Marc Weidenbaum – Page 148

Talking About Soundscapes

My new piece for JSTOR Daily

July 31, 2024July 31, 2024 / By Marc Weidenbaum

“If you’ve ever used the word ‘soundscape,’ you owe a small debt to the late Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. You can repay that debt by simply taking the opportunity to listen—and doing so in an ‘openly attentive’ manner, as Schafer put it in his 1969 book, The New Soundscape.”

And that’s how my new essay at JSTOR Daily begins. It’s all about the origins of the modern usage of the word “soundscape,” and it follows up an earlier piece I wrote for JSTOR Daily, last year, about the sound design of the film American Graffiti.

I’ll have a bit more on the piece in the coming days.

My Robin Sloan Interview

For 48hills.org

July 30, 2024July 30, 2024 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I got to interview Robin Sloan for 48 Hills about his recent novel, Moonbound. I have an extra tidbit from the interview that I’ll share here later this week. Meanwhile, here’s one of my favorite parts of the interview:

Read the full piece at 48hills.org.

Little Red Box

A Buddha Machine remix

July 29, 2024July 29, 2024 / By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s a Monday and you’re sitting in your office typing away, and there’s plenty to listen to, but why not whip up a quick little reworking of a loop from the FM3 Chan Fang Buddha Machine that someone recently sent to you as a gift? (Audio processed in VCV Rack. Buddha Machine audio inputted into a MacBook via an Edirol UA-25EX audio interface.) And a side note: SoundCloud shows this track as having been “mastered,” but that’s not the case. I did experiment with the built-in SoundCloud mastering option, applying the “Aurora” version, but it ended up too shrill for my ears. The ringing in particular sounded like a fire alarm was going off the whole time, so I replaced it with the original.

Early Evening

Stick to it

July 28, 2024July 28, 2024 / By Marc Weidenbaum

If it’s early Sunday evening and there’s ambient-inflected jazz being performed one room over and this is what the bathroom looks like then life is OK and you’re making good decisions

Scratch Pad: Haiku, 666, Cables

From the past week

July 27, 2024July 27, 2024 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually at the end of each week: collating most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I also find knowing I will revisit my posts to be a positive and mellowing influence on my social media activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ Which will come first: (A) the confirmation email from the editor to whom you sent the article you just finished writing, or (B) the surveillance-capitalist alert from Amazon to purchase random things you happened to research in the context of writing the article?

▰ The readymade haiku of Wikipedia’s notable deaths:

Hungarian short track speed skater
Italian robber
Maltese painter and sculptor

▰ This week’s Disquiet Junto project will be the 656th consecutive weekly project, which means that in 10 weeks we’ll hit 666.

▰ Do you have favorite email newsletters by electronic (and adjacent) musicians where they regularly include examples of their recordings? Mine are from Andrew Tasselmyer, Marcus Fischer, Chris P. Thompson, and Taylor Deupree. If you have others, I’d love to check them out. Thanks.

▰ Splitting my synth into a few cases made sense. But I’m gonna need some much longer cables.

▰ I read a ton this week, but only finished one book, the massive, 400-page first 12 issues of Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!, which I haven’t read since the previous millennium. It holds up. Also good to have re-read it shortly after reading Chantal Montellier’s earlier Social Fiction.