The Disquiet Junto is a group I founded over a decade ago. The purpose of the group is to use constraints to stoke creativity. Each Thursday morning, shortly after midnight, I post a clearly defined compositional assignment, and members of the Junto are to invited to complete the assignment by 11:59pm the following Monday. The initial Junto assignment was made on January 5, 2012, the first Thursday of the new year. It’s continued weekly since then.
The inspirations for the group’s existence are numerous. There are the weekly Beat Battles sponsored by Stonesthrow, in which dozens if not hundreds of participants craft instrumental hip-hop beats from a shared sample. There is the tradition of Oulipo, whose embrace of creative constraints is personified by one of its co-founders, the author Raymond Queneau. Several comics artists with whom I have worked, including Matt Madden, have bonded under the banner of Oubapo, and there is, in fact, a related musical tradition, which goes by Oumupo. The Iron Chef of Music projects at kracfive.com (which were, for many years, a big part of the Downstream department here on Disquiet) influenced my thinking, as well.
The word “junto” comes from the name of a society that Benjamin Franklin formed in Philadelphia in 1727 as “a structured forum of mutual improvement.” In Franklin’s honor, the third Disquiet Junto project explored the glass harp, an instrument he experimented with in the development of what he christened the armonica.
The idea for the Junto arose after the completion of a Disquiet project at the end of December 2011. That project, Instagr/am/bient, was more loosely curated than other such projects I had previously commissioned, beginning in 2006 with Our Lives in the Bush of Diquiet. Instagr/am/bient proved quite popular, with over 20,000 listens and almost 4,000 downloads in its first month (it went on to hundreds of thousands), and this success suggested to me that I experiment with an even looser format — the irony being that this “looser” format is, in fact, dedicated to constraint. Much to my surprise, the very first Junto project resulted, in four days, in over 50 original pieces of music by as many musicians. The assignment was to record the sound of ice cubes in a glass and to make something musical of that recording.
If for the musicians involved, the Disquiet Junto is an experiment in creative constraints, for me it is as much an experiment in what I would describe as “community organizing as a form of curation.”
The group initially communicated primarily on Twitter and via the Groups function within SoundCloud (unfortunately, SoundCloud dispensed with Groups a long time ago). These days most conversation occurs on the llllllll.co message board, as well as on the Junto Slack (email me at [email protected] if you’d like to join). There’s an email announcement list for the group. If you would like to be added to the subscription list, you can sign up at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto. And there’s an F.A.Q.
This page serves as an index of the assignments. They are listed here in chronological order:
These are the weekly projects to date:
0002: duet for foghorn and steam whistle
0005: adding sounds to everyday life
0006: remixing archival Edison cylinders
0007: create through subtraction
0008: rework Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography
0009: cross-species collaboration
0010: remix a previous Junto track
0011: everyday mechanical rhythms
0013: remixing wild Up playing Shostakovich
0014: sonic version of Matt Madden’s Oubapo story
0017: transition between field and composed
0019: graphic score (photo by Yojiro Imasaka)
0026: making music from your trash
0027: turm the instruction text into sound
0028: remix a netlabel release
0029: music from water, inspired by William Gibson’s Count Zero
0031: Revisiting a 1955 Yoko Ono Fluxus piece
0032: sonify the 2012 U.S. presidential election polling data
0033: making music with a turntable but without vinyl
0034: Use the theme song of the Radius broadcast as the source of an original composition
0035: Make music from a sample page of Beck’s Song Reader sheet music
0036: Reworking Bach into abstract expressionism
0038: Make a fake field recording
0039: Combine three tracks from the Nowaki netlabel into one
0040: Turn a Kenneth Kirschner duet into a trio
0042: Record a “naive melody” with your oldest and newest instruments
0043: Make mechanical roars from the sound of a retail space
0044: Transition from storm to calm using field recordings from Sandy 2012
0045: Combine material from the public domain adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Tom Sawyer
0046: Investigate a recording of the voting process for its “sonic fingerprint.”
0047: Turn the muffled voices of a distant party into the foundation of a recording.
0049: Make a track, 50% of which is the sound of a tape cassette deck in motion.
0050: Encode a word or phrase in Morse Code and employ that as a track’s rhythm.
0051: Create a 2012 audio diary with a dozen five-second segments.
0052: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Bump Foot netlabel.
0053: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it (redux).
0054: Create an original musical score for the day’s news.
0055: Combine two Nils Frahm solo piano pieces into one.
0056: Make music from the sound of the tick of a clock.
0057: Use sounds from the Phonetics Lab Archive at UCLA to depict emotions.
0058: Celebrate the Creative Commons by remixing three tracks from the Endless Ascent netlabel.
0059: Make music from three randomly assigned vowels.
0060: Record something about yourself and your music/sound in your own words and voice.
0061: Record a single for which the cover would be the image suggested by a @textinstagram tweet.
0062: Make music using just three sine waves.
0063: Make a new piece of music based on an echo-laden re-recording of Gregorian chant.
0064: Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound.
0065: Compose music atop a randomly assigned segment of a pre-existing track by Jared Brickman.
0066: Collaborate posthumously with the late Jeffrey (Nofi) Melton.
