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, #generativeHow to Submit for Review • Elsewhere: Twitter (Disquiet + Junto), SoundCloud (Disquiet + Junto).

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

tag: voice

Disquiet Junto Project 0071: Wind Music

The Assignment: Create an original score to the trailer to Christine Knowlton's film about blind sailors.

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 Disquiet Junto project is our first to employ video. It’s long been on my mind to do a video project, in which the participants would provide a score to pre-existing footage. I am sure this won’t be the last.

This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, May 9, 2013, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, May 13, as the deadline.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0071: Wind Music

This week’s project is straightforward. It is an exercise in scoring for video. The video is one minute and four seconds long. It is the trailer to a film now in development. The title of the film is Sense the Wind and the director is Christine Knowlton. The subject of the film is blind sailors. The fact that film is about people for whom hearing is especially important made it very attractive. The director is excited to hear, and see, what we come up with. As her @SenseTheWind Twitter feed states of the film: “Blind sailors race across open water, learning not to fear what they cannot see — on boats or on land.”

The source video is here. It has all the audio, but no music:

http://vimeo.com/65429113

Rules: The only restriction is that you should not employ any copyright-protected audio (i.e., source material), because the intent is for the director to select one of the tracks, potentially, to serve as the backing music for the trailer. And yes, you may certainly employ audio from the trailer as source material for your music.

Considerations: When working on this project, it is encouraged that you map out the trailer in advance of scoring, and take into consideration emotional/narrative beats, and the way its momentum builds.

Video Upload: If you have time, please also add your finished music to the trailer and upload the video to Vimeo (or another service of your choosing). Given the time involved, should you chose to upload the video, there is no firm deadline, though it would be nice if you could get it done by Wednesday, May 15, two days after the music is due.

Deadline: Monday, May 13, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: Your track will be equal to or less than the length of the trailer, which is four seconds over one minute.

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 “disquiet0071-windmusic” 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:

I give the director permission to use my music in the trailer for the film Sense the Wind for promotional purposes.

More on this 71st Disquiet Junto project, which involves creating a backing score for the trailer to the film Sense the Wind, about competitive blind sailing, directed by Christine Knowlton, at:

http://disquiet.com/2013/05/09/disquiet0071-windmusic/

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

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

More on the film at

http://www.sensethewind.com/

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Ashley Paul’s “Soak the Ocean,” During & After (MP3s)

The streaming original and a downloadable Pete Swanson remix

There are few pleasures like hearing the song removed from a song. After Pete Swanson has finished with Ashley Paul‘s “Soak the Ocean,” what is left is like the skin of a snake after the snake has gone on to shadier pastures. The original song is a mix of gestural near-microsonic composition and lightly layered vocals, more intoned than sung. It is a pleasure on its own, Paul’s tremulous voice moving amid the fragile plectrum geometries of the accompaniment. True to the snakeless-skin image, Swanson has largely excised the vocal — the inhabitant has moved on — and left the instrumental bed, which he has in turn made more motoric. There are hints of her voice, a syllable allowed to repeat here and there, a phrase even less robust than the ethereal original, more a vestige, a memory, of the song than a new rendering of it. The beat gains momentum as the track proceeds, memories left behind, as it moves forward into a deeper, richer, harsher, welcoming noise.

For comparison, this is the original version, from the Paul album Line The Clouds, which came out on REL Records in late March:

Swanson was half of Yellow Swans (the other half having been Gabriel Mindel Saloman), whose Going Places was one of my favorite commercial albums of 2010. The magazine xlr8r.com covered the remix back in February. More from Ashley Paul at ashleypaul.net. More from Pete Swanson at twitter.com/pete_swans.

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Scanning the Radio Waves (MP3)

A tactile exploration by Jesse Eric Schmidt

Jesse Eric Schmidt does not use the scan button on his radio to search for something to listen to. He uses the scan button to compose something to be listened to, something that collectively he has called a “rhythmic modular inventory” of what is on at that moment, the moment that is in fact an expanse of contiguous moments, the chance moments that occur between the start and end of his performance. The result is something that emphasizes the ephemeral nature of a radio signal. Much radio scanning by casual listeners has to do with finding a song worth lingering on — and in the vast majority of cases, that means to have temporary access to something that one knows is firmly available elsewhere: on YouTube, encased in a CD, in a box of 7″ singles at the back of one’s closet. Schmidt never lingers for long, instead allowing each audio element to commune with what preceded it and with what one anticipates will come next, each chess move enacted with the white noise signature of radio static.

Track originally posted for free download at theradius.us. More from Schmidt at jesseericschmidt.com. The image below is a grid of his varied activities:

20130707-jeschmidtradius

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Weary Decadence (MP3)

A collaboration between Michael Ash Sharbaugh and Adrian Hallam

With its lulling melody, ominous overtones, and the fragments of lightly tweaked vocal elements, “The Parting,” credited to Michael Ash Sharbaugh and Adrian Hallam (the latter aka Blue Room Green), could be a lost Angelo Badalamenti track. It has the enjoyably coy longueurs of weary decadence. Hallam is credited with guitar, Oberheim synth, and found sounds, and Sharbaugh with vocals, synthesizers, found sounds, and sound manipulations:

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/michael-ash-sharbaugh. More from Hallam, who is based in Australia, at twitter.com/BlueRoomGreen. More from Sharbaugh, who is based in Decatur, Georgia, at twitter.com/MDSharbaugh.

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Brian Reitzel on Music for Film (MP3)

A podcast MP3 from the Echoes show

A while back, Brian Reitzel (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Boss) talked with the Echoes radio show’s John Diliberto about his scores for film and television. Their discussion had a particular emphasis on the way his efforts as a music supervisor overlap with his composing (MP3). It’s especially interesting to learn how Reitzel’s editing/remixing provides a Venn Diagram overlap between his composing and his music selection — it comes across as almost seamless. Shortly after the broadcast, Boss was cancelled, and unfortunately the interview doesn’t cover his work on Hannibal. Reitzel’s latest film score is for the new Sofia Coppola movie, Bling Ring.

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Download at podbay.fm.

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