Disquiet Junto Project 0484: A Movable Heart

The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer's wind chimes to a new location.

/ 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, April 12, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 8, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0484: A Movable Heart

The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s wind chimes to a new location.

First, some background: Artist Chris Kallmyer’s “Two hearts are better than one” is a pair of wind chimes, one of which is depicted in this week’s cover image, crisscrossing Los Angeles at the height of the pandemic. Installed at homes for week-long listening sessions, the chimes formed a duet across a city and provided intimate experiences with sound for 16 families sheltering at home. (More at [chriskallmyer.com](http://www.chriskallmyer.com/portfolio-item/2-hearts/).)

Step 1: Chris has provided us with a recording of the wind chimes, a little over five minutes long. The audio was cleaned up by Alex Hawthorn to maximize the clarity of the chimes themselves, removing much of the background sound, thus situating the chimes in what might be thought of as a platonic space. Access the wav file at [dropbox.com](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i9fwo845wf218cn/2hearts_v3_heavy.wav?dl=0).

Step 2: You’ll be continuing the journey of this wind chime. You’ll do this by playing the wav file recording out loud somewhere you choose, and recording the sound of the wind chime in that environment.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0484” (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 “disquiet0484” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0484-a-movable-heart/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0484-a-movable-heart/)

Step 5: Annotate your tracks 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.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, April 12, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 8, 2021.

Length: You’d likely keep your track to the original length, but vary as you see fit.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0484” 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 484th weekly Disquiet Junto project — A Movable Heart (The Assignment: Transplant the sounds of Chris Kallmyer’s wind chimes to a new location) — at:
https://disquiet.com/0484/

More on Chris Kallmyer at:
[chriskallmyer.com](http://chriskallmyer.com/).

Major thanks to Alex Hawthorn for support:
[alexhawthorn.com](https://alexhawthorn.com/)

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-0484-a-movable-heart/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0484-a-movable-heart/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet) for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is by Pieter Kaufman and used with the artist’s permission.

Rhodes + Synth

From Minneapolis-based Midera

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Beautiful, nearly 12-minute live performance by Minneapolis-based Midera, playing Rhodes piano along with another bit of old-school hardware, the Sequential Prophet 10. Not surprisingly, the latter provides the lush, sustained pads, while the Rhodes provides a simple solo that occasionally emerges when the waves of the Prophet ease. According to the accompanying note, this is a sideways view because the other camera failed to record. Arguably the placidity of a single vantage is to the production’s benefit, even if it was achieved by accident.

More from Midera at [mideraartist.wordpress.com](https://mideraartist.wordpress.com/)

Guitar + Synth

Orbital Patterns levels up

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

One of the great things about the slipstream patchwork that is modern music listening — not Spotify, or full albums on Bandcamp, but the individual work-in-progress tracks that make up, particularly, so much of YouTube, SoundCloud, and, to a degree, Vimeo — is you can witness in something approximating realtime the changes that occur to favorite musicians’ approaches. For example, Orbital Patterns (aka Michigan-based Abdul Allums) has added electric guitar to the mix, resulting in a radical evolution of timbres and textures. The guitar is heard here running through the synthesizer he’s slowly accumulated and adjusted as the months and videos have passed. Three different guitar samples are processed by three very different modules, resulting in a dreamy track that varies its hush with a sense of slow-motion abandon.

Video originally posted at [YouTube](https://youtu.be/g8RWOLHiUUc).

Current Favorites: Guitar Samples, Instrumental Hip-Hop, Surround Keyboards

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them.

▰ There’s one track up thus far from the self-titled [*Sweepsculp*](https://nousklaer.bandcamp.com/album/sweepsculp), the remainder due out on the Nous’klaer Audio label May 7 (I’ve seen it listed as late April elsewhere; May 7 is the date on the Bandcamp page). Sweepsculp is a pseudonym for Dutch musician Thessa Torsing, best known as Upsammy. Apparently the EP is “using only an acoustic guitar besides drums.” The first track, “Plaudable,” is laudable for its tight groove, its punchy, low-key beats, and its playful exploration of slight variations amid minimalist repetition.

▰ On Bandcamp Day, Los Angeles producer Jansport J uploaded [the instrumental tracks](https://jansportjmusic.com/album/dont-you-weep-instrumentals) to rapper Quadry’s mid-2020 album *Don’t You Weep*. It’s seven soulful cuts, the tidy beats rich with backing vocals, old-school electric keyboard, dubby percussive effects, and occasional double-speed samples.

▰ Vancouver, B.C.-based musician Scott Morgan, aka Loscil, has a new record, [*Clara*](https://loscil.bandcamp.com/album/clara), due out on May 28. The production process is fascinating: “[It was] sourced from a single three-minute composition performed by a 22-piece string orchestra in Budapest. The subsequent recording was lathe-cut on to a 7-inch, then ‘scratched and abused to add texture and color,’ from which the entirety of Clara was sampled, shape-shifted, and sculpted.” The first track is all glimmering grainy heavens above a scratchy rhythm.

▰ If you dig Nils Frahms’ live setup, an indie-studio reimgaining of Rick Wakeman’s surround-keyboard mode, then this video of Hania Rani may appeal, especially when, at 7:15, she puts a stone on her Prophet sythesizer to hold a note.

▰ The dental drill wind tunnel noise of “Exhalation” and the lost, dubbed-out spaciousness of “Lost Race” were our first two tastes of the 13 tracks that will comprise [*End of Trilogy*](https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/end-of-trilogy), before it was released this past Friday. Now out on the excellent Room40 label, it collects pummeling sounds from Yuko Araki. She’s a force to be reckoned with.

Disquiet Junto Project 0483: Type Set

The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.

/ 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, April 5, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 1, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0483: Type Set

The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.

Step 1: You’re going to use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.

Step 2: Give some thought as to what you’re going to type. You might re-type something that already exists. You might type freeform, just associating ideas. You might type randomly. Arguably, the best thing to do is to think of something you want to write about, and then type that: Typing something you’re writing in your head will lead to momentary pauses where you consider things, and that will be infused into the cadence.

Step 3: Record yourself typing the text you decided upon in Step 2.

Step 4: Use the unedited recording from Step 3 as the rhythmic and underlying percussive element of a piece of original music. It’s preferable that you retain the recognizable sound of the typing.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0483” (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 “disquiet0483” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0483-type-set/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0483-type-set/)

Step 5: Annotate your tracks 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.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, April 5, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 1, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track will be as long as the story you choose to tell.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0483” 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 483rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Type Set (The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music) — at:

https://disquiet.com/0483/

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-0483-type-set/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0483-type-set/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet) for Slack inclusion.

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

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

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