0067: Compose music for a phrase from Homer’s The Odyssey
0068: Combine three songs from the first release of the new deriv.cc netlabel.
0069: Make music from field recordings of earth, water, air, and fire.
0070: Create a single piece of music from two tones and three beats.
0071: Create an original score to the trailer to Christine Knowlton’s film about blind sailors.
0072: Make a domestic score from sounds recorded in your own home.
0073: Read a map of the San Andreas Fault as if it were a graphic notation score
0074: Turn applause into music.
0075: Make a 3-part, 18-second suite with the Vine app.
0077: Combine music from three different netlabels to create one track.
0078: Create music by removing sound from a century-old Edison Symphony Orchestra recording.
0079: Remix music from the movie Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966) to make a downtempo instrumental.
0080: Make music with a metronome.
0081: Create generative music with four loops of differing lengths
0082: Create a minimal techno track using elements of a Haydn string quartet.
0084: Connect two distinct field recordings via a transition between isolated elements.
0085: Make a song with three simple parts (oscillator, drum machine, field recording).
0086: Your next single is titled “Hyperloop.” Now record it.
0087: Make five varied doorbell rings.
0088: Make a track simulating 3D sound.
0089: Use the sounds of interstellar space to make “goodbye music” for the Voyager 1 space probe.
0090: Explore the sound of a radio caught between stations.
0091: Explore the musical qualities of footsteps.
0092: Use room tone to shape a three-part suite.
0093: Combine music from three different netlabels to create one track.
0094: Record an unlikely vocal trio with the sound of a bird, a kitten, and a pig.
0095: Musicians post recent tracks with the express purpose of getting constructive feedback.
0096: Pay tribute to the late Lou Reed’s noise classic.
0097: Decode the music in a phrase from a book.
0098: Combine original three spoken texts into one track.
0099: Compose an 8-bit melody based on the “E G D” startup sound of the Xbox One.
0100: Record the sound of water boiling and make something of it.
101: Make a phase composition based on the sounds of three switches.
0102: Record original secular holiday music: glistening, reflective, gentle.
0103: Make a song based on last week’s “sonic tinsel” project.
0104: Create a 2013 audio diary with a dozen five-second segments.
0105: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it (re-redux)
0106: Treat the weather chart as a graphically notated score.
0107: Use a wind chime as the rhythmic foundation for a track.
0108: Create a soundscape for the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra.
0109: Insert musical objects into an urban soundscape.
0110: Celebrate the 100th birthday of that old cut-up, William S. Burroughs.
0111: Rework work from Impulsive Habitat, Xylem, Zeromoon (via actsofsilence.com).
0112: Turn your week’s dayplanner into music.
0114: Combine elements of Dave Seidel’s album ~60 Hz (Irritable Hedgehog).
0115: Record a duet with yourself, divided by a wall.
0116:Record a score for daily dental hygiene.
0117: Compose an original piece of music in response to a haiku.
0118: What is the room tone of the Internet?
0119: Write music to accompany the typing of a work of fiction.
0120: Write a song based on the heartbeat of Marcel Duchamp.
0121: Two projects of varying complexity inspired by Edward Frenkel’s book Love and Math.
0122: Create music for a fake movie whose plot is “Poltergeist meets Wreck-It Ralph.”
0123: Help Gizmodo create the soundscape of the home of the future.
0124: Recombinate work from the netlabels addSensor, As4cords, and Audiotalaia.
0126: Change the meter of a 1918 jazz recording by the Louisiana Five.
0127: Record the sound of your library — and then maybe make something of it.
0128: Write a score to accompany a short piece of text you wrote a year ago today.
0129: Create tones to match five of the new emoji.
0130: Create a composition by altering an ongoing loop
0131: Create a composition that naturally extends from the whistle of a tea kettle.
0132: Collaborate with the late Jeffrey (Nofi) Melton using a previous tribute track.
0133: Compose an especially short and concise composition.
0134: Compose music to accompany one minute of a dance video by Cori Marquis.
0135: Record the sonic equivalent of air conditioning.
0136: Recombinate work from the netlabels Nowaki, Phantom Channel, and Rec72.
0137: Produce an original piece of music that fits the genre “old-time electronica.”
0138: Compose a 2.5-minute soundtrack to complement a work of silent video art.
0139: Create and upload a track that exemplifies one key creative process you’ve developed.
0140: Take a recent track of your own and “cover” it with different equipment.
0141: Interpret a New Yorker cover as a graphically notated score.
0142: Make music from the near silence of phone calls.
0143: Play a live duet with the world outside your window.
0144: Remove parts from an unfinished composition to create a finished composition.
0145: Make a short piece of music inspired by a provided verse.
0146: Make a short piece of music based on a typographic symbol for the word “silence.”
0147: Record 8 seconds of white noise in your own personal style.
0149: Take a walk around the block and make something from it.
0150: Record a subtle personal mobile score.
0153: Record a short sound intended to be set on repeat.
0154: Create a track from two locked grooves
0155: Take a track and its remix and meld them into something new.
0156: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen five-second segments.
0157: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.
0158: Go from noise to signal with words.
0159: See what music the steps of a favorite recipe yield. 0160: Make a one-minute field recording starting right at midnight (wherever you are). 0161: Create a new track from three tracks from three different netlabels.
0162: Use Paul Lamere’s “Girl Talk in a Box” to gain a new perspective on your own music.
0163: Create a new late-night ambience with sounds from a handful of pre-existing field recordings.
0164: Create music that emerges from the sound of fireworks.
0165: Create a composition that explores the sonic resonance of Harry Bertoia’s iconic side chair.
0166: Take a pre-existing track, slow it in descending states, and then add something to it.
0168: Create an original, multi-part piece with a single audio source.
0169: Make a track using only an HTML5 drum machine.
0170: Create a one-minute track that takes the project title as its guiding aesthetic.
0171: Rework a pre-existing field recording in response to an Oblique Strategies card.
0172: Do something analog, then do the same thing digitally, and then combine them.
0173: Do an “over” rather than a “cover” of a pre-existing track.
0174: Play something on your favorite instrument — wearing gloves.
0175: Record the composition on top of the rough draft.
0176: Create a composition on top of a rough idea first recorded on your cellphone.
0178: Emphasize the bells in an urban field recording.
0179: Show off (and explain) one thing you’ve learned recently about an instrument/tool.
0180: Use the Russian nesting dolls as a model for a musical composition.
0181: Imagine your favorite instrument is dreaming while it sleeps — what does it sound like?
0182: Do a rendition of Ethan Hein’s laptop orchestra score by yourself.
0183: Insert something that plays across the stereo spectrum in an after-dark field recording.
0184: Explore the relationship between segments that consist of 1 bar, 8 bars, and 4 bars.
0185: Summon up a memory, and then summarize it in sound.
0186: Explore the sonic contours of a word you’ve spelled out loud frequently: your name.
0187: Shift between three renditions of the same melody.
0188: Take a provided track and make it more complex.
0189: Create a dense stack of attack-free tonal material from one audio source.
0190: Set two out-of-sync loops atop each other, and then add sonic glue.
0191: One chord to rule them all — on several instruments.
0192: Record a 10-second loop to accompany an insane cat GIF.
0193: Record a short composition for two instruments that occasionally intersect.
0194: Record the sound of a clock and make something playful and sweet out of it.
0195: Make music for a Caochangdi Village National Day party.
0196: Sight-read the whiteboard notation from a children’s music class.
0197: Sight-read newly uncovered choral music from the 10th century.
0198: Create an overture for a full-length album.
0199: Make a field recording of a field recording in a spaceship.
0200: Create a score to a Richard Kadrey short story — using his own voice as source audio.
0201: Encapsulate an album for efficient yet meaningful consumption.
0202: Create an audiobook chapter from the new essay collection The Cost of Freedom.
0203: Add something to a rhythm track titled “It.”
0204: Add a foundational rhythm to an ambient foreground
0205: Interpret boxed-up music-education materials as a graphic-notation score.
0206: Compose a track with a trio of through-lines that repeatedly alternate relative prominence.
0207: Rework source audio from Michel Banabila’s 1983 album, Marilli.
0208: Record a composition in place using only the sounds around you.
0209: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen five-second segments.
0210: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.
0212: Make music intended to attract male mosquitoes.
0214: Bring to the fore the distinction between two specific microtones.
0215: Make a short track with just pin-prick audio.
0216: Add a thin foundational bed to beats of pin-prick audio.
0217: Take an existing assemblage of rhythm and tone and turn it into verse/chorus/verse.
0218: Following the path of artist Kate Carr, explore sounds from a distance.
0221: Compose something — quiet, peaceful, refreshing — you’d want to wake up to.
0222: Compose a piece for contemporary dance — with a “soft top” and a “shifting bottom.”
0224: Make music with the sound of a refrigerator as its foundation.
0228 / Three Mics: Make a piece of music with one sound source recorded three different ways.
0229 / Fourth Worldizing: Use a favorite trick of legendary sound designer Walter Murch.
0230 / Design I: Interpret a graphic score (never before performed or realized) from the mid-1970s
0231 / Field Complement: Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound.
0247 / Waltz, Maybe / Interpret as a graphic score an illustration drawn upon waking by Lark Pien.
0248 / Galactic Tick / Celebrate the new celestial holiday in music.
0249 / 80 Phases / Wish the minimalist composer Steve Reich a happy birthday.
0250 / Soothing Sounds for Junto / Make some peaceful music for an infant child.
0251 / Soothing Sounds for Parents / Remix some music for infants with parents in mind.
0252 / Sonic Palindrome / Make music that sounds the same backwards and forwards.
0253 / Doorbell Rehab / Record some welcome music.
0254 / Fog and Steam / Make music from two provided samples.
0255 / Capone’s Ghost / What does the banjo music of the fabled criminal sound like?
0256 / Music in Place / Record a short piece of music using the sounds around you.
0257 / Remember Noisevember / Make some noise.
0258 / Sonic Climate / Express your local weather in sound.
0259 / Signals Lost / Summon up a horror story in sound.
0260 / Tone Fade / An exercise in when a sound ends.
0261 / Audio Journal 2016 / Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen five-second segments.
0262 / Ice Code / Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.
0263 / Overture Edit / Produce an overture to an existing album.
0264 / Time Travel / Record a piece of music that plays with the perception of time.
0265 / Kitchen Music / Record a piece of music that uses items from just one drawer.
0266 / Vocal Cuts / Use segments of your own held vowel to make music.
0267 / The Metronomic Society / Create a theme song for a fictional organization.
0269 / Duet Portion / Record half of a live duet.
0270 / Just Duet / Record the second half of a duet live.
0272 / Exoplanetary Intervals / Use music to express the relationships between planets.
0273 / Alarm Clocked / Make music for a (new! improved!) slow-waking alarm clock.
0274 / Broken Sound / Record a piece of music in the genre called “broken sound.”
0275 / Revisit Something / Make a track all over again.
0276 / 808 Blockchain Beats / Make 808-style beats based on the blockchain.
0277 / Chew Concrète / Make music inspired by C. Reider’s Chew Cinders album procedures.
0278 / MacConnel’s Jingle / Interpret a work of contemporary art as a graphically notated score.
0279 / Word Interiorities / Dissect the sonic properties of a single spoken word.
0280 / 20170514 / Celebrate the 70th birthday of a Junto member.
0281 / Pattern Interruption / Create a pattern, loop it, and intersperse alterations.
0283 / Rooms Within Rooms / Make an instrumental song built from the sounds of different room.
0284 / Creative Commonfield / Make ambient music from the sound of clay bowls.
0285 / Live Barcoding / Make rhythms from your packaged goods. 0286 / Found in Translation / Make three versions of something from different distances.
0287 / Digital Pause Tape / Make a track using only cut and paste.
0288 / Interspecies Duet / Make music from samples of two different animals.
0289 / Ancient Artifacts / Imagine a forgotten instrument and make music with it.
0290 / Text-to-Beat / Use computer-generated speech as the rhythmic foundation for a track.
0291 / Lantern Effect / Make music that suggests the way a paper lantern filters light.
0292 / Eclipse Music / In coordination with St. Louis Art Hack Day, make some solar-inspired tunes.
0295 / Disregard Echoes / Make music inspired by a haiku, reflecting on Australian history.
0297 / Domestic Chorus / Make music from all the alarms, buzzers, and other alerts in your home.
0298 / Dungeons & Drum Machines / Make a track with two rolls of a 20-sided die.
0299 / 10bpm Waltz / Make super slow music in 3/4 time.
0300 / The 300th Project / 3 chords x 100 seconds
0301 / Parts > Sum / Artfully reduce an album to something less than itself.
0302 / Gronkytonk / Record a single in the genre introduced in Malka Older’s novel Infomacracy.
0304 / Let’s Buzz / Create a piece of music by thinking of the structure of a bee hive.
0305 / Three Princes / Explore chance by exploring the roots of the word “serendipity.”
0306 / Music in Motion / Record a piece of music while en route somewhere.
0308 / Giving Thanks / Write a short piece of music for a person or thing you’re thankful for.
0310 / From Memory / Recall — and then recreate — a favorite sound.
0311 / Ceramic Notation / Read a work of ceramics as a score in graphic notation.
0312 / Amplify/Magnify / Explore two ways in which sound is scaled.
0313 / Audio Journal 2017 / Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen five-second segments.
0314 / Cold Start / The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.
0315 / First Chair / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio.
0318 / Linear Training / Record a piece of music composed of variations on the same held tone.
0323 / Music for Meditation / Record a piece of music suited to meditation.
0324 / Factory Floor / Make music for newsrooms, design studios, and other collaborative workplaces.
0325 / Fake Book / Make a forgery of an old jazz song by using samples from three Edison cylinders.
0327 / Time Zoned / Create a piece of music that is simultaneously in 3/4, 2/4, and 7/4 time.
0328 / Sonic Pentimento / Record a piece of music inspired by a term from painting.
0330 / Wax Off / Make a piece of music by erasing aspects of a pre-existing track.
0331 / Born Under a Bad Sine / What does it sound like when a robot has the blues?
0332 / Lucky Numbers / Make music based on the lottery.
0333 / Half Evil / Where numerology casts a shadow on musicology.
0334 / Mass Branca / Record a massive multi-layered tribute to the legendary guitarist-composer.
0335 / Alone Time / Record conference-call hold music — a private limbo of your own making.
0336 / Open Mic / Share a piece of music you’re working on in the interest of getting feedback.
0339 / Rude Mechanicals / The Assignment: Record a piece of music in this imaginary genre.
0340 / Porta Party / The Assignment: Record a piece of music entirely on the go.
0341 / Sample Forensics / The Assignment: Place a fragmentary sample into a natural-seeming setting.
0343 / Big Pun / The Assignment: What does a musical pun sound like?
0344 / Careful Symmetries / The Assignment: Explore palindromes in musical form.
0345 / Sample Time / Make your own drum machine sounds, do something with them, and share them.
0352 / Layering Permutations / The Assignment: Play something melodic atop two variations.
0353 / Warp & Weft / The Assignment: Read loom-woven fabric as a musical composition.
0355 / Sonic Vivisection / The Assignment: Operate with incisions on a live sound in real time.
0356 / Ground Swell / The Assignment: Derive something spooky from a specific place.
0357 / Clock Work / The Assignment: Base a piece of music on your previous 12 hours.
