- Why is the Dyson Ball vacuum cleaner not called the Dyson Sphere: Missed opportunity? Copyright issue? In-joke? #
- Watched 3 Days of the Condor last night for the first time. Seriously reconsidering my lack of attention to Dave Gruisin. #
- Listening from living room to early-morning traffic; wondering what would be the loudest sound in the house if I got a quieter fridge. #
- Yow, another fight on my MUNI bus route — a drunk passenger beating up on the driver before running off. #
- Happiness is a People Under the Stairs instrumental slowed in the Sonorasaurus app with echo decay and delay on at the highest level. #
- Glenn Branca, former noise hero; now, based on this NYT piece, oddly uninformed curmudgeon: http://bit.ly/6d6oE7 via @jdkun & @jesshopp #
- Morning sounds: internal HVAC, passing airplanes, and nearby motorcycles — together in perfect harmony. #
- Just drove 25 straight blocks on Geary Blvd (in San Francisco) with green lights the whole way, a first. Bonus: not a single honk. #
- Very much appreciating the recent addition of favicons to Google Reader. #
- RIP, Don Voegeli (b. 1920), composer of one of the most-recorded melodies: All Things Considered theme http://is.gd/52FbJ http://is.gd/52FcA #
- There's nothing like coming home to a box full of books from MIT Press. #
- Now I understand what the SoundCloud DropBox is for. Mine's at http://soundcloud.com/disquiet — thanks for the explanation, @mrbiggsdotcom #
- There's something distinctly civilized about page proofs, even in the age of the emailed PDF attachment. #
- Enough helicopters overhead to form a small chamber ensemble. #
- Vinyl LP sales up: "$57 million in sales in 2008, … double the previous year and the best for the format since 1990": http://is.gd/51UKy #
- Saw movie '(Untitled)' w/ Adam Goldberg as avant-sound composer. Great David Lang score. Funny in-jokes. Not sure it has a point of view. #
- The passing helicopter is a rock band. The humble office is a speaker with a rattling tweeter. (Pun acknowledged but unintended.) #
- Pitch control is nice, but I wish my Buddha Machines had a switch to simulate the effect of near-dead batteries. #
- Just remembered that last night I dreamed I found the complete tab for all of Billy Childish in a bookstore & intended then to buy a guitar. #
- RIP, Jeanne-Claude (b. 1935), flame-haired partner and wife of immersive installation artist Christo. #
- Tristan Perich's forthcoming gadget-in-a-CD-jewel-box maybe not the wisest thing to pull out of your bag on a plane: http://is.gd/50vqf #
Current Activities
Upcoming
• February 5, 2020: The first session of the 15-week course I teach at the Academy of Art about the role of sound in the media landscape.
• April 15, 2020: A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the forthcoming book The Oxford Handbook of Social Media and Music Learning (Oxford University Press), edited by Stephanie Horsley, Janice Waldron, and Kari Veblen. (Details at oup.com.)
• December 13, 2020: This day marks the 24th anniversary of Disquiet.com.
• January 7, 2021: This day marks the 9th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Dates TBA
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the forthcoming book The Music Production Cookbook: Ready-made Recipes for the Classroom (Oxford University Press), edited by Adam Patrick Bell. Ethan Hein wrote one, and I did, too.
• At least two live group concerts by Disquiet Junto members in the San Francisco Bay Area are in the works for 2020.
• I have liner notes for a musician's solo album and an essay in a book about an art event due out. I'll announce as the release dates come into focus.Ongoing
• The Disquiet Junto series of weekly communal music projects explore constraints as a springboard for creativity and productivity. There is a new project each Thursday afternoon (California time), and it is due the following Monday at 11:59pm: disquiet.com/junto.
• My book on Aphex Twin's landmark 1994 album, Selected Ambient Works Vol. II, was published as part of the 33 1/3 series, an imprint of Bloomsbury. It has been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018).
disquiet junto
Background
Since January 2012, the Disquiet Junto has been an ongoing weekly collaborative music-making community that employs creative constraints as a springboard for creativity. Subscribe to the announcement list (each Thursday), listen to tracks by participants from around the world, read the FAQ, and join in.Recent Projects
• 0465 / You Thank / The Assignment: Make a piece of music for someone or something for which you feel thankful.
• 0464 / Blanket Song / The Assignment: Play over a song, and then remove the original.
• 0463 / Making the Gradient / The Assignment: Make a piece of music inspired by the concept of a gradient.
• 0462 / Vade in Pace / The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.
• 0461 / Goldilocks Zone / The Assignment: Navigate a sonic space between the hospitable and the inhospitable.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 465 consecutive weeks to date.