The top bar is a recording of some music for a project. The bottom bar is a recording of some freeform speaking toward an essay about the project.
Sounds and Thoughts About Sounds
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
Author: Marc Weidenbaum
Notes on Notes
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
Three recent notebooks, done. I know it’s received good form to keep all this stuff, but I just transcribe (and sometimes photograph) the notes into digital documents, and then shred ‘em.
Disquiet Junto Project 0630: Creative Sufficiency
The Assignment: Count your tools in advance of employing them.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five 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 and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, January 29, 2024, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 25, 2024.
Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.
These following instructions went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto). Note that this service will change shortly, likely to Buttondown, due to Tinyletter shutting down.
Disquiet Junto Project 0630: Creative Sufficiency
The Assignment: Count your tools in advance of employing them.
This project was proposed by Alex (aka XHG) from Switzerland, who also drew the cover image.
Step 1: The first thing to do is to set a limit. Specifically, you will determine — in advance — how many pieces of equipment or software you will need to produce and record a satisfactory piece of music. Think through what you want to record and what it might take.
Step 2: Now, decide upon a suitable number of items. It is suggested to count DAWs or AU-hosts and each used plugin individually (e.g., the iOS/iPadOS app AUM plus 3 Audio Units = 4 items). In advance of recording, count each piece of equipment and/or software you intend to use for recording. Come up with a total number.
Step 3: Now, produce a piece of music using the amount of equipment you decided on in Step 2. You can use fewer pieces of equipment but no more.
Option: Add a short description to your track. Describe your thinking from Step 1, your equipment from Step 2, and perhaps your experience with the process.
Seven Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0630” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your tracks.
Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0630” (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 tracks. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your tracks.
Step 4: Post your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
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.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you. Perhaps you’ll set a limit in advance.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, January 22, 2024, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 18, 2024.
Upload: When participating in this project, 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: It is always best to set 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 630th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Creative Sufficiency — The Assignment: Count your tools in advance of employing them — at: https://disquiet.com/0630/
This project was proposed by Alex (aka XHG) from Switzerland, who also drew the cover image.
About the Disquiet Junto: https://disquiet.com/junto/
Subscribe to project announcements: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0630-creative-sufficiency/
This Week in Sound: “Vigilance in Response to Noise Playback”
A lightly annotated clipping service
These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the January 23, 2024, issue of the Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter, This Week in Sound. This Week in Sound is the best way I’ve found to process material I come across. Your support provides resources and encouragement. Most issues are free. A weekly annotated ambient-music mixtape is for paid subscribers. Thanks.
▰ BIG FLOCK: Noise pollution has numerous impacts on nature, including making birds flock together: “Why might birds become more social when exposed to noise? The researchers have a few ideas. One possibility is that since traffic noise makes it more difficult to hear the approach of predators, the birds seek safety in numbers. Indeed, studies of other species have noted increased vigilance in response to noise playback. … Another possibility is that the increased social behavior acts as a buffer to the stress of noise pollution. Scientists have measured increased stress hormones in response to noise in some species. Being more social may mediate the effects of noise-induced stress.”
▰ CITIZEN WATCH: A biodiversity effort in Rwanda focuses on birds — and bird song: “At present, the first ever Rwandan citizen science initiative, which has been running since 2021, focuses on equipping young students, many from rural communities, with the skills to observe, audio record, and scientifically label birds by their sounds, songs, and calls. … By using affordable sound recording equipment aimed at entry-level citizen scientists, participants are trained in audio-data collection, verification, preparation, and storage for both higher-level scientists and other citizen scientists. Currently, different existing teams deployed across birding hotspots in Rwanda are divided into categories, including recordists and verifiers.”
▰ I, ME, MINE: It’s quite incredible how much control people playing games have to personalize the environments and interfaces that define those games, case in point this list of eight mods for Minecraft, all related to sound, such as “effects like realistic reverb, attenuation, and simulated sound absorption,” and “increased variety of sounds that can occur when you’re exploring a specific biome or region,” and “higher-quality, rain, thunder, and other atmospheric and immersive sounds in-game,” and a detailed ability “to disable any default sound within the game through a custom settings menu.”
▰ QUICK NOTES: Turn It Up: The voice AI company ElevenLabs has gained an $80M investment. ▰ On the Make: AI vocal deepfakes hit the presidential primary New Hampshire. ▰ Read It: Google Chrome for Android now has a “text-to-speech” feature. ▰ Outboard Motor: If your listening habits are as technologically mediated as mine, then you may appreciate the idea that a synthesizer musician, Richard Brewster, can identify unused outputs from the circuitry of a commercial product and then devise an extension module to take advantage of them. ▰ Soup Sound: What you hear matters when you eat. ▰ Head Games: The more I read about Apple’s new VR goggles, the more I wonder how many of the interface advancements in other Apple products, such as the “Spatial audio follows head movements” setting in MacOS, were developed in tandem. ▰ Great Shakes: The Shriek of the Week is the Great Tit, of whose noise-making we’re told, “It’s all very confusing to the human ear, and one credible explanation for their extensive repertoire is that it’s designed to be confusing — to other great tits.” ▰ Smart Alecs: An upgrade of Alexa, Amazon’s voice assistant, could come with a subscription price. ▰ Beat It: The perception of rhythm is inherent in being human. (Thanks, Glenn Sogge!) ▰ Sing-Along: A car with a built-in karaoke machine. (Thanks, Rich Pettus!)
Sound Ledger: Leaf Blowers, Brussels
Audio culture by the numbers
66%: In a 2-1 vote, a township council in New Jersey voted to ban gas leaf blowers
$200: The price for third and subsequent violations
30: The speed limit, in kilometers per hour (just shy of in miles) in Brussels, as of three years ago, making the city considerably quieter
Sources: blower (patch.com), speed (brusselstimes.com)