Author: Marc Weidenbaum

Make Themselves Present

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a stack of CDs that all feature Pauline Oliveros

Nice to have the CD player hooked up again. I sometimes wonder if much of the music I most enjoy wouldn’t have existed, wouldn’t have taken the form that it did, wouldn’t have risen to the prominence it did, without the arrival of the CD. The tabula rasa of digital sound, not only recording but reproduction, meaning production and consumption in union — the lack of surface noise, the lack of ground hum, the ability for the quietest, humblest sounds to make themselves present in a room — allowed for experiments in subtlety, in nuance, that wouldn’t merely have been drowned out on cassette and vinyl, but likely wouldn’t have been attempted, let alone flourished.

Scratch Pad: Drive-bys, Lennon, Reznor

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media during the preceding week. I tend to think of social media — Twitter especially, though I’m taking a break, and Facebook to a degree, and increasingly [Mastodon](https://post.lurk.org/@disquiet) — as my public scratch pad. It’s informative to revisit a week of thinking out loud in public. Also, knowing you’ll revisit what you say pulls in the reins a bit, in a good way.

▰ My year-end streaming summary tells me I’m in the top 20% of Led Zeppelin listeners. I’m like, whatever, streaming is just a subset of my listening. And then I look over at the turntable, and there’s a Led Zeppelin album on it.

▰ The new Metallica single sounds like someone asked an AI to make a new Metallica single

▰ A car just went by blasting “Blue Rondo à la Turk” — couldn’t they drive around the block a few times, or maybe even idle?

▰ “You will hear music until your call is answered.”

This feels like a prophecy more than it does a voice menu narration.

▰ I would totally join a cult that worshipped a trinity of tuning forks.

▰ Just the occasional note of astonishment as to how good the speakers on my 14″ MacBook Pro are — the stereo separation, the range. It’s kind of incredible. (Right now listening to the new Bill Frisell album on Blue Note, *Four*, featuring Johnathan Blake, Gerald Clayton, and Greg Tardy.)

▰ Been listening to a lot of Brad Mehldau, the pianist, lately. This one, his cover of “Dear Prudence,” hits hard on the 42nd anniversary of John Lennon’s death. This is from Mehldau’s *Largo* album. It is, I believe, just him, Jim Keltner (drums), and Darek Oleszkiewicz (bass). The record is over 20 years old. He has a new solo piano collection of Beatles covers due out in 2023. Keep music alive by interpreting it anew.

▰ The primary purpose of voice menus is to reassure us that voice AI is not nearly ready to take over the world.

▰ Ooh, time to take a break from the CD player, ’cause a new Trent Reznor / Atticus Ross score has arrived: *Empire of Light*, the new Sam Mendes film (or, perhaps more importantly, the new Olivia Coleman and Michael Ward film). And on that note, have a good weekend. See you Monday.

Disquiet Junto Project 0571: Child’s Play

The Assignment: Make music inspired by a nursery rhyme.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is the cover image for the 571st Disquiet Junto project. It is an old, public domain drawing of the dish running away with the spoon from the classic nursery rhyme.

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, December 12, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 8, 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-0571-childs-play/60026).

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0571: Child’s Play
The Assignment: Make music inspired by a nursery rhyme.

This week’s project was proposed by Junto participant El90.

Step 1: Listen to some nursery rhymes — and do sing along if you like.

Step 2: Think about the idea of nursery rhymes, the nature of their melodies, lyrical content, rhyme scheme, form, and any other aspects you find striking.

Step 3: Make a piece of music based on, or inspired by, a nursery rhyme.

Step 4: Upload your piece, making sure to explain in your description the name of the nursery rhyme (or rhymes) that it is based on and how the source material has informed your work. Please also provide a link to a recording of the nursery rhyme if one is readily available.

Step 5: Listen to and comment on your fellow contributors’ pieces.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0571” (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 “disquiet0571” (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-0571-childs-play/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0571-childs-play/)

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:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, December 12, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 8, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0571” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

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 571st weekly Disquiet Junto project — Child’s Play (The Assignment: Make music inspired by a nursery rhyme) — at: https://disquiet.com/0571/

This week’s project was proposed by Junto participant El90.

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-0571-childs-play/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0571-childs-play/)

This Week in Sound: A Lone High-Pitched Honk

A lightly annotated clipping service

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

[](https://thisweekinsound.substack.com)

These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the December 6, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound: [thisweekinsound.substack.com](https://thisweekinsound.substack.com).

▰ **SILENT VS. DEADLY:** “The nearly silent motor of the ebike — a factor that can make them an accident risk in the busy city — has become the surprise secret weapon for saving the world’s most endangered species.” Yeah, [park rangers are using ebikes in Mozambique, on the southeast coast of Africa, to catch poachers](https://www.wired.com/story/anti-poaching-ebikes/).

