November 2018 – Disquiet

Disquiet Junto Project 0361: Zork Diaries

The Assignment: Score a classic interactive fiction.

November 29, 2018November 30, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. It’s weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when you have the time.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, December 3, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted shortly after noon, California time, on Thursday, November 29, 2018.

Tracks will be added to the playlist for the duration of the project.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0361: Zork Diaries
The Assignment: Score a classic interactive fiction.

Step 1: Zork is the title of one of the earliest interactive text adventure games. The complete text of a spoiler-laden full run of the game is at the following URL, housed at Georgia Tech, or the Georgia Institute of Technology:

http://bitly.com/junto-zork

Step 2: If you’re not familiar with Zork and/or with interactive text adventures, consider reading up. Otherwise, just think of the script as exactly that: the bare-bones narrative of a story.

Step 3: Compose a score (along with, if possible, sound effects) for the first page or so of Zork. It is suggested that you begin with the fifth line of provided text (“West of House”) and end about a page down, where it reads “The door reluctantly opens to reveal a rickety staircase descending into darkness.”

Bonus Alternates: (A) You can, of course, end sooner or later. (B) You can, of course, play the game yourself and score the moves you make. (C) You can, of course, sort out a means to record alternate, forking versions, based on various potential outcomes of different decisions when playing the game. (D) You might open with a brief opening-credits theme.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0361” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0361” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0361-zork-diaries/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0361” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and be sure to 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.

Download: Please consider setting your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution, allowing for derivatives).

Context: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 361st weekly Disquiet Junto project — Zork Diaries / The Assignment: Score a classic interactive fiction — at:

https://disquiet.com/0361/

New Pedal at Dusk

A live ambient performance by half of the Japan-based duo Lullatone

November 27, 2018November 9, 2020 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This elegant, beautiful video tracks from various angles a test drive by one member of the act Lullatone on a newly acquired reverb pedal. As the sun sets, the pedal is put through its initial paces, segments played on a keyboard and then through the reverb, all set to layer as loops. Those individual layers are barely distinguishable from each other, so peacefully do they accrue as a singular, solitary spaciousness. At times the high notes bring to mind Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois’ production for U2. Throughout, both the video and the performance it documents are marvels of simplicity.

This is the latest video I’ve added to my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music. Video originally posted at YouTube channel. More from Lullatone, the duo of Shawn James Seymour and Yoshimi Tomida, who are based in Japan, at lullatone.com and lullatone.bandcamp.com.

The Benefits of Deviations

Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are

November 22, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The cover image to this week’s Disquiet Junto project features more text manipulation than has generally been the case this year. Here’s to further deviations — visual, sonic, and procedural — in 2018.

It’s Thanksgiving in the U.S. today, and I want to say thanks to everyone who is part of the Junto — past and present, long-timers and new arrivals. As I say each week in the email newsletter of the Junto, thanks as always for your generosity with your time and creativity.

Disquiet Junto Project 0360: Fishbowl Progressions

The Assignment: Explore spatial sound as a compositional element.

November 22, 2018November 23, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, November 26, 2018, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on. It was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, November 22, 2018.

Tracks will be added to the playlist for the duration of the project.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0360: Fishbowl Progressions
The Assignment: Explore spatial sound as a compositional element.

This week’s project: Record a piece of music in which the relative position and movement of sounds are as important to compositional development as are melody, harmony, and rhythm.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0360” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0360” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0360-fishbowl-progressions/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Length: The length of your track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0360” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Context: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:

More on this 360th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Fishbowl Progressions / The Assignment: Explore spatial sound as a compositional element — at:

https://disquiet.com/0360/

This Week in Sound: Naughty Gadgets

+ RIP, HAL + RIP, FMA + RIP, the free time of Autechre fans

November 21, 2018November 22, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

An annotated clipping service

It’s been far too long since I last hit sent on an email to this list, not since mid-July.

Disconnect Me: Shakespearian actor Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, has died at the age of 90: nytimes.com. This year, 2018, marks the 50th anniversary of the movie’s release.

Naughty List: Mozilla, maker of the Firefox browser, has created a list (at mozilla.org) of smart devices in an effort to gauge consumers’ sense of their “creepy” factor. The items range from the Nintendo Switch to the Parker Teddy Bear. (Via Next Draft.)

Volume Off: The Free Music Archive is reportedly closing down: theverge.com.

Robot Overload: A few days ago, the British electronic duo Autechre revealed it had uploaded 444 (yes, 444) new (yes, new) videos to YouTube, totally more than 13 (yes, you know the drill) hours of music. The result brings to mind a neural network’s combination of Hiroshi Sugimoto’s horizon-view ocean photography and Brian Eno’s colorful light installations. As is the case with many an internet Easter Egg hunt, the communal scrambling to make sense of the ambiguous material is reminiscent of the mysterious Russian video footage at the heart of William Gibson’s 2003 novel, Pattern Recognition.

This was first published in the November 20, 2018, issue of the free weekly (well, kinda weekly, in a hopeful way) email newsletter This Week in Sound.