Monorail, the solo musician not the retro-futuristic vision of transportation utopia, has a running series of live synthesizer jams on his YouTube channel. The styles and tools vary from jam to jam, though there is usually a modular synth at the core. Some might argue that the contemporary rise of the modular synth is itself a form of retro-futurism. If you scroll through his (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjEIsPm7n8mm8Q10rMhg76g/videos) you can chart, in the thumbnail images, the steady progression of his studio:
Sometimes a fellow musician, like [a drummer](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpfCTSyami0), joins in, but generally speaking these are solo outings. The most recent, as of this writing, is jam number 114, a textural ambient piece, starting off with piercing tones and found snatches of dialog, and then proceeding into something denser and more amorphous, with segments of smashed white noise and soft, low-lying drones. Admirably, the video has the full synthesizer in clear view, so you can patch along at home following his example if you elect to. Occasionally Monorail’s arm enters the picture to adjust an oscillator or tweak some other setting, though for much of the piece the music is left to its own looping, slowly evolving devices. Present in the video is a little Lego figure of a Star Wars stormtrooper who appears — like Where’s Waldo from a galaxy far, far away — in many if not all of Monorail’s recorded jams.
This is the latest video I’ve added to [my YouTube playlist of recommended live performances of ambient music](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-). Video originally posted at Monorail’s [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbBSZCJmLgs). Monorail is Rijnder Kamerbeek, based in Berlin, Germany.
Mix music according to a military standard for relative message clarity.
/ 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.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, December 4, 2017. This project was posted in the evening, California time, on Thursday, November 30, 2017.
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 0309: Military Matrix Mixer**
Mix music according to a military standard for relative message clarity.
Step 1: Familiarize yourself with the concept of “five by five,” in which five “readability” levels and five “signal strength” levels are aligned in a matrix. Messages are rated from 1 to 5 in readability (unreadable, readable now and then, readable but with difficulty, readable, perfectly readable) and from 1 to 5 in signal strength (scarcely perceptible, weak, fairly good, good, very good).
Step 2: If you’re not familiar with the concept of a matrix mixer, familiarize yourself with it.
Step 3: Imagine a matrix mixer whose X axis and Y axis align with the concept of “five by five” described in Step 1.
Step 4: Create a piece of music that is mixed over the course of its duration in a way that explores the various intersections of a hypothetical “five by five” matrix mixer.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: If your hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0309” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track:
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, December 4, 2017. This project was posted in the evening, California time, on Thursday, November 30, 2017.
Length: Five minutes makes sense, but it’s up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0309” 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 309th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Military Matrix Mixer:
Mix music according to a military standard for relative message clarity) at:
There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.
Image associated with this project is a detail of the cover of the FM 24-6 Radio Operator’s Manual, Army Ground Forces, June 1945, courtesy of the Internet Archive:
Write a short piece of music for a person or thing you're thankful for.
/ 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.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, November 27, 2017. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, November 23, 2017.
Tracks will be added to [this playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0308) for the duration of the project.
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 0308: Giving Thanks**
Write a short piece of music for a person or thing you’re thankful for.
Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. To keep it brief, I always think of Thanksgiving as an inherently Junto holiday, for various reasons, key among them its focus on the turkey, which Benjamin Franklin once upon a time proposed as the national bird of the then-nascent U.S. (Spoiler: the country went with the eagle.) Of course, it was Franklin’s use of the word Junto in the early 1720s that served as the basis of our music community.
Step 1: Think of someone (a friend, family member, etc.) you’re thankful for, or perhaps a thing (an instrument, an institution, a local business, etc.).
Step 2: Write a short piece of music dedicated to the subject you focused on in Step 1.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: If your hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0308” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track:
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, November 27, 2017. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, November 23, 2017.
Length: Somewhere under 5 minutes seems about right, but it’s up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0308” 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 308th weekly Disquiet Junto project (Giving Thanks:
Write a short piece of music for a person or thing you’re thankful for) at:
Pay tribute to the Sex Pistols on the 40th anniversary of Never Mind the Bollocks.
/ 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.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, November 20, 2017. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, November 16, 2017.
Tracks will be added to [the playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0307) for the duration of the project.
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 0307: Black and White and Punk All Over**
Pay tribute to the Sex Pistols on the 40th anniversary of Never Mind the Bollocks.
It’s the 40th anniversary of the Sex Pistols’ 1977 album Never Mind the Bollocks, a punk origin point if ever there were one. Of course, punk can be traced both forward and further back, not just back to the prior urtexts of the Ramones, but further still to Dada, to the Situationist International. To explore punk continuity, and borrowing from Greil Marcus’ Lipstick Traces, we’re going to use a classic Situationist film, Hurlements en faveur de Sade, as a starting point. The whole thing is streamable here:
Note that Hurlements has no visual component outside of a white and black screen: when the screen is white, people speak; when it is black, there is silence.
Major thanks to Zero Meaning, Toaster, and Jason Wehmhoener for leading the way in developing this prompt.
Step 1: Think about what “punk” means to you. The word has mutated over time, and can embody something as specific as instrumentation and recording, and as broad as a spirit, an approach, a philosophy. It’s both a source of inspiration and a nexus of conflicted debate. Keep your sense of punk in mind as you follow the remaining steps.
Step 2: Choose a length for your project. Somewhere under 5 minutes should do fine.
Step 3: Using chance methods, divide that length into segments. A minimum of one segment per minute should keep things interesting, though certainly feel free to use more or fewer segments.
Step 4: Label your first segment “white” and your second “black” and your third “white” and, per Hurlement, continue to alternate labels until all the segments are labeled.
Step 5: Choose two sets of instruments (or, more broadly defined, sound sources). If you don’t have access to more than one instrument, then vary the playing approach (plucking vs. bowing, chords vs. single notes, different patches on a single synth, etc.). Label one set “white” and the other “black.” Do not use any of the same instruments/methods in the “white” sections that you use in the “black” sections. The amount of cohesion between the segments is up to you, but keep the instrumentation the same in each.
Step 6: Now, jam econo. Record an original piece of music in the simplest way possible, using only white instruments in the white segments and black instruments in the black segments. Consider something more lo-fi than you might normally use.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: If your hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0307” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track:
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, November 20, 2017. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, November 16, 2017.
Length: Somewhere under 5 minutes seems about right, but it’s up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0307” 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 307th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Black and White and Punk All Over: Pay tribute to the Sex Pistols on the 40th anniversary of Never Mind the Bollocks.) at:
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.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, November 13, 2017. This project was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 9, 2017.
Tracks will be added to [this playlist](https://soundcloud.com/disquiet/sets/disquiet-junto-project-0306) for the duration of the project.
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 0306: Music in Motion**
Record a piece of music while en route somewhere
Step 1: You’ll be making a piece of music while en route somewhere. Consider what instrument(s) and recording equipment you can easily carry.
Step 2: Plot a short trip — maybe a bus or train ride, maybe you’re in the back seat while someone else drives, maybe you’re driving and you record yourself singing.
Step 3: Compose and record a short piece of music with the equipment from Step 1 while on the route you decided upon in Step 2. Only use that equipment, and finish the piece while you’re still on the road.
Side Note: Certainly the sounds you encounter while on your little trip are potential source material.
Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: If your hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0306” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.
Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.
Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track:
Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.
Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are on Monday, November 13, 2017. This project was posted in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 9, 2017.
Length: The finished track’s length is up to you.
Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0306” 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 306th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“Music in Motion: Record a piece of music while en route somewhere) at:
