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.
▰ Morning sounds: garbage trucks’ grinding and rumbling, air filter whir, passing traffic rumble, low level electric hum, yipping and barking of dog being walked by
▰ Voice Menu: “If you would like to hold without music, please press star”
Me:
▰ The thing about these year-end music-listening recaps is mine end up weighted artificially by the numerous songs I’ve struggled to learn for guitar class, and just had on loop repeatedly so I could (try to) play along. And much of my listening is just MP3s (and equivalent) on my laptop/phone. But whatever.
▰ I got my first Mac in late 1984 or early 1985, after having put my TRS-80 through many years of hard labor. The first thing I did with MacPaint was try to recreate a semblance of the artist Tom Phillips’ typography from the inner gatefold, shown here, of the 1974 King Crimson album *Starless and Bible Black*. I think I missed dinner that night. (RIP, [Tom Phillips](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/29/tom-phillips-obituary), 1937-2022)
▰ Kinda funny I was remotely concerned this synthesizer module I ordered from Australia would arrive too soon in San Francisco and it’d get left on the stoop while I was away from home, which I no longer am, and haven’t been for a week — as it has only just now cleared customs.
▰ If you like time travel (I do — if you don’t, fun fact: this ain’t for you), you may like *The 7 Lives of Léa*, a short (seven episodes) French TV series on le Netflix. I dug it a lot. Jumps between today and the early 1990s, back and forth and back and forth. There was a ton of early-1990s French pop music and hip-hop I’d never heard, which was icing on the cake. I had Shazam running the whole time. It’s got a bit of *Russian Doll* in it, though it’s nowhere near as dark. Pretty much the oddest thing about it was these kids live in this gorgeous French town and it was, at times, hard to think of it as a tough place to have to live in, but many of us rightfully wanna get outta wherever we grow up. (Thanks, Darko Macan, for the recommendation!)
▰ Absolutely essential hip-hop instrumental I haven’t listened to in way too long. Apparently there’s a Milt Jackson sample in there.
After I posted it, someone on Mastodon [pointed out](https://techhub.social/@stephenmeyer/109439464204232131) that it is quite similar to De La Soul’s “Stakes Is High.”
▰ First passing-car Christmas carol of the year. Doppler Santa.
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 5, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 1, 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-0570-key-change/).
Disquiet Junto Project 0570: Key Change
The Assignment: Make music that changes keys
Step 1: There’s been news of how, in the past decade, the newest most popular music doesn’t change keys as often as the most popular music used to. (I’m being cautious by being specific that this is about the most popular music, because the data relates specifically to No. 1 singles.) Read about it here:
Step 2: Record a piece of music that does change keys. (Don’t feel required to record music that aspires to mass popularity.)
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0570” (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 “disquiet0570” (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-0570-key-change/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0570-key-change/)
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 5, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, December 1, 2022.
Length: The length is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0570” 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 570th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Key Change (The Assignment: Make music that changes keys) — at: https://disquiet.com/0570/
Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0570-key-change/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0570-key-change/)
The cover image for this project is from DALL·E 2, where “key change into another key” was the prompt.
These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the November 29, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound: [thisweekinsound.substack.com](https://thisweekinsound.substack.com).
▰ HOLD YOUR APPLAUSE: As I mention each week, I love getting TWiS tips from readers, especially regarding topics (e.g., sports, fashion, romance fiction) in which I am virtually illiterate. Bruno Ruviaro wrote in about the World Cup:
>“With the World Cup going on and all my family and friends in Brazil watching games, I came across this interesting & unexpected effect of online streaming delays and communal sound. Soccer fans in Brazil who watched the game via streaming got extremely annoyed when they realized they were so behind the others who were watching on regular TV. They would hear the uproar of neighbours celebrating Brazil’s goal, while their own screen was still 30-40 seconds in the past. In soccer’s terms, of course, 30 seconds is an eternity. Totally ruined the game for streaming viewers.”
And he shared some coverage from [newsbulletin247.com](https://newsbulletin247.com/sports/214208.html):
>“Fans reported … having been warned about … goals in advance, through the screams and fireworks of neighbors. ‘I’m spoiling all the goals because of the neighbors,’ posted one Twitter user. ‘It’s so much different delay that each person here in the building reacts at a different time,’ wrote another.”
