June 2015 – Page 2

Disquiet Junto Project 0182: Diverge Converge

Do a rendition of Ethan Hein's laptop orchestra score by yourself.

June 25, 2015June 26, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

divergence-convergence

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.com and at disquiet.com/junto, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just over four days to upload a track in response to the assignment. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate.

Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:

This assignment was made in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 25, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 29, 2015.

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0182: Diverge Converge
Do a rendition of Ethan Hein’s laptop orchestra score by yourself.

Step 1: The following is Ethan Hein’s score for laptop orchestra. You will record a version that you will do by yourself — an orchestra of one:

Each performer loads a short, shared sample. It should have a distinct attack and decay, for example a bell or gong. It can be pitched or unpitched, musical or unmusical.
Each performer triggers the sample repeatedly, either as a steady loop or at any arbitrary time interval.
After a few repetitions, each performer manipulates the sample as they see fit, via pitch shifting, time stretching, filtering, or other effects. Transformations should be gradual and clearly perceptible.
Once the entire ensemble is playing altered versions of the sample, the performers begin to undo their manipulations, preferably in the reverse order that they were originally applied.
When all performers have resumed playing back the original sample, the piece ends.

Step 2: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 3: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the early afternoon, California time, on Thursday, June 25, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, June 29, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work is up to you, but between one minute and four minutes is probably best in this context.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This description is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0182-divergeconverge”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: It is preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).

Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 182nd Disquiet Junto project (“Do a rendition of Ethan Hein’s laptop orchestra score by yourself”) at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0182: Diverge Converge

The piece is based on Ethan Hein’s score, more on which here:

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/brahmss-third-racket/

What Sound Looks Like

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

June 25, 2015June 25, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

When is a doorbell not a doorbell? When it’s the doorbell next to your front door, that many years later — well over half a century —Â was rendered useless when a metal gate was eventually installed at the sidewalk. There’s another doorbell, quite plain, at the gate of our house. This ornate if hollow item just sits quietly. The vestigial doorbell. The emeritus doorbell.

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.

The Laptop Orchestra as Remix Engine

A piece by Ethan Hein

June 24, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

divergence-convergence

Friends who have attended creative-writing MFA programs have said the best thing about them is simply the unadulterated time during which to write. Friends who have done advanced programs in musical composition have stated even more practical concerns: That thesis or dissertation project may be the last time they’d ever hear their music performed by an actual orchestra (or chamber group, or chorus — insert your dream ensemble here).

Ethan Hein, a prolific writer on the intersection of music theory and sampling, among other subjects, expressed that sort of pleasure when he posted his “Divergence/Convergence Remix,” a rapturously chaotic mix of chance sonic encounters and hip-hop”“derived syncopation. Hein writes of it:

My first legitimate composition to be performed by someone other than me. I was asked by Daphna Naphtali to write it for the NYU Laptop Orchestra. You can read about the process of writing the piece and see the score here: www.newmusicbox.org/articles/brahmss-third-racket/

The recording is the debut performance of Divergence/Convergence at NYU. While I was asked not to include dance beats in the piece, there was nothing stopping me from adding them to the version I posted here. I feel like they really tie the whole thing together.

There’s a more in-depth piece at newmusicbox.org in which he tracks his interest in the laptop orchestra, debates the aesthetics of classical music from John Cage to John Cleese, considers the role of pleasure in art, and then shares the rule set at the heart of “Divergence/Convergence”:

Each performer loads a short, shared sample. It should have a distinct attack and decay, for example a bell or gong. It can be pitched or unpitched, musical or unmusical.

Each performer triggers the sample repeatedly, either as a steady loop or at any arbitrary time interval.

After a few repetitions, each performer manipulates the sample as they see fit, via pitch shifting, time stretching, filtering, or other effects. Transformations should be gradual and clearly perceptible.

Once the entire ensemble is playing altered versions of the sample, the performers begin to undo their manipulations, preferably in the reverse order that they were originally applied.

When all performers have resumed playing back the original sample, the piece ends.

Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/ethanhein. More from Hein at ethanhein.com. (Full disclosure: while writing about his piece, Hein refers to the Disquiet Junto as “the internet’s most happening electronic music collective,” which means a lot to me.)

This Week in Sound: Post-Alaska and ER Sonics …

Plus: sound design documentary and sound branding

June 23, 2015June 24, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

A lightly annotated clipping service:

— Newest Yorker: John Luther Adams has been having a moment for several years now. The composer, who at the most fundamental level is appreciated as someone who artfully interweaves field recordings with orchestral arrangements, has been the subject of numerous profiles, including one on his obsession with baseball (“It’s ironic, isn’t it, that in my day job I keep score, and in my avocation I keep score, too?”). Now in the New Yorker, he writes at length about leaving his longtime home in Alaska, a state synonymous with his music, for a Manhattan apartment. Side note: It is remarkable to learn that two of your heroes were correspondents: “Here is my correspondence,” he writes, “with Edward Abbey, who first wrote to me after hearing my setting of the song of the hermit thrush over the radio.”
http://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/leaving-alaska

— ER Sonics: Even when stuck in the hospital due to what was initially suspected to be a stroke, author Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Trees, Gun Machine) is always listening: “Spend more than half an hour in an MRI and you will find yourself identifying every electronic noise from the last fifteen years of techno music. The MRI is the ursprache of the sound of the 21st Century.”
http://morning.computer/2015/06/medical-advice/

— Documenting Sound: The Image of Sound is a short film (under 13 minutes) by Amar Dusanjh profiling three sound professionals — Richard Addis (sound designer on the TV series Human Universe), Eddy Joseph (sound editor on Harry Potter and Casino Royale), and Dirk Maggs (who directed the radio production of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) — on the role of sound in media. (Found via http://designingsound.org/2015/06/news-the-image-of-sound/.)
https://vimeo.com/129969570

— Sound Branding: Kevin Perlmutter talks about the work Man Made Music does in sound and branding: “Despite all of the research about how sound impacts us, and massive changes in our behavior brought on by technology, many of us are still relying on the same brand identity pillars — visual and verbal — that have been in place for decades.”
http://www.manmademusic.com/facing-the-music-as-a-brand-strategist/

This first appeared in the June 23, 2015, edition of the free Disquiet “This Week in Sound”email newsletter: tinyletter.com/disquiet.

What Sound Looks Like

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

June 21, 2015June 21, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I now know the Chinese word for “doorbell.” (I need to read up on the derivation of the individual characters.) What really needs translating, though, is neither language: The sign has to explain what is not immediately evident. The doorbell is hidden by the metal gate, and rendered humorously difficult to utilize. The small button is situated directly behind the crosshairs of the lattice work. The whole thing is a marvel of poor choices. It’s rusted through and the wires are exposed to the elements. If you do manage to press the button you’ll be welcomed into a church across the park from where I live. Not quite the gates of heaven, but a trial to access nonetheless.

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.