0358 / Rhythm + Blue(s) / The Assignment: An exercise in genre.
0360 Fishbowl Progressions / The Assignment: Explore spatial sound as a compositional element.
0361 / Zork Diaries / The Assignment: Score a classic interactive fiction.
0364 / Casting Drones / The Assignment: Use dice to determine your slowly shifting tones.
0366 / Ice Breaker / The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.
0367 / Trio Initiate / The Assignment: Record the first third of an eventual trio.
0371 / Concrete Ambience / The Assignment: What could concrete wallpaper music sound like?
0373 / Copernican Music / The Assignment: Record a piece of music intended for an alien species.
0374 / Glitch Glitch / The Assignment: what happens when you glitch something that’s been glitched?
0375 / Despite Yourself / The Assignment: Make a piece of music that sounds as unlike you as you can accomplish.
0376 / Pi Filling / The Assignment: Celebrate Pi Day.
0377 / Algorithms Assemble / The Assignment: Have fun with rules applied to scales, in coordination with the Algorithmic Art Assembly.
0378 / Blue(tooth) Haze / The Assignment: Experiment with the sonic qualities of a failing signal.
0379 / Open Studios / The Assignment: Share a track, get feedback, and give feedback.
0380 / Ears Only / The Assignment: Record a piece of music for an audience of one.
0381 / Shared System / The Assignment: make music using a free software synth assembled by Scanner.
0382 / Understanding McLuhan / The Assignment: Remix samples of an interview with Eric McLuhan on his father and media theory.
0383 / Interstellar Ambience / The Assignment: Record the sound of an apartment on a large interstellar ship.
0384 / Breath Beat / The Assignment: Explore breath as a resource for rhythm.
0385 / Audubonus Instrumentum / The Assignment: Imagine a fake instrument, and make music with it.
0386 / New Colors / The Assignment: Out with the old white noise, in with the new.
0387 / Everything & More / The Assignment: Make a single piece of music using every single instrument that you have at your disposal.
0388 / Random Less / The Assignment: Make a single piece of music with very few tools, all selected at random.
0389 / Long Then / The Assignment: Take an old song, and make it (much) slower, and add something.
0390 / Pace Quickens / The Assignment: Take an old song (or field recording), and make it faster, and then add something.
0391 / Front Page / The Assignment: Make music that fills in where the news trails off.
0392 / Another Country / The Assignment: Compose the national anthem for a fictional country.
0393 / Mix Master / The Assignment: Make a new composition from your favorite parts of three of your previous recordings.
0394 / You & Me / The Assignment: Accompany the music made by a species other than your own.
0395 / Acoustic Expanse / The Assignment: Make music with (samples of) the biggest guitar in the southern hemisphere.
0396 / Front Page / The Assignment: Make music with by humming a song and then processing the humming.
0397 / Numbers Racket / The Assignment: It’s 808 Day. Do it up.
0398 / Rauschen Bern / The Assignment: Make music by making a collage of noises.
0399 / Edges & Echoes / The Assignment: Make sonic art for a space with the sounds of that space.
0400 / Sub Divided / The Assignment: Create a score to a Malka Older story using the author’s own voice as source audio.
0401 / Noise Pacing / The Assignment: Use background noise as a beat, as a rhythm.
0402 / Music for Tasks / The Assignment: Record music intended as the backdrop/soundtrack to a chore.
0403 / Filter Box / The Assignment: Record music a piece of music in which a sequence of sounds is treated by the same filter or process.
0404 / Seven (St)ages / The Assignment: Record a piece of music that follows the arc of Jacques’ “All the world’s a stage” speech from Shakespeare’s play As You Like It.
0405 / Trustable (C. Remix) / The Assignment: Remix music from C. Reider’s album … a trustable cloud.
0406 / Phoneme Home / The Assignment: After a visit to Yellowstone National Park, you send a sonic report back to your planet of origin.
0407 / Dark Pitch / The Assignment: What do you hear between stations on the radio dial during a drive in the middle of night?
0408 / Fritiniency Tronics / The Assignment: Were “fritiniency” (“the chirruping sound made by birds or insects”) a musical genre or technique, what would it sound like?
0409 / Spooky 3.0 / The Assignment: Raise haunting music to the next level.
0410 / Op Audio / The Assignment: What does the sonic equivalent of Op Art sound like?
0411 / Wrapped Up / The Assignment: Record a piece of music as a gift for someone special to you.
0412 / One Chord Wonder / The Assignment: Play an extended chord where the instrumentation of each note changes as the piece proceeds.
0413 / Objective Thankfulness / The Assignment: Highlight one piece of musical equipment for which you are particularly grateful.
0414 / Mod Cons / The Assignment: Compose one or more sounds for an appliance/device/gadget of your own choosing.
0415 / Seasonal Metal / The Assignment: Tinsel is your latest instrument.
0416 / Time Laps / The Assignment: Improvise successive layers, each time reversing the previous layer.
0417 / Changes Tracker / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.
0418 / Ice-Nine / The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something of it.
0419 / Dischoir / The Assignment: Make music from 100+ vocal samples of held syllables by members of the Disquiet Junto.
0420 / Luna Tick / The Assignment: Make music that proceeds according to the phases of the moon, in celebration of Lunar New Year.