▰ BOXED IN: Caity Weaver, writer, and Alec Soth, photographer, teamed up for [“Could I Survive the ‘Quietest Place on Earth’?”](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/magazine/quiet-chamber-minneapolis.html?unlocked_article_code=HFnqzOMTBOkZXmDZX5jvJybdt5_xqQMa-1nn4Fhqjhm0GeaDaSJ2v7tOVffKAaZld2nfqewPlU1u18c-kI0Up3UOxGdQef4dDCNEmnsYtwhG0k4wOmlj-dUD5xNOP_41-lndCm14TCmSbcX4P2B-Lrgt-4FQd8SiXN5U5HaUKdtFv-16Hx49Ics2sfjhccenfwtEdwpQ3oQWExCtVDUdedTfDIFYhw5Rae4tXWeEO29DoL22KFom42Ry-39LaYJH4F_JHFBs9Nr0dAx5UWlUniPp-3BwgxJTk0adUivo2SEa8WvYnzyovPyKFvw3WWMrACCjoo-G0wgcyvJO-PQJb9hGL40&smid=share-url) — a New York Times piece about an anechoic chamber in Minneapolis. That it takes its origin from a story in, of all things, the Daily Mail, is somewhat troubling, but Weaver makes a solid case for the specific location’s internet fame (a term I predict will someday replace the current meaning of the word “infamous”), thanks to the groundswell that initially informed the Daily Mail story, and more recent attention on TikTok and YouTube. The Minneapolis spot isn’t the anechoic chamber where John Cage had his silence epiphany. It’s a discarded one from Sunbeam, purchased from the appliance manufacturer by Steven J. Orfield, of Orfield Laboratories, in the 1980s. Among many things of interest in the story, including Weaver’s fine description of facing the challenge of monumental silence, is a showdown between Orfield and Microsoft for the Guiness Book of Records title. *(Read free with this [gift link](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/23/magazine/quiet-chamber-minneapolis.html?unlocked_article_code=HFnqzOMTBOkZXmDZX5jvJybdt5_xqQMa-1nn4Fhqjhm0GeaDaSJ2v7tOVffKAaZld2nfqewPlU1u18c-kI0Up3UOxGdQef4dDCNEmnsYtwhG0k4wOmlj-dUD5xNOP_41-lndCm14TCmSbcX4P2B-Lrgt-4FQd8SiXN5U5HaUKdtFv-16Hx49Ics2sfjhccenfwtEdwpQ3oQWExCtVDUdedTfDIFYhw5Rae4tXWeEO29DoL22KFom42Ry-39LaYJH4F_JHFBs9Nr0dAx5UWlUniPp-3BwgxJTk0adUivo2SEa8WvYnzyovPyKFvw3WWMrACCjoo-G0wgcyvJO-PQJb9hGL40&smid=share-url) — and thanks to the many people who shared the story with me.)*
▰ IVONA BE A CONTENDER: There’s so much news about the declining profits (and future) of the seemingly ubiquitous voice assistants like Alexa, Google Assistant, Cortana, and Bixby that I’m still wrapping my head around it. Here’s one bit, from [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/amazon-alexa-voice-assistant-big-tech-1849830596):
>“Amazon marketed Alexa at a low price in order to use it as a conduit to get consumers to purchase more from Amazon, but the voice assistant quickly became the subject of innocuous requests to play music and to relay weather conditions, not to purchase more laundry detergent. … ‘Alexa is a colossal failure of imagination,’ an anonymous former employee said to Insider. ‘It was a wasted opportunity.’”
▰ KEY OF LIFE: Like a lot of “why” news stories, the NPR discussion **[“Why the key change has disappeared from top-charting tunes”](https://www.npr.org/2022/11/25/1139232684/why-the-key-change-has-disappeared-from-top-charting-tunes)** is more of a “that” story — that is, it says “that” happened, without much concrete why. In brief, according to Chris Dalla Riva, a musician and data analyst (at Audiomack): “from the 1960s through the ’90s, roughly a quarter of No. 1 songs changed keys.” By contrast: “in the entire decade from 2010 to 2020, there was only 1.” (See this week’s TWiS Sound Ledger for its identity.) Dan Charnas, author of the great book *Dilla Time*, suggests that overfamiliarity undid the technique: “Charnas says the key change kind of got stale. It sort of became a crutch.” NPR host Ari Shapiro notes changing times: “Instead of melody, popular music today often prioritizes rhythm, like rap and hip-hop.”
Chartbreaker: No messin’ around, the key change has been in serious decline for years (via flowingdata.com)
I wonder if part of the decline in the popularity of the key change has to do with music becoming more always-on in our age of streaming (Audiomulch, Riva’s employer, is itself a streaming service). There’s an argument that most music today is experienced as ambient music — that is, as background sound that one might elect on occasion to actually pay attention to – and that for many people, its purpose is to set a consistent tone and back away. That would mean that songs are most appreciated when they don’t change, and that they’re appreciated precisely when they hold a certain emotional tone for the length of their playing time. (Thanks, Rich Pettus.)
▰ RING CYCLE: Major thanks to the folks at [eurogamer.net](https://www.eurogamer.net/in-praise-of-fortnites-visual-sound-effects-setting) for introducing me to the concept of the “Sound Ring” in the video game Fortnite. In brief, the Sound Ring visualizes sound effects, so you “see” the sound effects as they occur. Says one Eurogamer writer:
>“For someone with hearing issues like me it’s a game-changer, but I’ve been talking to a number of people who don’t have hearing issues and who also use it and also find it to be a brilliant thing.”
And another:
>“I think it’s a fantastic piece of accessibility design and a genuine aid for everyone. It helps me play better — prioritise what I’m going to do next based on something’s proximity, discover chests or other players I might not have had cues to. It makes me more alert to the game and its world feel more alive to see visual clues to things I might not have picked up myself.”
Even if you don’t play video games, it’s a fascinating UX topic. Note that these aren’t visualized like comic book or manga sound effects. It’s something quite different. Here’s a still image via [fortniteintel.com](https://www.fortniteintel.com/fortnite-visualize-sound-effects-setting/39979/):
Apparently, though, the Sound Ring is (or was?) somewhat controversial. Some gamers are (or were) [quite opposed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwsLa5J7DYo) to the Sound Ring (assuming you’re not deaf or hearing impaired), at least in part because when first deployed, the in-game sound was reduced from stereo to mono, though apparently [that issue was corrected](https://youtu.be/fFbIbvUlkQE?t=9) at least a year ago
▰ QUICK NOTES: NO KITTEN: A cat owner, Lucas Fischer, in Indonesia [uses AI to “scientifically measure” how “annoying” his pet is](https://www.newsweek.com/pet-owner-app-measures-cat-meows-1763125): “The app uses Apple’s Sound Analysis framework to recognize the noises made by a cat. Sound Analysis can identify over 300 specific sounds including laughter, applause, and, of course, meows” ([meow.lucas.love](https://meow.lucas.love)). ▰ HANDS-FREE AUDIOBOOKS: When using Audible on iOS you can now [use Alexa voice commands to navigate your audiobook](https://9to5mac.com/2022/11/29/audible-ios-voice-control/), such as pause or repeat a section. ▰ OFF THE HOOK: The airline Frontier has done away [entirely with human phone support](https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/27/23480167/frontier-airlines-shut-down-customer-service-phone-line) in favor of “fully digital communications.” ▰ LET’S SUBMERGE: The Unreal Engine now supports multichannel audio, meaning game developers, among others, can newly [“couple a 3D interface with 3D sound.”](https://cdm.link/2022/11/unreal-engine-5-1-whats-new/) (For someone like me who mostly loiters in video games, this is a virtual flâneur’s dream come true.) ▰ FLY LIGHT: The Candela P-8 Voyager, due in 2024, is a [“flying, whisper-quiet explorer vessel”](https://www.dpaonthenet.net/article/194738/Candela-P-8-Voyager-could-help-save-coral-reefs.aspx) with an [“electric hydrofoil”](https://candela.com/) that is said to significantly reduce sound underwater. ▰ REST IN PIECES: [Tom Phillips, the British painter](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2022/nov/29/tom-phillips-obituary) perhaps most widely known for his work with Brian Eno, King Crimson, and the Who, and for his decades-long collage exploration, *The Humument*, died yesterday, November 28, at age 87. (I fell hard for Phillips during high school, and never lost interest. I treasure my hardback copy of the original *A Human Document* book, by W.H. Mallock, on which Phillips’ *The Humument* was based.)
