Author: Marc Weidenbaum

On Repeat: Ambient, Organ, Techno

Home/office playlist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ Gorgeous mix of microlooped and warped guitar figures from T1D3S, aka Samuel Death.

▰ “This album focusses on the quirks of the old organ,” writes Élan Vital of his forthcoming release, “its mechanical noises, the breathing of the pump and the sighing of the pipes rather than on actual tonal playing.” There’s one track from Travelling Waves II online so far, dense chords that give way over a long time with occasional sudden shifts in register and tonality.

https://elanvital.bandcamp.com/album/travelling-waves-ii

▰ It feels beneficial to note when I post something here that is the opposite of music that could double as a sedative. I’ve been really digging Synergy, a split EP between Chloe Lula and Ireen Amnes: vital techno that feels sparse and monochromatic while also commanding and filled with rich sound design.

https://tresorberlin.bandcamp.com/album/synergy

Scratch Pad: Timing, AudioMoth, Foghorns

/ 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 used to do this on Saturday mornings over coffee, but it recently became clear to me that that timing is counterproductive, since I aim to take weekends off social media — thus, doing this chore on Saturday morning meant pulling up social media on Saturday morning, which is not what I want to be doing. So, now I’m collating late Friday afternoon, and then posting on Saturday morning. As for social media, these days I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. 

▰ A privacy filibuster: Based on the appearance of “<crosstalk>” in automated transcriptions of human speech, the best current way to keep AI/ML from comprehending a conversation is for an additional person to speak continuously at the same time in a way the others can just ignore.

▰ My phone is set to a voice (South African, according to fruit company linguists). When I decline to reply to a text message, it says “OK,” which always sounds like it’s in on some unspoken meaning I’ve thus telegraphed. It sounds like what it means is “OK, you cheeky monkey.”

Also, I realize that the word “telegraph” has itself long since transformed from an actual form of direct communication to a synonym for suggesting something indirectly.

▰ This is aimed an no one in particular: there’s rarely reason to follow-up about an album you’ve asked me to write about, and much as I try for it not to affect me, after three or four emails, the correspondence does begin to negatively impact the likelihood of what you’re asking.

▰ Between June 23 and August 4 I used the AudioMoth for 14 overnight recordings of five to six hours each night (half indoors, half out), yielding over 26 gigabytes of sound, on just three AA batteries. And far as I can tell, the batteries still have about half a charge. Amazing.

▰ This is incredibly obvious, but only today during guitar class did it occur to me that when I move chords in a major scale up and down the fretboard, each string is in its own mode. (I can be a slow learner.)

▰ Moved to Obsidian.md from IA Writer for markdown and general note-taking. So far it’s nice: elegant, solid, customizable. (Side note: I love that a 1994 decision to use .md as Moldova’s top-level domain led to it being a favorite of medical professionals and coders.)

▰ Summer in San Francisco is foghorn mating season

Disquiet Junto Project 0605: Fifty Fifty 

The Assignment: Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, 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 and interest.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, August 7, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 3, 2023.

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).

Disquiet Junto Project 0605: Fifty Fifty 
The Assignment: Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes.

There’s just one step to this project:

Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes.

(Thanks to Jason Richardson for having proposed it.)

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0605” (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 “disquiet0605” (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:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0605-fifty-fifty/

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.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

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.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, August 7, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, August 3, 2023.

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 605th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Fifty Fifty (Compose a piece of music with as much silence as notes), at: https://disquiet.com/0605/

Thanks to Jason Richardson for having proposed this week’s project.

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-0605-fifty-fifty/