- "knife that slices through any ambient noise on a block in a particularly clamorous part of the city" http://nyti.ms/fCwfTI on cab whistles #
- Does all work and no sound make Jack a dull typist? #
- Facebook page of Egyptian electronic musician Ahmed Basiony, slain during Jan uprising, 309 followers shy of 10,000 http://j.mp/f3oOz2 #
- [email protected] @ilkae All interesting takes. I do think that embouchure ultimately is about the intimacy of the man-machine interface. #
- RIP, Tommy Bermejo, founder of our neighborhood restaurant Tommy's, founded in 1965. He's from Oxkutzcab, Yucatan. And he knew his tequila. #
- "No results found for 'Skinner Beatbox'" #
- What is the digital equivalent of embouchure? #
- Glad to hear @kickstarter Morocco project of @jfpetersphoto @MagaBo @Tal1es1n & @DJRupture met goal. I was the first backer, back on 2/7. #
- The foghorns have returned with wild tales of their adventures. #
- Photos of the terracotta army of the @InternetArchive http://j.mp/gRkOZv #richmonddistrict #
- Buy a Susan Philipsz book via Tesco's estore, she having done sound art piece ("Filter") in actual Tesco in 2004 http://j.mp/hY2HAx #meta #
- "Bix to Buxtehude to Boulez / The little white dog on the Victor label / Listens long and hard as he is able" James Merrill, via @robsheff #
- Morning sounds: drone of neighbor's vacuum cleaner is creating sonic moiré patterns with drone of nearby construction work. #
- My dev interview on @thicketapp got adapted for @csindependent, local newspaper of half its creative team, @morganpackard http://j.mp/g24ruG #
- Mongoliad.com: "All … subscriptions (except Lifetime Patron, unless you are reincarnated) renew automatically after the indicated period." #
- Thinking about the homebrew singularity at the core of Daniel Suarez's novel Daemon: http://j.mp/eZquRJ #mmorpg #games #augmented @goodreads #
- When people speak of The Conversation, The Parallax View & Three Days of the Condor they should also speak of Colossus: The Forbin Project. #
- Just got my first campaign call in San Francisco mayor election. Q: "Do you know whom you'll support?" A: "Yes, whoever calls me the least." #
- Meet Xiang Zhang, Berkeley scientist developing plasmon lasers inspired by the echo effect of whispering galleries: http://j.mp/ezmvZW #
- My buddy Eric dedicates himself to covering superhero (non-graphic) novels. Follow @superheronovels #comics #manga #capeswithoutpictures #
- More than a new tablet, I just need someone to show me how to hack a better speaker into my Toshiba netbook. #
- [email protected] Yeah, I'm not opposed to autotune by any means, but some implementations do inspire in me a kind of road rage. #
- This Ukulele Kills Right Notes. #
- Apparently the WrongNotes.com URL is available via some GoDaddy service. Maybe someone will make use of it. #bent #blue #ipad2 #
- "@cinchel: I like to contrast that w/ a Lee Ranaldo quote: 'There are no wrong notes, only new ones'" [Yeah, and second time, it's a theme.] #
- Pondering iPad 2 purchase. Celebrating end of Apple event by playing "Imagination" (Van Heusen/Burke) on my uke with plenty of bad notes. #
- This, though, is inspiring: "It's in Apple's DNA that technology is not enough. It's tech married with the liberal arts and the humanities." #
- Mid-morning sounds: rough wind, cars on wet street, the light click of the liveblog of Apple event at @arstechnica #
- And this, from Jobs: "Anyone can make music now." Wondering in contrast with "when." #
- [email protected] Yeah, having flashback to MIDI demo I witnessed at Vegas tech event in early 1990s: guy at piano extolling end of bad notes. #
- Pondering this phrase from iPad 2 demo of Garage Band: "They make it so you can't play a bad note." #
- Finishing last 50 pages of Daniel Suarez's novel Daemon while keeping eye on @engadget Apple event liveblog. There must be a connection. #
- RIP, Mark Ryan (b. 1959), former guitarist (as the Kid) for Adam and the Ants, later successful playwright (Dr Jekyll) http://j.mp/eIgTU2 #
- Recuperating from flu. Hit the family hard. Fortunately, the six-month-old recuperates quickly. Get me via email if you need to nudge me. #
- Next month marks 12th Disquiet.com "Sketches of Sound" entry. Also lined up: excellent July 4 piece. If you want to participate, lemme know. #
- Tuesday noon siren: so peculiar on a bright, almost blindingly sunny day. #
- Can someone explain the new cover to DeLillo's White Noise? http://j.mp/gsoDg6 Are headphones mentioned in the novel? What's with the cross? #
- Mid-morning sounds: as intense family-wide flu slowly comes to a close, reportage of household sounds will become more publicly palatable. #
- These OS X Lion screenshots have me wondering if Apple may also be getting past its no-widgets mode on iOS. #
- RIP, Nobutoshi Kihara (b. 1926), developer of "Japan’s first tape recorder and transistor radio" and the Betamax http://is.gd/lhU1wg #
- As an experiment, I kept track of how many music PR emails I got in one week: 267. Not a meaningful statistical sample, but still. #
- I think I need a capo for my ukulele. The older sheet music in the library is A D F# B (not G C E A). #
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.