0421 / Marquee Ghosts / The Assignment: What sounds haunt a discarded movie theater in the middle of the night?
0422 / Chapter Cascade / The Assignment: Make a piece of music made up of tiny alternating parts.
0423 / Hold Noise / The Assignment: Record music intended to sound just as garbled as the hold music on a phone call.
0424 / Fluctuating Rhythm / The Assignment: Employ nature as your conductor.
0425 / Crop Score / The Assignment: Crop circles are musical compositions.
0426 / Cellular Chorus / The Assignment: Make music with the source audio from (and inspired by) a Patricia Wolf project.
0427 / Music 4 Airplanes / The Assignment: Make music that blends in with the industrial drone of modern air flight.
0428 / Urban Moss / The Assignment: What echoes of past concerts are retained within this pole?
0429 / Solitary Ensembles / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio that others will complete.
0430 / Solitary Ensembles x 2 / The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio that others will complete.
0431 / Solitary Ensembles x 3 / The Assignment: Complete a trio by adding a track to an existing duet by two other musicians.
0432 / Ensembles (Remix) / The Assignment: Take an existing musical trio and remix it to make it your own.
0433 / Kit Bits / The Assignment: Create a kit’s worth of percussion samples.
0434 / Beat Kit / The Assignment: Create music with beats crafted by fellow Junto participants.
0435 / Woodshed Report / Share something you’ve been working on (and respond to what others post).
0436 / Planetary Headspace / The Assignment: Share a recording of your local environment to create a communal soundscape.
0437 / Echo Relocation / The Assignment: Record someone else’s field recording of their environment playing within your own.
0438 / Deep Plan / The Assignment: Compose a piece of music in which something special is situated at the very center.
0439 / Hybrid Self / The Assignment: Compose music combining the styles of two musicians you admire.
0440/ Tuning In / The Assignment: Dismantle the institution known as A440.
0441/ Three Stones / The Assignment: Make music that explores territory sonically.
0442/ One Sentence / The Assignment: Make music that explores the shape, tone, cadence, and content of a favorite section of prose or poetry.
0443 / In Two Landscapes / The Assignment: Take two different field recordings and combine them to make one track, as in a mash-up.
0444 / Bot Ensemble / The Assignment: Make music as directed by the great twitter.com/InstrumentBot account.
0445 / Aare Tribute / The Assignment: Read maps of a river as a graphic score.
0446 / WWWLDD / The Assignment: Celebrate World Listening Day for the whole weekend.
0447 / Listen Ahead / The Assignment: Make some music for the near future.
0448 / Seamless Bridge / The Assignment: Create a 20-second piece of music to connect two preexisting 20-second pieces of music.
0449 / Page Machine / The Assignment: Read a page of text from a book as if it were a musical score.
0450 / Texture Analysis / The Assignment: Create a piece of music from sounds related to working with rocks.
0451 / Ursula’s Silences / Make music inspired by a line from A Wizard of Earthsea.
0452 / Let’s Scream / The Assignment: Get cathartic. Be resilient. Turn your scream into music.
0453 / Dial Up / The Assignment: Imagine the technologically mediated First Contact through sound.
0454 / Lsoo Vneg / The Assignment: Encode the name of someone you love into a piece of music.
0455 / Inner Invertebrate / The Assignment: What does a moment (or a day) in the life of a jellyfish sound like to a jellyfish?
0456 / Line Up / The Assignment: Interpret a painting by Agnes Martin as if it were a graphic score.
0457 / System Alert / The Assignment: Compose sounds for an OS.
0458 / Phrase Shift / The Assignment: Make music in a sequence of parts with shared elements.
0459 / From a Distance / The Assignment: Make music intended to be heard from afar.
0460 / Creative Destruction / The Assignment: Show how you got to a tortured sound.
0461 / Goldilocks Zone / The Assignment: Navigate a sonic space between the hospitable and the inhospitable.
0462 / Vade in Pace / The Assignment: Write a short piece of music that gets slower and slower as it proceeds.
0463 / Making the Gradient / The Assignment: Make a piece of music inspired by the concept of a gradient.
0464 / Blanket Song / The Assignment: Play over a song, and then remove the original.
0465 / You Thank / The Assignment: Make a piece of music for someone or something for which you feel thankful.
0466 / [ ] Sound Machine / The Assignment: What sort of sound does your city make?
0467 / Toolbox Show & Tell / The Assignment: Share a tip for making music that you learned during the pandemic.
0468 / Mirror Rorrim / The Assignment: Create a new persona for yourself, and record a duet together.
0469 / [Missing in Caption] / The Assignment: Make music that pushes the constraints of descriptive television captions.
0470 / Calendar View / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.
0471 / Phase Transition / The Assignment: The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.
0472 / Jam Time (1 of 3) / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio that others will complete.
0473 / Placebo Effect (2 or 3) / The Assignment: The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio that others will complete.
0474 / Police Action (3 of 3) / The Assignment: Complete a trio by adding a track to an existing duet by two other musicians
0475 / Low End (4 of 3) / The Assignment: Remix a trio by doing forensics on its component parts.
0476 / IAH Forecast / The Assignment: Here’s your next single’s cover. Now record it.
