Author: Marc Weidenbaum

Scratch Pad: Soundproof, Rodgers, Waiting

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.

▰ Young child, perhaps in a bookstore for the first time, to parent: “It’s, like, soundproof in here.”

▰ Making abstract, rhythmic electronic music intended to sound like something falling apart in reverse? You could do worse than to study the first 42 seconds of Diana Ross’s (and Bernard Edwards’s and Nile Rodgers’s) “I’m Coming Out.”

▰ Well, it wouldn’t be Jamuary without an unwarranted takedown notice from SoundCloud

▰ Membership in the DisquietJunto is open: just join and participate. There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

▰ The music in the waiting room at the car dealership is “Hotel California.” I’ve been waiting an exceedingly long time. A service technician hums along as the song arrives at the line “You can check out any time you like but you can never leave.” I’m trying to discern if the individual is aware of the irony.

▰ Few situations make me feel like I’m in a Kobo Abe novel quite like sitting for a long time in a waiting room

▰ If I’ve done my math correctly, the 750th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto project will begin on May 14, 2026

▰ Two books this week: I finished reading my second novel of 2026, Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch (following quickly after Flesh by David Szalay). I’ve been to London (and more broadly various parts of the United Kingdom) several times, but clearly not often enough to get the nuances of the rivers and monuments that are anthropomorphized here. The story, an urban fantasy reworking of Punch and Judy, made me want to re-read China Miéville’s King Rat, an urban fantasy reworking of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. … I also finished the first graphic novel I’ve read this year, the just-published collection in the often excellent Lazarus series, written by Greg Rucka and illustrated by Michael Lark. I really dig this long-running series, a plot-heavy not-too-near-ish-future sci-fi thriller, more timely than ever due to its emphasis on post-capitalist feudalism and the wages of longevity. After I read the first issue of this latest arc, I waited until the sequence of six issues, collectively titled Lazarus: Fallen, was complete before taking it all in in one sitting. (Note: Don’t start reading the Lazarus books with this one. Start at the beginning.) Lark is reported to be have suffered a stroke at the end of 2025. Here’s wishing him a smooth recovery.

#30s Buzz Saw Afternoon

When is a violin not a violin?

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I’d gone for a walk and was listening to an audiobook, one that is largely set in London. I’d been alternating between reading the book and listening to it. Now I was walking through San Francisco while my head was in London, a different sort of alternating. At one point in the audiobook, I heard something, the sound of a violin, and I thought that was an interesting creative choice on the part of the recording’s producer or director. Except the sound wasn’t a violin, nor was it part of the audiobook. The sound was a buzz saw from a construction site, a residence half a block away. I paused the audiobook and took a few recordings of the buzz saw until I got one with the minimum of wind, chatty passersby, and traffic. This is on a clear, quiet day, no planes overhead, and the wind pretty chill, if not entirely still. The more I listened to the buzz saw on its own, the less it resembled a violin, but it was never any less musical than when I’d first heard it.

Recorded around 11:15am on an iPhone 17 Pro on Thursday, January 22, 2026, in San Francisco. Posted to SoundCloud and Freesound. This post is part of an ongoing series of field recordings that generally last for roughly 30 seconds and are collectively titled #30s.

Disquiet Junto Project 0734: Meet Cue

The Assignment: Write music for a scene from a favorite film

/ 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 five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.

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. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the llllllll.co discussion thread.

Disquiet Junto Project 0734: Meet Cue
The Assignment: Write music for a scene from a favorite film.

There is just one step: Write music for a scene from a favorite film. (Note: You don’t need to adhere to the style of the film’s original score.)

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0734” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one track per weekly project (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If on occasion you feel inspired to post more than one track (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which is the “main” rendition for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0734-meet-cue/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. How long is the scene?

Deadline: Monday, January 26, 2026, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).

Please Include When Posting Your Track:

More on the 734th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Meet Cue — The Assignment: Write music for a scene from a favorite film — at https://disquiet.com/0734/

A Troubling Such Instance

Or, life during online

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

This is from the Disquiet Junto email project announcement newsletter than goes out Thursday, January 22, 2026, shortly after midnight Pacific Time:

We get used to — if not entirely inured to — the buggy vagaries of the software platforms we spent our time on.

I experienced a troubling such instance of the phenomenon this week, when I uploaded a #Jamuary track to my SoundCloud account. My fairly rudimentary music was instantly flagged for copyright infringement, even though what I had recorded sounded nothing like the track that was singled out as the supposed source material.

Fortunately, my challenge to the infraction notification was deemed satisfactory by whatever software algorithm or employee intervention occurred. My track eventually went live, and my SoundCloud account was not erased from the internet. However, the experience lingered as a potent reminder of how fragile these systems are, and all the more so our connections to them.

Part of the reason the Disquiet Junto has always been on multiple platforms — originally primarily SoundCloud and Twitter (RIP) — is so there’s always a place for conversation, for people to convene and share. Upload to SoundCloud, post on Lines, share on Instagram, chat on Mastodon, listen on Bandcamp, and on and on.

There is no requirement, for example, to be on SoundCloud. Plenty of people post to Bandcamp, YouTube, and elsewhere. To the extent the Disquiet Junto is even “on” SoundCloud, we’re on there because that’s where we started, and the service is still around, and no platform, apart perhaps from YouTube, has suggested itself as dependable and functional in a way that might serve the (seemingly simple) structure of our weekly activities.

Why, you may be wondering, isn’t there an official Junto home on the web? I’ve run the scenarios many times alone and with others, and setting up our own platform, while enticing in theory, has its own inherent problems. Those perceived complications don’t mean we won’t do it someday, but it’s not the priority. The platform isn’t where my main thoughts are. My main thoughts are with ideas that encourage people to make music, to explore new ways of making things, and to communicate (non-verbally for the most part) with each other across borders: linguistic, cultural, and so forth. My main thoughts are about observing activity within the Junto, and in turn both developing new projects and absorbing ones proposed by members of the community. That’s what happens. Where it happens matters less, and so long as it happens lots of places, the Disquiet Junto is in good shape.

Dexba’s Granulated Gestures

Live from Vietnam

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Jamuary is the gift that keeps on regifting — that’s a poor joke in an attempt at commenting on sampling and resampling, and delays and and the like, all of which are part and parcel in the synth realm of this ongoing month-long engagement in making new music every single day (or doing our best). Vietnam-based Dexba posted this solo piece, a video in which simple keyboard gestures are reworked live through granular synthesis, little wisps of notes left to hover, tonalities held in place, all while a slow rhythmic pattern emerges.