Author: Marc Weidenbaum

Widescreen Synthesis

Another generous slate from Glasgow-based Instruō

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
This is a set of six modules from the Scottish company Instruō from the library of the virtual synthesizer software VCV Rack

The maximum display width of an image on Disquiet.com increased significantly with this site’s recent redesign. I figured I’d employ the capacity for the first time by taking a screenshot of the six modules that the Scottish company Instruō (instruomodular.com) made available for free last month on the free software synth platform VCV Rack (vcvrack.com) — along with, for good measure, a seventh module, the earlier Cš-L oscillator, just to max out the width. Each of these modules was ported to software from existing commercial hardware that Instruō designs and builds in Glasgow.

It’s also a good opportunity to highlight the interview I did back in January 2021 with Instruō founder Jason Lim about the process and decision-making that went into the company’s initial slate of hardware ports: “How Instruō Went Virtual.”

Notes on Note-taking

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a screenshot of some nested folders on a Mac, as described in detail in the blog post.

Over on [Mastodon](https://post.lurk.org/web/@disquiet/109627471663388588), some folks asked about my note-taking/writing process in response to the above image. I replied, and then I figured I could tidy it up and archive it here, in case it’s of interest:

The short version is I have (1) a document named “today” that I just keep running notes in all day long. I have some #categories in there, to break it down, many of which remain empty by the end of the day, but they provide some organization, some guardrails. I then have (2) a document for the given month (and these end up in one folder per year as the months go by). This month’s document is titled “daily202301.” I always go “yearmonth” (or “yearmonthday”) for file names, because then they sort easily into chronological order. I’ve been labeling files that way a long time, back to the late 1980s at least. (I remember in 1996 I took a new job overseeing a fairly large editorial staff, more than a dozen people, and I requested that people do this. At first they were like “Why?” — and then they saw the benefits.)

The next morning I copy the “today” stuff and paste it to the top of the given month’s document, so at the end of the month I have a reverse chronological journal of all the stuff I’d noted. That way I start each day with the “today” doc fresh (aside from those categories I mentioned). I also have a (3) various special documents (books-in-progress, Junto material, raw This Week in Sound fodder, articles-in-progress, projects, cut’n’paste replies for over-eager publicists, etc.), that some of the “today” stuff ends up moved over to (rather than to the generic monthly documents mentioned above). (For what it’s worth, I do this all in [markdown](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown), so the files end with an “.md” suffix. These files are the same size as .txt and .rtf files, take up very little room, and are quickly searchable and indexable.)

Also, my laptop screen is arranged so I have a narrow window for the today.md file always visible on the left 1/5th (or so) of the screen, and then all my other activities (browser, word processor, Slack, Discord, calendar, etc.) fill the remaining right 4/5ths of the screen. I use Scrivener for anything longer than a blog post and iA Writer for anything shorter than Scrivener, and I generally end up in Google Docs for stuff that gets particularly collaborative.

I also have a cheap Android tablet to my right that’s my digital project whiteboard, with all my projects listed on it. Currently it displays a Google Sheet, but I’ve used other software to the same ends. I like a whiteboard that can be turned off, rather than have it stare at me 24/7 from a wall. Also, I like to work in lots of places — cafes, museums, libraries, the couch — and this way my whiteboard is always accessible, even by phone if I feel the need to take a peek. To my left is an iPad that’s usually got my email and calendar running, and which I often lift up to take handwritten notes on, or to annotate PDFs and screenshots, and so forth. (Or to make music with, or read comics on.)

I do use little paper notepads, but I treat them as essentially disposable. I write in them, less as full text and more as line-item mental reminders, and then I transfer that writing to digital files every day or so (though sometimes there’s a bit of a backlog) by typing it and expanding the initial thoughts. At some point in the last year or so I concertedly taught myself to write in all caps by hand quickly, and that’s significantly extended the half life (i.e., legibility) of my stray thoughts.

There’s a whole lot more to the process, and the tool deployment slowly evolves over time. Everyone’s needs differ. This has just worked for me.

