Revisiting Some Texture

Part of my ongoing live ambient performance playlist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Listen through the shimmer. Listen through the held tones, and the bell tones, and the swelling notes. Listen past the asynchronous patterning and the resulting chance chordal play. Listen instead for the frictives, the less sinuous textural elements, the way vinyl surface noise (or its approximate) moves across the stereo field. Listen for the clatter, and how it lends a sense of scale to the sonic space. Then listen to the more tonal material, and how the presence of the less inherently sedative elements bring out textures in the seemingly texture-less.

I don’t think I’ve re-upped a recording in a while, but I just love this piece, so having written about it [back in April](https://disquiet.com/2021/04/23/a-certain-type-of-ambient-youtube-performance/), I wanted to mention it again. This video is part of my ongoing [YouTube playlist](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine live ambient performances. Video originally posted to [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhNial3nZ_E) by the talented Jae Ryan.

Disquiet Junto Project 0507: In DD’s Key of C

The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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, September 20, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 16, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0507: In DD’s Key of C

The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key.

Step 1: This week’s project is based on a great “construction kit” of WAV files in the key of C recorded for us by Disquiet Junto member Daniel Díaz. Access the files, of which there are 10, at this Dropbox link:

[https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fitxmqhkggxwpye/AADnKVkTbi4XejHRaqr_N1dsa?dl=0](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/fitxmqhkggxwpye/AADnKVkTbi4XejHRaqr_N1dsa?dl=0)

Step 2: Listen through the tracks, which include piano, two electric guitars, melodica, bowed upright bass, and other instruments.

Step 3: Record your own track employing the source audio.

Background: Consider what the tracks have in common. They are in the same key of C and on a single chord, Cmaj13(#11). Daniel played the instruments in different registers from deep low C to a very high accordina note. Daniel says, “I didn’t listen to the other tracks while playing and didn’t pay attention to the length, so if all the tracks are pasted at the ‘one’ of a project the results will be random. I just used a metronome of 100bpm, so the rhythmic little bits would match, approximately.”

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0507” (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 “disquiet0507” (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-0507-in-dds-key-of-c/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0507-in-dds-key-of-c/)

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.

Note: Please post one track per 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, September 20, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, September 16, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0507” 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 507th weekly Disquiet Junto project — In DD’s Key of C (The Assignment: Make music with 10 acoustic instrument samples all in a shared key) — at: https://disquiet.com/0507/

Tracks made with samples created generously by Daniel Díaz.

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-0507-in-dds-key-of-c/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0507-in-dds-key-of-c/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is by Thorsten Sideb0ard, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

[https://flic.kr/p/bvKCrv](https://flic.kr/p/bvKCrv)

[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)

Everything Merges

Jeannine Schulz gets pecussive, gently

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Jeannine Schulz had a prolific 2020, and while her most recent record dates back to the end of July, coming up on two months ago, there’s little reason to worry about a longer pause ahead. That was the brief *Tiān*, following shortly on [*When Fragments Align*](https://jeannineschulz.bandcamp.com/album/when-fragments-align), both of which were self-released, and, back a bit further in March, [*Luminous*](https://polarseasrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/luminous), which came out on the Polar Seas label. *Tiān*, like *Fragments* before it, expresses a welcome expansion of the held-shutter, soft-focus, deep-field ambient music that Schulz has produced over the past couple years. It introduces light but certain textures, actual percussive elements that set and keep a pace. How those sounds, notably in the singsong “Xīn,” merge with the backing sound field, how their presence gently pushes the haze to the rear without formally drawing a line, is part of Schulz’s considered compositional accomplishment. A simple delay on a secondary pulse echoes into the distance, merging beat with atmosphere.

Schulz is based in Hamburg, Germany. Album released at [jeannineschulz.bandcamp.com](https://jeannineschulz.bandcamp.com/album/ti-n).

Yes, You Want to Listen to Bowed Glockenspiel

A Lullatone sample set that is great before it's even sampled

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

While it’s true that I think the internet excels especially at works in progress, where the audience can witness the given musician’s process, it remains also the case that work considered (merely? purely? solely?) raw material can be an end unto itself. Which is to say that while the best listening to recorded music is often when it isn’t even done, often the very best listening is the stuff that exists before the music-making can be said to have begun. Which is to say, some sample sets are listenable until themselves.

The material in the new sample set from Japan-based act Lullatone, all bowed glockenspiel, is a fine example. Just listen the pristine, soaring, organ-like beauty of the sample. And then, of course, try out the cooked versions, four reworkings of the source audio: ambient, distorted, granularized, and “reverse reverb.”

Set first released at [lullatonesamplesets.bandcamp.com](https://lullatonesamplesets.bandcamp.com/album/bowed-glockenspiel-sample-set).

Three Takeyuki Hakozaki Videos

From what became What Comes After

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

These three videos have footage of the installations that led to each of the three tracks on *What Comes After*, the Takeyuki Hakozaki album I wrote about [earlier this week](https://disquiet.com/2021/09/06/takeyuki-hakozaki-hako/).

This is “Air,” with the fans and tuned guitars:

And this is “Magnetic,” with the tape rubbing along the guitar strings:

And this is “Complex,” for loops and synthesizer: