downstream – Page 242

Disquiet Junto Project 0291: Lantern Effect

Make music that suggests the way a paper lantern filters light.

July 27, 2017July 30, 2017 / 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.

This project’s deadline is 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 31, 2017. This project was posted in late afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 3, 2017.

Tracks will be added to this playlist 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 0291: Lantern Effect

Make music that suggests the way a paper lantern filters light.

Step 1: Consider what might be called the “lantern effect” — the way light is filtered through the textured material of a paper lantern.

Step 2: Consider how the lantern effect, a visual phenomenon, might have a sonic corollary. That is, answer to the question: What would the lantern effect sound like?

Step 3: Record a short piece of music that evidences the lantern effect idea that arose from Step 1 and Step 2.

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 “disquiet0291” (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:

https://llllllll.co/t/make-music-that-sounds-like-a-lantern-junto-0291/

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 wherever you are on Monday, July 31, 2017. This project was posted in late afternoon, California time, on Thursday, August 3, 2017.

Length: The length is entirely up to the participant, though two or three minutes is suggested.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0291” 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, along with details of your source audio, including links to it:

More on this 291st weekly Disquiet Junto project — Lantern Effect: Make music that suggests the way a paper lantern filters light — at:

https://disquiet.com/0291/

Disquiet Junto Project 0290: Text-to-Beat

Use computer-generated speech as the rhythmic foundation for a track.

July 20, 2017 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This project’s deadline is 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, July 24, 2017. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, July 20, 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 0290: Text-to-Beat

Use computer-generated speech as the rhythmic foundation for a track.

Step 1: This week we’re going to build a track around text-to-speech, the results of a computer-generated voice speaking. In past text-to-speech we’ve used pre-existing text as the source. In this case we’re going to build the text to order. Keep this in mind.

Step 2: Find a good text-to-speech system that you think you can work with musically. In MacOS, for example, there’s a built-in system shortcut: Just select the text you want to hear, highlight it (in a browser, or a text editor, wherever) and then hit the ESC button while holding down the OPT button. There are also other tools, including browser-based options, like the one here:

https://text-to-speech-demo.mybluemix.net/

Step 3: Experiment with different combinations of words to produce a rhythm you want to work with.

Step 4: Record the rhythm you developed in Step 3.

Step 5: Produce a track using the rhythm in Step 4 as the foundation. (Level Up: Use more than one text-to-speech pattern to create cross-patterns, phasing, among other polyrhythmic events and effects.)

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 “disquiet0290” (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:

https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0290-text-to-beat/

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 wherever you are on Monday, July 24, 2017. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, July 20, 2017.

Length: The length is entirely up to the participant, though two or three minutes is suggested.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0290” in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

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). Keep an eye on the license of the audio you source, as that may determine the license you end up using.

Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information, along with details of your source audio, including links to it:

More on this 290th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Text-to-Beat:
Use computer-generated speech as the rhythmic foundation for a track. — at:

https://disquiet.com/0290/

An Installation for Oliveros

July 18, 2017July 18, 2017 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This document of a sound installation created in memory of the late Pauline Oliveros delivers the opposite of closure. As it proceeds, the lulling ambience is overtaken by the harsh slashes of what might be a violin, or a knife against rough leather for that matter. In retrospect — that is, upon subsequent listens — those string-like noises toward the end help reveal the source of the held tones at the track’s opening, the higher-pitch notes amid the general fog-horn drones. The violin is a constant presence, as it turns out, even though some time must pass before its presence becomes clear. The installation was created by the Vienna-born Mia Zabelka at the behest of the Austrian Cultural Forum New York ([acfny.org](http://www.acfny.org/event/15-years-austrian-cultural-forum-new-york-reloaded/)). Pauline Oliveros, a maverick composer and sound theorist, was a practitioner of Deep Listening. So listen deep, put yourself inside Zabelka’s installation, and observe as her violin gains substance.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/miazabelkamusic](https://soundcloud.com/miazabelkamusic/elegy-for-pauline). More from Zabelka at [miazabelka.com](http://www.miazabelka.com/) and [twitter.com/miazabelka](https://twitter.com/miazabelka).

Three Decks, Six Minutes, Twelve Layers

A live tape-loop performance by Austin, Texas–based Amulets

July 17, 2017 / By Marc Weidenbaum

If you were to just hear — rather than also watch — this track by the artist known as Amulets, you might wonder about the little clickety clacks that occur six times, first at five seconds in, then at half a minute in, and then at just past the minute-and-a-half marker, and then again in quicker succession, within 30 seconds of each other, toward the track’s end. These clicks, sharp and fragile, appear amid and yet apart from the otherwise wooly-lush six minutes of music. What’s occurring is the start and stop of cassette tapes being placed into a trio of multi-track player-recorders. Those tapes are the source and the receiver of the echoing, excellently lo-fidelity, gently crackling music. The tapes are both producing and layering the audio, hence the slow yet discernible buildup as it progresses. Since these are four-track recorders, the result is a dozen component parts, twelve separate loops being manipulated in real time.

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 [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAESEL8JakU). More from Amulets, aka Randall Taylor, at [amuletsmusic.com](http://www.amuletsmusic.com/) and [amulets.bandcamp.com](https://amulets.bandcamp.com/).

Lush and Sharp

When puffy clouds cast menacing shadows

July 14, 2017 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This is a lush composition, rendered with a sharp blade. “Declensions” by Dave Phillips is largely a confluence of cloud-like apparitions, but each of those overlapping, spacious presences is outlined in serrated detail. These are clouds so bright that they blind. Played at foreground-level volume, it reveals piercing peaks. The whole thing hovers over a dense bass drone, and it features a little pixelated wisp of a filigree that entices the ear even as those clouds cast menacing shadows.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/davephillips69](https://soundcloud.com/davephillips69/declensions). Phillips is based in Findlay, Ohio.