Disquiet.com Redesign

New year, new look, new outlook

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a quick note to mention that Disquiet.com has undergone a major redesign. This effort has been a long time coming, a long time in the works. The site had come to look more claustrophobic as time passed. I wanted the text to be larger, the space in which the text appeared to be larger, the navigation to be simpler, and the backend to be modernized. I also wanted the mobile version to be less burdensome to read.

In the process, a “books” page has been added to the site, and the sidebar has been cleaned up considerably.

The new theme just got turned on this evening, and there is some inevitable tidying up to be taken care of in the days ahead, but it’s 95% of the way there. Major thanks to futureprüf for the support.

And for your enjoyment, here’s a screenshot of what Disquiet.com looked like in 1998, two years after its 1996 launch:

This is a screenshot of the incredibly simple design of the original Disquiet.com website.

And here’s what this site looked like just before the new theme was implemented:

Disquiet Junto: 11th Anniversary

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s a new year, and a new project — and also an old one. This week’s music composition prompt, to record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it, is the same project the Disquiet Junto community does the first week of every new year. It’s the same as the very first Junto project, way back during the first week of January 2012. It’s a simple proposal, just a single line of instruction, and you can, as always, interpret as you see fit.

I’m sitting here as I type this, drinking black iced coffee with three ice cubes in it — two and a half ice cubes, actually, as half of one disintegrated when I tried to remove it from the tray. Those ice cubes in the context of that daily morning habit were on my mind when I first started the Junto, as were the clinking sounds in an old Alkaholiks rap song (the great “Hip Hop Drunkies”). Also on my mind at the time, as I sat with a friend in a now defunct cafe on Valencia Street here in San Francisco, was the inclusion of sampled ice cubes by an important Junto precursor, the challenge series Iron Chef of Music, in which samples are equivalent to the shared ingredients on the *Iron Chef* TV shows.

I truly had no idea that week if anyone would even take up the proposed project, but people did, and we’ve been doing a new Junto project Junto starting each Thursday ever since. It isn’t always a sample-based effort. We’ve explored visual scores, and live recordings, and open source software, and numerous techniques, and many other types of prompts.

If you’re new to the Junto, welcome. I hope it can be part of a productive and fulfilling year of music-making. If you’ve been around for a while, then you new this project was coming.

And that covers it. Thanks, as always, for your generosity with your time and creativity. Oh, and I might as well mention that this week marks a double milestone: not just 11th anniversary of founding of the Disquiet Junto, but the 575th consecutive weekly project.

Best from a windy and rainy San Francisco.

Disquiet Junto Project 0575: On Ice

The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the cover image for the week's Disquiet Junto project. It is a glass of water, filled to the brim, with three ice cubes floating in it.

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.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, January 9, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 5, 2022.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the [ llllllll.co discussion thread](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0575-on-ice/).

These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):

Disquiet Junto Project 0575: On Ice

The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it.

Welcome to a new year of Disquiet Junto communal music projects. This week’s project is as follows. It’s the same project we’ve begun each year with since the very first Junto project, way back in January 2012. The project is, per tradition, just this one step:

Step 1: Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it.

Background: Longtime participants in, and observers of, the Disquiet Junto series will recognize this single-sentence assignment — “Please record the sound of an ice cube rattling in a glass, and make something of it” — as the very first Disquiet Junto project, the same one that launched the series back on the first Thursday of January 2012. Revisiting it at the start of each January ever since has provided a fitting way to begin the new year. By now, it qualifies as a tradition. A weekly project series can come to overemphasize novelty, and it’s helpful to revisit old projects as much as it is to engage with new ones. Also, by its very nature, the Disquiet Junto suggests itself as a fast pace: a four-day production window, a regular if not weekly habit. It can be beneficial to step back and see things from a longer perspective.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0575” (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 “disquiet0575” (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-0575-on-ice/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0575-on-ice/)

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. How long until the ice melts?

Deadline: Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, January 9, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, January 5, 2022.

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 575th weekly Disquiet Junto project — On Ice (The Assignment: Record the sound of ice in a glass and make something with it) — at: https://disquiet.com/0575/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0575-on-ice/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0575-on-ice/)