An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
I’ve passed the logo for this long-ago audio company on the 101 south of San Francisco many many times, but these tapes (hand me downs from a friend) are the first time I’ve owned the product. These date from around 1994, apparently.
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.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).
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
• 0472 / Jam Time (1 of 3) / The Assignment: Record the first third of a trio that others will complete.
• 0471 / Phase Transition / The Assignment: The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.
• 0470 / Calendar View / The Assignment: Create a sonic diary of the past year with a dozen (or more) super-brief segments.
• 0469 / [Missing in Caption] / The Assignment: Make music that pushes the constraints of descriptive television captions.
• 0468 / Mirror Rorrim / The Assignment: Create a new persona for yourself, and record a duet together.
Full Index
And there is a complete list of past projects, 472 consecutive weeks to date.
5 Comments
Ampex were huge in reel tapes but for cassettes most I knew were using Maxell,TDK and BASF chromes. Are those 15 minute? For singles maybe? Boring point #2, my son asked for instructions on how to make a mix tape… I was so proud :-)
Thanks for that. Yeah, I think of Ampex as reel-to-reel, so the cassette form really surprised me when I pulled them out of the bag of tapes they were in. They are 15 minutes each. I don’t know the intended use. Someone joked about computer programs. They were bought in 1994, but maybe they indeed were a remnant from a decade earlier. I just checked the small print and there’s no year on the tapes anywhere that I can see. (And that is indeed reason for pride. Well done, fellow parent.)
Well, given that the 472s were chromium (hinted at with the “high bias” mention) tapes, they couldn’t have been older than maybe 1987. Ampex was hard to find here in Oklahoma, so I can’t speak to the age based on any personal experience apart from when chromium arrived in the cassette tape market at large.
Regarding the length, I’m immediately reminded of the cassette single. Heh. The “Cassingle” as some companies tried to brand it, hoping a catchy format name would make it sell better… I remember seeing Denon tapes back around 1990 that were 25 minutes or so. So, I suppose this is still in that range and would have a similar utility value.
As for data cassette suggestions, it logically could have been used as such. However, personal c0mputers were the only units I can find that used cassette drives, and were rarely sold in the US. But, it was still the same form factor. Cassette drives seem to have even fallen mostly out of use in Europe (the biggest market, apparently) by the late 80s, though. So, yes it could, but it probably wasn’t.
My money is still on the cassette single “craze” companies tried to start.
Thanks for this. That’s interesting to know the date of the use of chromium. Cassette drives came with early US PCs, like the TRS-80, which I had and used from roughly 1978 to 1984.
I had completely forgot about “cassingles” even though they still take up residence on a shelf in the next room :-) Found an interesting site on tape history if your bored… http://vintagecassettes.com/_history/history.htm apparently chrome appeared in early ’70’s with metal following in the late ’70’s. I was also talking with a friend who was a radio jockey in the early 90’s and some stations were using short cassettes for spots and segues in lieu of the cart(Fidelipac) system. Did you try to play those? Could be some rare material from some morning zoo ;-)