0477 / Flying Blind / The Assignment: Record a piece of music in which some substantial portion is performed without looking.
0478 / Collage of Collages / The Assignment: Make a collage that will become part of a larger collage.
0479 / Truck Radio Rain / The Assignment: Locate three sound sources and make something with them.
0480 / Ongsay Aftcray / The Assignment: Record a piece of music by employing Pig Latin as a technique.
0481 / Capsule Time / The Assignment: Record a time capsule for yourself in the future.
0482 / Exactly That Gap / The Assignment: Make a musical haiku following instructions from Marcus Fischer.
0483 / Type Set / The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.
0484 / A Movable Heart / The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s wind chimes to a new location.
0485 / Strange Weather / The Assignment: Remix the pure sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s traveling wind chimes to your own musical purposes.
0486 / Earths Days / The Assignment: Celebrate Earth Day on or for another planet.
0487 / Carillon Quotidian / Assignment: Turn a recurring sound from your life into music.
0488 / Reverse Delay / Assignment: Do something you’ve been putting off.
0489 / The Prestige / The Assignment: Apply some magic to ABA form.
0490 / In Conversation / The Assignment: Compose a piece of music structured like dialog.
0491 / Footsteps Sequencer / The Assignment: Compose a piece of music structured upon a walk through your home.
0492 / Kintsugi Rework / The Assignment: Employ the Japanese technique of mending broken ceramics as a metaphor for remixing.
0493 / AudioCorrect / The Assignment: Think about the utility and the useful failures inherent in autocorrect and apply this to your music.
0494 / Insect Menagerie / The Assignment: Record a 20-second clip of the sounds of an insect that you yourself have invented.
0495 / Protip Etude / The Assignment: Share a tip for making music or working with sound, and record a track that employs it.
0496 / Isolation Room / The Assignment: Create new music around one strand of something you made in the past
0497 / Benjamin’s Glass / The Assignment: Pay tribute to Benjamin Franklin and his armonica
0498 / Sonic Entomologist / The Assignment: Create a new hybrid insect from the sound of two different insects.
0499 / Out of the Landscape / The Assignment: Record a piece of music in which a sound emerges from a field recording.
0500 / Humming to Your Selves / The Assignment: Play a tune by yourself and as if by two people whom you invent.
0501 / PDK Playback / The Assignment: Record the sound of a Martian daydream, interrupted.
0502 / Global Swarming / The Assignment: Create a swarm of imaginary insects.
0503 / Sing Song / The Assignment: Record a song using only your voice transformed beyond recognition.
0504 / Transform Formula / The Assignment: Take a sound, change it, and contrast that with the original.
0505 / Line Out / The Assignment: Share a track, get feedback, and give feedback.
0506 / Wipe Out / The Assignment: Take something whole and erase half of it.
0507 / In DD’s Key of C / The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key.
0508 / Germane Shepard / The Assignment: Use the Shepard tone to create a piece of music.
0509 / The Long Detail / The Assignment: Create a piece of music with moments from a preexisting track.
0510 / Cold Turkey / The Assignment: Record one last track with a piece of music equipment before passing it on.
0511 / Freeze Tag / The Assignment: Consider freezing (and thawing) as a metaphor for music production.
0512 / The Sequel / The Assignment: Record a piece of music that follows up a preexisting piece of music.
0513 / Ghost OST / The Assignment: Play that spooky music.
0514 / Chord Channels / The Assignment: Take two chords and connect them over time.
0515 / Talking Cure / The Assignment: Write music for a psychotherapist’s waiting room.
0516 / Outside In (Co/Exist 1 of 3) / The Assignment: Record a minute or two of nature.
0517 / Inside Out (Co/Exist 2 of 3) / The Assignment: Record a minute or two of civilization.
0518 / Inside Out (Co/Exist 3 of 3) / The Assignment: Combine sounds of nature and civilization.
0519 / Looking Glass Remix / The Assignment: Remix yourself from another point of view.
0520 / On the Clock / The Assignment: Get that thing done before the end of the year.
0521 / Cannon Canon / The Assignment: Make a martial round.
0522 / Just Backdated / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.
0523 / Chill Communication / The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.
0524 / Sunset Waveform / The Assignment: Read a photo like a graphic score.
0525 / Magic Number (1 of 3) / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio.
0526 / Magic Number (2 of 3) / The Assignment: Record the second third of an asynchronous trio.
0527 / Magic Number (3 of 3) / The Assignment: Complete an asynchronous trio begun by two other musicians.
0528 / Landscape Architecture / The Assignment: The Assignment: Forge an unobtrusive path through musical flora.
0529 / Squared Off / The Assignment: Explore the number 23.
0530 / Minimally Viable Music / The Assignment: How much less is just shy of too little?
0531 / Noise Sculpt / The Assignment: Listen for a mirage of your music within white noise.
0532 / Other Means / The Assignment: Make music about something you find difficult or unproductive to talk about.
0533 / Numbers Magik / The Assignment: Remix a trio — potentially using its subsets and variants.
0534 / Transition Capsule / The Assignment: Record music to help people efficiently reorient between two zones.
0535 / Jigsaw Disjunction / The Assignment: Break a familiar melody into pieces and play it in a different sequence.
