- Morning sounds: spoon against bowl, baby's small cries as she wakes, cars passing on wet street, hard drives. #
- RIP, bassist Walter Payton Jr. (age 68), link between Preservation Hall Jazz Band & Lee Dorsey; father of Nicholas Payton http://is.gd/gtdRt #
- I love getting packages from Russia http://ow.ly/i/51dO #
- iPod Touch (gen 4) + Bluetooth keyboard (Stowaway) + G1 phone + Barnacle Wifi Tether (app) = pretty darn good and highly mobile setup #
- Picturing the vast warehouses where the robots making pre-election robo-calls will be stored once election day passes. Sleep well, robots. #
- [email protected] Good question, where to start listening to Milton Babbitt. I'd say this great Babbitt/Amirkhanian interview http://is.gd/gsqNZ in reply to tedfriedman #
- Morning sounds: hard drives, baby's breathing and trumpeting, light traffic, and what may be a neighbor's dryer. #
- Trading emails with Nigerian scamster trying to trick me out of iPod I put up on Craigslist is like communicating with brain-damaged cyborg. #
- Dreaming of a Wayne Thiebaud / Steve McQueen mash-up, "24th Street Intersection" meets Bullitt. #
- Man, now Nitzer Ebb is back. Who isn't back at this point? I want a Skylab reunion. #
- Dear @myspace congrats on redesign; now howzabout including blog posts in emails instead of just providing a generic link back to yourself. #
- Used to cafes playing music. Used to earbud sound bleed. Not used to multiple people at cafe on laptops watching videos without headphones. #
- Gotten in the habit lately of turning off music shortly before noon, in order to hear the bells. As habits go, it's a good one. #
- Once again don't notice that I've left the kid's Fisher Price Calming Vibrations seat on for half an hour, empty — calming, indeed. #
- "The National Do Not Call Registry doesn't cover political messages…you've probably noticed that lately" via @lifehacker #chatterpollution #
- Fireworks. #
- "Decibels measure…intensity of…trouble…physicist gets into because he didnʼt take off his shoes first" per CNiemann http://is.gd/glq5N #
- The iOS autospell for "Napster" is "baldish" #
- Happiness is discovering a brand new izakaya in your neighborhood. #
- The Radio Shack (excuse me, the Shack — oy) near my house is closed today due to "technical difficulties," according to handwritten sign. #
- Tuesday noon siren heard from inside ramen shop in SF's Union Square, muffled by walls, conversation, and slurping. #
- Elevators are Tetris in reverse, bodies shifting at each floor so as to maximize mutual distance. #
- According to the revamped Electric Company, the "ninja of the alphabet" is … the silent e. #thistweetisbroughttoyouby #
- RIP, tuba player Harvey Phillips (b. 1929), whose Ringling Bros apprenticeship taught him music serves an alarm: http://nyti.ms/aynoN0 #
- Honking from numerous automobiles pierces my headphones on the bus; it signals a win by the Giants. #
- "'the people's version' of the [Brion Gysin] dreamachine cell phone app" http://is.gd/geqc5 via @tommoody #
Current Activities
Upcoming
• December 13, 2021: This day marks the 25th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• December 28, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the Instagr/am/bient compilation.
• January 6, 2021: This day marks the 10th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.Recent
• July 28, 2021: This day marked the 500th consecutive weekly project in the Disquiet Junto music community.
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the 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.
• A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the 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.)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
• 0507 / In DD’s Key of C / The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key.
• 0506 / Wipe Out / The Assignment: Take something whole and erase half of it.
• 0505 / Line Out / The Assignment: Share a track, get feedback, and give feedback.
• 0504 / Transform Formula / The Assignment: Take a sound, change it, and contrast that with the original.
• 0503 / Sing Song / The Assignment: Record a song using only your voice transformed beyond recognition.Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 507 consecutive weeks to date.