downstream – Page 228

An Agent of Transport

Ambient music from Valencia, Spain

February 6, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Ambient comes in many shapes and sizes, and also in many scales. “2018Project04” by Warmth, aka Agustín Mena of Valencia, Spain, is as vast as it is soft. Tonally, it moves back and forth between warm wool and cool gauze. But the space it travels is significant. Listened to on speakers, it seems to stretch beyond the confines of the room. Listened to on headphones, it is an agent of transport. Some that is movement literal, like the lush surf that churns at times, but most of it is figurative and ambigious, somehow both gentle and cosmic, intimate and expansive. It’s gorgeous stuff.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/w\_a\_r\_m\_t\_h](https://soundcloud.com/w_a_r_m_t_h/warmth-2018project04). Warmth’s latest album is *Home*, dating from July of last year and available at [archivesdubmusic.bandcamp.com](https://archivesdubmusic.bandcamp.com/album/home). Track found via a repost by [soundcloud.com/havdis](https://soundcloud.com/havdis), based in Nordland, Norway.

Orchestral Movements in the Rural Dark

A field recording by Glenn Sogge

February 5, 2018February 5, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Glenn Sogge calls it a “Night Song.” At 24 minutes in length, it’s closer to a Night Symphony. In addition to that length, the piece’s varying phases suggest orchestral movements in a manner that would do acoustic ecologist and composer R. Murray Schafer proud. What it is is a continuous, nearly half-hour field recording made in Troutdale, Oregon, two days ago, at 11pm on February 3. It is rich with insect noise, dense with layers of oscillating mating calls — or as Sogge calls it, in a brief accompanying note: “Another late winter evening in the country.”

If Sogge’s “Night Song” were in fact a symphony, it would be singled out in the program notes for electronic additions that set it apart from the traditional repertoire. In this case those sounds come in the form of passing cars, at first odd signals barely evident in the mix, but gaining speed and presence over time, and of the gargantuan arrival late in the piece by a jet airplane, the swoop of that massive, singular presence a telling contrast to the sheer mass of insects underfoot.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/glenn-sogge](https://soundcloud.com/glenn-sogge/night-song-11pm-feb-03-2018-troutdale-or-usa). Sogge notes in his bio: “#Collab and #remix are always welcome. All material is downloadable and covered by a Creative Commons license.” So do have at it.

A Sketch from Debashis Sinha

Between audio journals and sonic #latergrams

February 2, 2018February 3, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The popular failure of SoundCloud’s mainstream streaming service, SoundCloud Go, served primarily to highlight just how much SoundCloud’s strengths rest on the far other end of the production-consumption spectrum. SoundCloud is good for many things, and what it’s particularly good for is sketches, for bits of music recorded and posted as two conjoined halves of a self-contained act of musical self-expression.

Take “Sketch1” by Debashis Sinha, whose awareness of SoundCloud’s utility for fragments and byproducts is evidenced by the final sentence of his account bio: “This soundcloud page hosts exclusive content from projects not available elsewhere.” Sinha has plenty of other elsewheres, including a healthy [debsinha.bandcamp.com](https://debsinha.bandcamp.com/) page, but SoundCloud is where his works-in-progress reside, much as Sinha’s Instagram account currently hosts pictures of [his creative space](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bens5MOHdpR/?taken-by=upanisha_ds) in the theater where he is at work on a production score.

Instagram shows where Sinha is at, and SoundCloud shows what he’s up to. On Instagram, people who post frequently will often take it for granted that their images are being experienced in real time, which is why they might add a #latergram tag if they’ve already moved on to another location, another mood. SoundCloud isn’t quite so timed to the very moment, but the instant works that do appear on the site have a feeling of what the creator’s mind is focused currently. Which means Sinha’s mind is currently focused on downtempo rhythms, light industrial percussion, and deftly deployed string samples, all of which constitute the excellent 47-second “Sketch1” posted earlier today.

Track originally posted to [soundcloud.com/debsinha](https://soundcloud.com/debsinha/sketch1). More from Sinha, who is based in Toronto, Canada, at [debsinha.com](http://debsinha.com/) and [twitter.com/sinhadeb](https://twitter.com/sinhadeb).

Disquiet Junto Project 0318: Linear Training

Record a piece of music composed of variations on the same held tone.

February 1, 2018February 8, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the [Disquiet Junto group](https://disquiet.com/junto/), 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.

Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0318) for the duration of the project.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, February 5, 2018. This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, February 1, 2018.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0318: Linear Training**

Record a piece of music composed of variations on the same held tone.

Step 1: You’ll be making a piece of music based on a single held tone. Before recording that tone, it might help to understand the circumstances under which it will be employed, so read the instructions fully before proceeding.

Step 2: Record the held tone for roughly five to ten seconds.

Step 3: Make variations on that tone by processing it in various ways. The result should yield between roughly five and ten different versions of the original tone from Step 2.

Step 4: Compose a short piece of music that consists solely of the variations that resulted from Step 3. It is also fine to include the “original” tone from Step 2.

Six More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0318” (no spaces or quotation marks) in the name of your track.

Step 2: If your audio-hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to also include the project tag “disquiet0318” (no spaces or quotation marks). If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to subsequent location of tracks for the creation a project playlist.

Step 3: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 4: Please consider posting your track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0318-linear-training/

Step 5: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Other Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, February 5, 2018. This project was posted in the late morning, California time, on Thursday, February 1, 2018.

Length: The length of your track will be roughly the length of the track to which you are adding something.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0318” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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 preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).

Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 318th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Linear Training: Record a piece of music composed of variations on the same held tone) at:

https://disquiet.com/0318/

Snakes & Oscillators

A glimpse at a video-game music interface by Jon Davies

January 31, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

A post shared by Jon Davies (@jonpauldavies) on Jan 24, 2018 at 2:43am PST

Just to follow up [yesterday’s post](https://disquiet.com/2018/01/30/lets-get-physical/) of an Instagram video depicting [a tiny robot band playing artfully arranged instrumental music](https://disquiet.com/2018/01/30/lets-get-physical/), here’s another solid example of the miniature musical-technological (a slightly more humane appellation than “music-technology”) wonders found on the social network.

As you listen to the clip, a brief synthesized melody is being modulated in real time, the sound warping at the whim of a controller. The familiar shape of the x/y control pad is viewable in the lower right hand corner of the illuminated grid device. What it controls is this snake, familiar from video games like Centipede, the early-1980s classic. The snake can be aimed at a little stationary reward, whose consumption by the snake ushers in a new phase of the melody, which appears to move up the register a step at a time, or something along those lines.

The rules of this game-composition aren’t entirely clear, but it does appear that while you can aim the snake to hit that reward light right on the schedule that the rhythm suggests, you can also delay doing so, letting the standing melody extend for awhile. It’s nice to imagine how an audience in a live setting would get engaged in such a performance, becoming aware of the process and enjoying the occasions of delayed gratification as the snake takes its time to consume its prey. It’s also interesting to think how the scenario can train a player to keep time, or adeptly veer from it, along the lines of Guitar Hero and other so-called rhythm games.

Video found via a post by Scanner Darkly on the [llllllll.co](https://llllllll.co/t/grid-ops-integration/9216/300?u=disquiet) boards. Software by Jon Davies, on whose [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/p/BeVEim9HXje/) account the clip was published. The device is the open-source Monome Grid controller (more at [monome.org](http://monome.org/)). Davies says the code will soon be shared publicly, for those who want to play along at home.