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, September 30, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 26, 2019.
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 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.
Step 1: This project is inspired by a famous speech from William Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. The speech is the one that begins “All the world’s a stage,” and is spoken by the melancholy character Jacques.
Step 2: Familiarize yourself with the speech, in which Jacques lists the “seven ages” that people move through over the course of their lives, should they lead full and long ones: the infant, the student (“schoolboy” in the play), the lover, the soldier, the justice, old age, and the final decline (likened to a “second childishness and mere oblivion”).
Step 3: Consider how those seven ages might be explored in musical terms. Consider concepts in the original text, such as how in old age “his big manly voice, / Turning again towards childish treble, pipes / And whistles in his sound.”
Step 4: Record a piece of music that occurs in seven stages, following the seven ages of Jacques’ speech. One possibility is to have seven related pieces of music, as i na suite, that represent the ages. Another is to have one consistent source audio throughout, but to treat/filter/process it in accordance with each successive (st)age.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0404” (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 “disquiet0404” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation of 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-0404-seven-st-ages/
Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 6: If posting on social media, please consider using the hashtag #disquietjunto so fellow participants are more likely to locate your communication.
Step 7: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Additional Details:
Deadline: This project’s deadline is Monday, September 30, 2019, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 26, 2019.
Length: The length is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0404” 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: 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).
For context, when posting the track online, please be sure to include this following information:
More on this 404th weekly Disquiet Junto project — 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 — at:
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:
https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0404-seven-st-ages/
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image used (cropped, text added) via the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/mrvvilliamshakes00shak/page/n217