- Hearing the sound world processed in realtime on iPhone/Touch with the @rjdj app = sonic heaven. It just hit build 0.9.9: http://is.gd/b0X8E #
- RT @soundscrapers I swear that the sound of brewing coffee is just as enticing as the smell. #
- First major change to our domestic soundscape: the city's paving the street. Will it dampen traffic noise or will cars drive faster/louder? #
- Headed across town in minivan masquerading as a taxi, its aged hull creaking like I'm deep in the bowels of a leaky sailboat lost at sea. #
- Great office sounds: business cards shuffled into a deck, printer settling into sleep mode, muffled chatter from closed conference rooms. #
- Desk across from mine covered with 200+ plastic shot glasses. Sounds of them being stacked, unstacked, moved around is the music of my day. #
- This would be an awesome Firefox addon: In Google Contacts you click on an email address; it triggers the default email client, not Gmail. #
- Morning sounds: matter of potential energy; construction equipment perched on street, awaiting hour when it may begin pneumatic pounding. #
- Morning listening: Larry Johnson's mix of field recordings from the great Wandering Ear netlabel: http://is.gd/aUkXI #
- Generally not a proponent of elective surgery, but glad to have upgraded the RAM from 1Gb to 2 on my new (and great) Toshiba NB305 laptop. #
- Monday morning sounds: more than anything, the uptick in car traffic, and the slightly tighter bus schedule, signal start of a workweek. #
- More LiveMetallica set-detail intensity: "first performance of Shortest Straw in 2010. only played six times in 2009 after 12-year absence." #
- Bonus: BBC Radiophonic book in August: http://is.gd/aSalj … RT @stasisfield Saturday for Delia Derbyshire fans: http://bit.ly/deliaderb #
- LiveMetallica-release trainspotting detail is extraordinary: "third performance of Sanitarium in 2010. last played January 31 in Sao Paulo" #
- Lee Scratch Perry's 73th birthday yesterday; JS Bach's 325th today. Seems like a good time to put the Solo Cello Suites through a Kaoss Pad. #
- Having one of those "Exactly how many of my browsers' tabs are emitting sound?" moments … #
- Sunday morning sounds: clack of intermittent typing from across the house, through mild droning haze of heater, hard drive, & fridge. #
- Another great Virginia Heffernan sound article, on the origin, shape, artificiality, & inherent human-made-ness of beeps: http://is.gd/aR9NU #
- Local church bells ring at 10:30. Recollecting what Gilbert & George said about this when they visited @deyoungmuseum — must revisit notes. #
- Belated RIP, Jun Seba (ç€¬å ´ 潤, b. 1974), Japanese hip-hop DJ/producer better known as Nujabes. Audio & tribute: http://is.gd/aQhVh #
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
• 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.
• 0460 / Creative Destruction / The Assignment: Show how you got to a tortured sound.
• 0459 / From a Distance / The Assignment: Make music intended to be heard from afar.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 463 consecutive weeks to date.