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.

tag: field-recording

Disquiet Junto Project 0072: Domestic Score

The Assignment: Make a domestic score from sounds recorded in your own home.

[ May 16, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

20130516-doorbell

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 assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 16, 2013, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, May 20, as the deadline.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0072: Domestic Score

This week’s project is based on field recordings of wherever it is that you live. The goal is to produce a relaxing score to your domestic life by employing noises that intrude on that life.

Step 1: Make a recording of your doorbell, or whatever noise it is that someone would make when announcing their arrival at your residence. If you don’t have a functioning doorbell, then, for example, record the sound of a knock on your door.

Step 2: Record between one and three additional sounds that intrude on your life: your phone’s ring, perhaps, or the alarm on your microwave oven.

Step 3: You will now have between one and four sounds recorded. Using those sounds as source material, compose a new, original piece of music that could easily be described as gentle or meditative. You can transform them as much as you choose, but each should in some way still be evident and recognizable in the mix. You cannot add any other sounds to the project.

Deadline: Monday, May 20, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

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

Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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.

Title/Tag: Include the term “disquiet0072-domesticscore” 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 72nd Disquiet Junto project, which involves making a domestic score from sounds recorded in your own home, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/16/disquiet0072-domesticscore/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Image found via wikimedia.org.

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16°30’37″N, 88°22’1″W (MP3)

Belize field recording by Tony Myatt

[ May 15, 2013 / Department: field notes / Leave a comment ]

20130515-placenia

The 95th Touch Radio entry is by Tony Myatt, and it is another in the series’ enticingly detailed field recordings. This one was made in Placenia Bay, in Belize. The entries in the Touch series tend to fall into one of two camps: pure field recording and sound in which field recordings serve as source material (though there are, increasingly, also documents of humans that we call live concert recordings). Myatt’s presents itself as a subset of the pure field recording approach, in that it appears not to be a single event but a sequence of sonic shapshots collected into one MP3.

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Writes Myatt at the opening of his journal of the recording event:

After a long day of finicky experimentation in the sun, I returned to the bay to wash salt water from the equipment and to hose down. From 16°30’37″N, 88°22’1″W I looked out on a tranquil evening scene and decided to attempt one last recording.

I had recorded throughout the day in shallow coral seas off the coast of Belize. I’d attempted to capture a spatial impression of the clouds of clicks and pops produced by crustacea and who-knows-what; a sound present at almost every ocean location on Earth.

Track originally posted for free download at touchradio.org.uk.

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Anonymous Dawn Chorus

The 94th in the TouchRadio series, all urban birdsong, recorded this very morning

[ May 1, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

20130430-Radio94

Even by its own relatively taciturn standards, the TouchRadio series has outdone — underdone? — itself with the latest entry in its ongoing free MP3 releases. Titled “Urban Dawn Chorus,” the nearly 70-megabyte file, just shy of an hour in length, is a field recording of the title subject, reportedly taped in London — specifically “Balham, south west London, from 0400 HRS 1st May 2013,” which would have been this very morning. No artist is specified, not on the podcast entry page, nor in the track’s metadata. It’s worth noting that TouchRadio regular Jez riley French used the phrase “dawn chorus” in a track’s description back in January, so perhaps that’s a clue. While consisting largely of birdsong heard from varying degrees of distance, the track also, true to its urban title reference, occasionally witnesses the intrusion of automobiles, though their light whir could have, had even less information accompanied the track, been mistaken for a nearby river (MP3).

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Track originally posted for free download at touchradio.org.uk.

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The Sonic Tourist (MP3)

Old Clone takes us on a tour of Chicago, ears only.

[ April 27, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

In due time, aural snapshots will match their camera equivalent in frequency, in commonplaceness. The microphone embedded in so many devices — most notably cell phones, but also tablets, laptops, gaming devices — will be used casually, as well as expertly, to capture a moment by an ordinary tourist, or student, or business traveler. We’ll share these with friends and relatives, and thanks to the means by which tools such as Flickr, Instagram, Twitter, and, of course, SoundCloud have trained us, we’ll share them with strangers as well. These aural snapshots will be routine expressions of everyday mundanity and they will pay welcome witness to majestic documentary wonder.

And, of course, for some this future is already an accepted habit, or at least a habit in the making. Old Clone, a U.S.-based musician, recently posted this following montage of a trip to Chicago. It consists of 10 clips (“made on a little portable recorder”) stitched into a singular whole. In part that whole is simply a matter of it being one single track, a sequence with beginning and middle and end, but Old Clone also augmented the original material (“Stretched and bent, but mostly just shuffled around”), retaining its real-world-ness, but in turn providing a singular patina to the overall undertaking:

Old Clone credits an experiment by Robert Rizzi of Kolding, Denmark, with inspiring him. This appears to be the Rizzi track being referred to:

Old Clone track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/oldclone. Rizzi track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/rizzi.

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Disquiet Junto Project 0069: The 4 Elements

The Assignment: Make music from field recordings of earth, water, air, and fire.

[ April 25, 2013 / Department: downstream / Leave a comment ]

20130425-4elements

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 assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, April 25, 2013, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, April 29, as the deadline.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0069: The 4 Elements

This is a shared-sample project. Its theme is “The Four Elements.” The goal is to create a new piece of music by employing the following four source recordings, each of which is intended to represent one of the elements: earth, water, air, and fire. (Alternately, you can record your own source audio for any or all of the elements.) Your track should be be divided into four segments of roughly equal length, one for each element. Any two consecutive segments may overlap, but only briefly, up to three seconds. You can manipulate the source audio in any way you choose, but you cannot add any other source audio.

Earth: http://www.freesound.org/people/ABouch/sounds/174938/

Water: http://www.freesound.org/people/aesqe/sounds/39901/

Air: http://www.freesound.org/people/Bosk1/sounds/144083/

Fire: http://www.freesound.org/people/suonho/sounds/3202/

Deadline: Monday, April 29, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

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

Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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.

Title/Tag: Include the term “disquiet0069-4elements” 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. Of course, edit/omit the source-audio text, should you decide to produce your own source recordings:

More on this 69th Disquiet Junto project, which involves creating a single piece of music from samples that represent each of the four elements, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/04/25/disquiet0069-4elements/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

All the source audio is from Freesound.org. The earth sample is by ABouch, the water by aesqe, the wind by Bosk1, and the fire by suonho:

Earth: http://www.freesound.org/people/ABouch/sounds/174938/

Water: http://www.freesound.org/people/aesqe/sounds/39901/

Wind: http://www.freesound.org/people/Bosk1/sounds/144083/

Fire: http://www.freesound.org/people/suonho/sounds/3202/

Image via wikimedia.org

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