0536 / Metaphor Play / The Assignment: Take a figure of speech as a creative prompt.
0537 / Penitent Honk / The Assignment: Do sound design for “a missing gesture” of vehicular life.
0538 / Guided Decompression / The Assignment: Get someone from tense to chill.
0539 / Control Breath / The Assignment: Let your slow breathing guide a piece of music.
0540 / 5ive 4our / The Assignment: Take back 5/4 for Jedi time masters Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond.
0541 / 10BPM Techno / The Assignment: Make some snail-paced beats.
0542 / 2600 Club / The Assignment: Make some phreaking music.
0543 / Technique Check / The Assignment: Share a tip from your method toolbox.
0544 / Feedback Loop / The Assignment: Share music-in-progress for input from others.
0545 / Unself-Awareness / The Assignment: Learn from feedback intended for others.
0546 / Code Notes / The Assignment: Make music that includes a secret message.
0547 / Genre Melee / Combine two seemingly different genres.
0548 / Drone Vox / The Assignment: Make a drone using just your voice.
0549 / Sidelines / The Assignment: Get intentional with stereo.
0550 / Abrupt Probability / The Assignment Make music based on a chance graphic score.
0551 / The Bends / The Assignment: Get less strict about something you’re strict about.
0552 / The Radio in My Life / The Assignment: Record music in response to a John Cage and Morton Feldman conversation.
0553 / Break That Cycle / The Assignment: Record in a steady tempo but break it on occasion.
0554 / Cage Chord / The Assignment: Riff on a chord by John Cage.
0555 / A Simple Timer / The Assignment: Simplify by a factor of 5.
0556 / Gabber Ambient / The Assignment: Field-test a hybrid genre.
0557 / Condensation Is a Form of Change / The Assignment: Interpret a graphic score that depicts four phases.
0558 / Chore Progressions / The Assignment: Use a routine activity as the map of a composition.
0559 / Yes Exit / The Assignment: Compose your personal entrance and exit cues for conference calls.
0559 / Sonic Disambiguation / The Assignment: Help the Wikimedia Foundation develop a sonic logo.
0561 / Samplelicker / The Assignment: Rework environmental sound recordings with Aphex Twin’s new software.
0562 / Sheep Music / The Assignment: Record something to help someone fall asleep.
0563 / Digital Magical Realism / The Assignment: What does this imaginary genre sound like?
0564 / Octave Lept / The Assignment: Work an octave leap — or more than one — into a piece of music.
0565 / Musical Folly / The Assignment: Make a piece of music inspired by this architectural concept.
0566 / Outdoor Furniture Music / The Assignment: Imagine the ur-ambient Erik Satie musique d’ameublement concept en plein air
0567 / Three Meters / The Assignment: Make music in 5/8, 6/8, and 7/8 time signatures.
0568 / Slumber Mill / The Assignment: Make music inspired by a key chord from sleep research.
0569 / Think Thank / The Assignment: Make music inspired by something or someone you’re thankful for.
0570 / Key Change / The Assignment: Make music that changes keys.
0571 / Child’s Play / The Assignment: Make music inspired by a nursery rhyme.
0572 / Rhythm Kit / The Assignment: Make a beat that someone else will add to.
0573 / Float Mode / The Assignment: Add material atop a pre-existing beat to form a complete track.
0574 / Audio Journal 2022 / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.
0575 / On Ice / The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.
0576 / Casual Resolution / The Assignment: Get a musical New Year’s resolution out of the way.
0577 / Make That Money Shaker / The Assignment: Make a simple instrument and put it to use.
0578 / Rabbit Spirit Ally / The Assignment: Make music for Lunar New Year.
0579 / Memory Serves / The Assignment: Rerecord a piece of music.
0580 / Evo Evol Evolve / The Assignment: Record a piece of music that develops like an organism evolves.
0581 / Helsinki Downspout / The Assignment: Use a rhythmic field recording as the foundation for a new track.
0582 / X Techno / The Assignment: Make a new subgenre.
0583 / Wall to Wall / The Assignment: Use a building as a filter.
0584 / Generations / The Assignment: Bridge a gap in your musical taste.
0585 / F9 / The Assignment: Fast forward an old track to make a new one.
0586 / Chance the Eraser / The Assignment: Use probability to remove material from a track.
0587 / Sour Mash / The Assignment: Let something go out of tune.
0588 / Swell Time / The Assignment: Make some surf music.
0589 / Auto Play / The Assignment: Automate something manual — or vice versa
0590 / Concrète Roots / The Assignment: Make music combining field recordings and feedback
0591 / The Loneliest Number / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio.
0592 / Better Than One / The Assignment: Record the second third of an asynchronous trio.
0593 / The Charm / The Assignment: Complete an asynchronous trio begun by two other musicians.
And this is the initial post I made on Disquiet.com, announcing the project on January 7, 2012: “Sneek Peek.”
Thank You very much
Hi Junto-ers up for round 0173 – my browser couldn’t find the track download link as posted. If this is you also, try the content list at –> https://ia601003.us.archive.org/34/items/inoquo068/ … and your preferred method for download.
Thanks for having provided that.
Wow, this brings back memories—it’s been years since I participated. I’m so happy Junto Disquiet still thrives.
Thanks so much, Miranda.