▰ **BATS, MAN:** One thing that Substack subscribers helped me do was rationalize a subscription to [New Scientist](https://www.newscientist.com/article/2348901-bats-and-death-metal-singers-use-the-same-throat-structure-to-growl/): “Bats are known for their high-frequency calls, which they use to echolocate and catch prey, but they also let out much lower frequency calls for bat-to-bat communication. The structure in a bat’s larynx that lets them produce these sounds is the same one used by death metal singers to growl out low notes. … Lower frequency squeaks came from the bats’ false vocal folds, which get their name from the fact that ‘in humans they are rarely used, never for speech’.” *(Thanks, Rich Pettus)*

▰ **BATHROOM TONE:** “Scientists have created a machine that will listen to your farts, pee, and poop. Yes, that’s right. The machine will recognize and analyze the sound of each bathroom-related activity.” It is not April Fools Day, though the scientists sure have a sense of humor. The machine is called Synthetic Human Acoustic Reproduction Testing machine — or [S.H.A.R.T. for short](https://www.medicaldaily.com/farts-poop-and-pee-ai-will-listen-these-sounds-and-detect-abnormalities-467572). “Scientists are training AI to detect and scrutinize scatological sounds so that it can one day help in diagnosing deadly diseases like cholera and nip a potential outbreak in the bud.”

▰ **GADGETS WITH BIG IDEAS:** Popular Science’s list of [the year’s 100 best inventions](https://www.popsci.com/technology/best-of-whats-new-2022/) includes at least one mentioned here previously (Sony earbuds with an “open ring” to make sure you hear the outside world while you’re outside in it, for safety’s sake). ▰ There’s also GameDAC (digital audio converter), which “connects to multiple systems and pumps out high-res certified sound with 360-degree spatial audio from whatever source you choose.” ▰ And a soundbar, the Diome, that may be worth the price. ▰ And most interestingly (to me), a drone (named the Zipline) that use sound to avoid obstacles: “Eight microphones on the drone’s wing listen for traffic like an approaching small plane, and can preemptively change the UAV’s route to get out of the way before it arrives.”

This is an image showing how flying objects can avoid each other
Air Lines: Graphic from the flyzipline.com website illustrates how drones “autonomously and continuously monitor for airspace traffic”

▰ **GOOSE CHASE:** One of my favorite newsletters (Substack or otherwise) is [This Week in Birding](https://www.twibchicago.com) by Bob Dolgan, whose writing about his dedicated pursuit can be quite beautiful. Here he is on the trail of the Cackling Goose, which sounds like something Edward Gorey might have come up with:

>“I stood on a snowy baseball field and looked up a cackler video on my phone and compared it to the birds around me. The nearby geese were considerably larger with a slightly different posture than the bird in the video. As I was doing this, [a lone high-pitched honk](https://www.twibchicago.com/p/identifying-a-cackling-goose-is-far) pierced some momentary quiet and seemingly hung in the wintry air for a moment.”

▰ **BOXED IN:** A “boxy” heating solution called the heat pump is gaining popularity in Germany, but first [someone has to sort out the noise concerns](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/world/europe/germany-heat-pumps.html). *(Thanks, Mike Rhode!)*

>Aware of the problem, German manufacturers have been fine-tuning their machines to make them quieter. Vaillant has altered the angle of the blades and cut zigzagged notches into their edges, testing the results in an acoustics room on the premises of their factory.

▰ **QUICK NOTES: STILL LIFE:** John McNamee looks at [the role of silence in the comics](https://solrad.co/out-with-the-bang-jason-and-the-art-of-silence) of the Norwegian cartoonist who simply goes by the name Jason *(via Mike Rhode)*. ▰ **DEAF TONE:** There’s lots of talk about recent legal changes opening the market for cheap(er) hearing aids — now there’s news about [low-cost tests for hearing loss](https://www.wired.com/story/this-low-cost-test-for-hearing-loss-lives-on-a-smartphone/), too. ▰ **FOOD FIGHT:** I couldn’t help but notice that the Kenyan “upmarket” suburb where [a local restaurant has gotten noise complaints is named Karen](https://nation.africa/kenya/news/karen-residents-want-betty-kyallo-s-noisy-summer-house-restaurant-shut-down-4036424). ▰ **PING PONG:** I love when a [UX fetishist](https://www.androidpolice.com/google-messages-sent-message-sound-change/) details such a minor thing as the change in sounds made by Google’s Messages app. ▰ **WILD THINGS:** At least 53 creatures “[thought to be soundless](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/scientists-thought-these-53-species-were-silent-now-theyve-recorded-their-sounds-180981046/) are actually communicating with vocalizations” (and more at [nature.com](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-33741-8) — *thanks again, Rich Pettus!*).