A quick lunchtime office-ambience experiment, taking Buddha Machines by the duo FM3 and making new background music loops from them. Two Buddha Machines (the blue device is generation one, the uncertain color generation two), each going into separate channels, the input gain adjusted according to the selected loops. The gen-one device is split, half right to the voltage-controlled mixer, and half into Smog (a remix of the Mutable Instruments module Clouds). The Smog route provides some haze in the background. Both the gen-one and gen-two lines are then being operated on (their amplification adjusted by voltage control) thanks to dual pairs of rapid, unsynced LFOs (originating from the Batumi, those combined levels then adjusted by the SPO). And a much slower LFO from the neighboring Dixie II module is occasionally introducing a higher frequency range, which adds another layer. This experiment started off somewhere else entirely (that somewhere involving envelopes), and then was employing very slow LFOs throughout. But then the sound of the rapid LFOs worked even better. A very fast LFO can, in a manner of speaking, serve a slow LFO as well. The title, “Glass Horizon,” is a joke about how down the road there would be a Philip Glass collaboration on a Buddha Machine, but for now these automated arpeggios will have to suffice.
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about
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Marc Weidenbaum founded the website Disquiet.com in 1996 at the intersection of sound, art, and technology, and since 2012 has moderated the Disquiet Junto, an active online community of weekly music/sonic projects. He has written for Nature, Boing Boing, The Wire, Pitchfork, and NewMusicBox, among other periodicals. He is the author of the 33 1⁄3 book on Aphex Twin’s classic album Selected Ambient Works Volume II. Read more about his sonic consultancy, teaching, sound art, and work in film, comics, and other media
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• December 13, 2022: This day marks the 26th anniversary of the founding of Disquiet.com.
• January 6, 2023: This day marked the 11th anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community. -
Recent
• April 16, 2022: I participated in an online "talk show" by The Big Conversation Space (Niki Korth and Clémence de Montgolfier).
• March 11, 2022: I hosted a panel discussion between Mark Fell, Rian Treanor and James Bradbury in San Francisco as part of the Algorithmic Art Assembly (aaassembly.org) at Gray Area (grayarea.org).
• December 28, 2021: This day marked the 10th (!) anniversary of the Instagr/am/bient compilation.
• January 6, 2021: This day marked the 10th (!) anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.
• December 13, 2021: This day marked the 25th (!) anniversary of the start of the Disquiet Junto music community.
• There are entries on the Disquiet Junto in the 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.
• A chapter on the Disquiet Junto ("The Disquiet Junto as an Online Community of Practice," by Ethan Hein) appears in the 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.) -
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• 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).
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disquiet junto
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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 -
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• 0544 / Feedback Loop / The Assignment: Share music-in-progress for input from others.
• 0543 / Technique Check / The Assignment: Share a tip from your method toolbox.
• 0542 / 2600 Club / The Assignment: Make some phreaking music.
• 0541 / 10BPM Techno / The Assignment: Make some snail-paced beats.
• 0540 / 5ive 4our / The Assignment: Take back 5/4 for Jedi time masters Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond. -
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And there is a complete list of past projects, 544 consecutive weeks to date. Archives
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