0002-duet Duet for fog horn and train whistle — using only those two provided samples. Start: 2012.01.12 … End: 2012.01.16

01: Disquiet0001-ice Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it. Start: 2012.01.05 … End: 2012.01.09

And this is the initial post I made on Disquiet.com, announcing the project on January 7, 2012: “Sneek Peek.”

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Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

[ February 5, 2011 / Department: field notes / Comment: 1 ]
  • Re-read Jasia Reichardt's Computer in Art for like 10th time. Slim 1971 book about computer graphics but with obvious musical application. #
  • Obituary for Egyptian artist/musician Ahmed Basiony (1978-2011) with partial list of exhibits: http://j.mp/fjAyvg via @africancolours #jan25 #
  • Morning sounds: cars, hard drive/fan, no birds, no planes, no bus; fridge asleep, like everyone else. #
  • It's a relief when you compare a musician's work positively to Depeche Mode's and said musician doesn't want to kill you. #
  • Malcolm Gladwell sets out to prove ideas by yoking together disconnected anecdotes. He must see Egypt as an anecdote that doesn't fit. #
  • "@timprebble: thoroughly enjoyed stuck/skipping CD in bookstore just now – went on for 10min – perfect soundtrack" #eartwit #glitch #chance #
  • "@LongplayerNow: Longplayer has been playing for 11 years 34 days 11 hours 57 minutes. http://j.mp/f6JLkY Sounding beautiful right now." #
  • Genius: Steve Reich's "Clapping Music" as performed by Lee Marvin and (mostly) Angie Dickinson: http://youtu.be/BY4bL_bO8sA via @pheezy #
  • Jon Bentley's Programming Pearls remix: abridged to one sentence from each of its 15 chapters http://j.mp/ghel1P by YubNub's @JonathanAquino #
  • Is there a Firefox extension that will give me a mild but noticeable electric shock when I have more than 20 tabs open at once? #
  • "@melchoir: Tyondai Braxton is gone right? idk if they'll sound as good" Likely won't. If it's just snarky mathrock I'll bail. [Re: Battles] #
  • I need to remind myself that in most cases @[whoever] isn't tweeting too much; to the contrary, I may be reading too closely. #
  • Battles: "new music coming soon." That's enough good news to get me through a hectic day: http://j.mp/eLJGZB #
  • Alternate memorial page for slain Egyptian musician Ahmed Basiony (1978-2011), with photos from Cairo protests: http://j.mp/h9xpx9 #
  • NB to self: Don't install Ubuntu Netbook Edition while on deadline. Don't install Ubuntu Netbook Edition while on deadline. Don't install… #
  • Maybe "John Barry" isn't really a specific composer, but merely a code name used by a long line of British secret-agent/composers. #
    • Read more »
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