Note: In the version of the article about the TV series Sunny that I emailed out, I had the name of the robot, Sunny, and the name of the bartender, Mixxy, mixed up. That’s what I get for fact-checking-while Covid. Thanks, Ernie Dulanowsky, for the alert!
Author: Marc Weidenbaum
Obsidian Graph View
A use case at last
One last note before going quasi-offline for the weekend: I finally found utility in the Obsidian feature called “graph view,” which is that I put a ton of my recent sound studies news items in and I tagged ’em, and that helped me locate clusters of related information by visualizing connections for my This Week in Sound email newsletter. Those examples shown here, by the way, are not from this week’s issue but instead from the previous issue.
Experimenting with Format
In my This Week in Sound email newsletter
As you can tell from the piece on the TV series Sunny in this week’s issue, I’m experimenting with format. I want the newsletter to feel less like I’m offloading homework onto the reader. Much as I like being fairly upstream with news, much as I like observing topics coalesce over weeks and years, data points not necessarily evident as a through-line except in retrospect, I think there’s value in my clustering these sound studies findings. Thus in this issue I have, among other things, a “lead” story about digital voices in Sunny, followed by a variety of other current stories that engage with voice, technology, assistants, and culture but that have no direct ties to Sunny. It’s an experiment.
Jedi Field Recording Expedition
From the seventh episode of The Acolyte
Disquiet Junto Project 0654: Just Notation
The Assignment: Interpret a graphic score by Franziska Baumann.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
Disquiet Junto Project 0654: Just Notation
The Assignment: Interpret a graphic score by Franziska Baumann.
This project is the second of three that are being done over the course of as many months in collaboration with the 2024 Musikfestival Bern, which will be held in Switzerland from September 4 through 8 (details at musikfestivalbern.ch). We are working at the invitation of Tobias Reber, an early Junto participant, who manages the festival’s educational activities. This year is the sixth in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern.
Step 1: Spend time observing this graphic score by Franziska Baumann, the Swiss composer and musician who is part of this year’s Musikfestival Bern. It is titled True Glimpses 1. There is a larger version available for download. More on Baumann at franziskabaumann.ch.
Step 2: Consider how the image in Step 1 can be interpreted as a graphic score. (If you’re unfamiliar with the concept of graphic notation, read up and join the conversion at the llllllll.co link below.)
Step 3: Record a piece of music that interprets the graphic score from Step 1.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0654” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.
Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0654-just-notation/
Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: Monday, July 15, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.
About: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 654th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Just Notation — The Assignment: Interpret a graphic score by Franziska Baumann — at https://disquiet.com/0654/
The cover image for this project is a detail of a graphic score, titled True Glimpses 1, by Franziska Baumann, used with her permission and the support of Musikfestival Bern. More on Baumann at franziskabaumann.ch.