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It’s Not a “Drone” in the Military Sense

Except to the extent that it sounds that way

February 5, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

“That’s Not Me”feels like the sound design for the opening credits to a thriller — maybe a video game, likely a film, but in any case a very good thriller, indeed, packed with septuple agents and all matter of styling, technologically mediated skullduggery. The underlying pulse of the piece is a slow, methodical burr that rises up and cuts off. It’s like a contained flare, or an especially militant drone. The track, recorded by Adam Fielding, sets the pace for a growing assembly of careful additions. There’s a secondary beat that eventually arrives, the echo treateed as a rhythmic shadow, and then vaporous percussion and thick atmosphere synthesis fill in the space between those pulses.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/adfielding](https://soundcloud.com/adfielding/thats-not-me). It’s part of a Bandcamp subscriber release, *Apparitions*, at [adamfielding.bandcamp.com](https://adamfielding.bandcamp.com/). More from Adam Fielding, who’s based in Huddersfield, England, at [www.adamfielding.com](http://adamfielding.com/) and [twitter.com/misterfielding](https://twitter.com/misterfielding).

Disquiet Junto Project 0214: Microtonal Errata

The Assignment: Bring to the fore the distinction between two specific microtones.

February 4, 2016February 5, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

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Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on [SoundCloud.com](https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/) and at [disquiet.com/junto](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. 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 this playlist for the duration of the project:

This project was posted shortly after noon, California time, on Thursday, February 4, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, February 8, 2016.

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 0214: Microtonal Errata

The Assignment: Bring to the fore the distinction between two specific microtones.

Background: There’s a typo in the bible of microtones. The bible in question is Alain Danielou’s 1958 book Tableau Comparatif des Intervalles Musicaux. As reported recently by composer and critic Kyle Gann, “On the right-hand bottom corner of page 48, the interval listed as 569/512 should actually be 567/512.”We’re going to explore the sonic distinction between those two microtones.

Step 1: Choose a pitch and record three things: (a) a base pitch, (b) the mistaken microtone (569/512), and (c) the correct microtone (567/512). Here’s an example: Start with your base pitch (e.g., A440). To get the mistaken microtone, multiply the base pitch frequency by 567/512 (that is, raise the base pitch by one semitone plus 77.6 cents). To get the corrected microtone, multiply the base pitch by 569/512 (that is, one semitone plus 82.7 cents). For reference, here’s a handy conversion tool:

http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-centsratio.htm

Step 2: Record a short piece of music employing the three tones (a, b, and c) from Step 1. Other tones are also welcome, certainly. The only request is that the emphasis in your piece should be on those three tones. The goal of the short piece should be to explore the distinction between the mistaken and correct microtones. Try this: Imagine someone reading about the errata in the Danielou book said, “What’s the big deal?” Your piece should, to the extent possible, answer that question in sound by shedding light on the gap between the two microtones.

Step 3: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

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 was posted in the mid-afternoon, California time, on Thursday, February 4, 2016, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, February 8, 2016.

Length: The length is up to you, though between 1 minute and 2 minutes is recommended.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this project, 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.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please in the title to your track include the term “disquiet0214-microtonalerrata.”Also use “disquiet0214-microtonalerrata”as a tag for your track.

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, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 214th weekly Disquiet Junto project (“The Assignment: Bring to the fore the distinction between two specific microtones”) at:

https://disquiet.com/0214

Vowels Accumulate Over Days and Months

An experiment in beading, accrual, and tonality by Steph Horak

February 3, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Yesterday, on a brand new SoundCloud account, the artist Steph Horak posted a track of layered vocals, just tones, just soft vowels, that when played against each other yield a familiar, lovely, gently abrasive beading that sounds less like a choir of one and more like a glass harmonica played by an expert soloist. Her explanation is that it’s part of an art project that accrues and amasses individual tones over time on a regular basis.

Here is Horak’s description:

>I am attempting to sing a note a day for a year because I want to know if my body holds a certain tension, or harmony, a resonant bias. Therefore, I record each day’s note in isolation, without hearing any of the previous days, and then I make a mix of the month. This is a somewhat indulgent side-project. This is not about singing in tune. This is about data. Trigger warning: People with absolute pitch may find this jarring to listen to.

The track is labeled “366 JANUARY 2016,” though it’s unclear how much time is accounted for, how many vowels over how many days.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/threehundredandsixtysix](https://soundcloud.com/threehundredandsixtysix/januarysixteen). More from Horak at her other SoundCloud account, [soundcloud.com/sheisrevolting](https://soundcloud.com/sheisrevolting), and at [stephhorak.wordpress.com](http://stephhorak.wordpress.com) and [noisevagina.tumblr.com](http://noisevagina.tumblr.com), the latter of which includes this intriguing sonified lipstick case:

tumblr_inline_nr2smyPxhV1tt5g1x_1280

Horak works as part of the computing department at Goldsmiths, University of London, where she earned an MA in 2013. (Track found via a repost by [soundcloud.com/leafcutterjohn](https://soundcloud.com/leafcutterjohn).)

When a Drone Seems More Traditionally Musical Than Other Drones

Without ever ceasing to be, you know, a drone

February 2, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

All drones are not created equal. Not that one is better, by some measure, than another, but that between intent and tonality, density and momentum, texture and form, they are as different from each other as the ear might allow. Many drones have an industrial quality, like the finely crafted noise of either a well-oiled or nostalgically archaic machine. Some are expressly synthesized, devoid of any semblance of earthy quality. And some are, by some manner, musical — in the traditional sense of the word. They may have no apparent melody — they are still, in the end, drones — or rhythm, but there’s something to the harmonic staging and the sound quality itself that seems less like an industrial machine and more like, say, a pop song put in suspended animation. That’s the sort of drone that Rob Kriston created with “Toneless Dying Heart.” It’s beautiful and ever-shifting, a florid and chaotic timbre spectacle.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/robsville](https://soundcloud.com/robsville/toneless-dying-heart). More from Kriston at [robkriston.com](http://www.robkriston.com/)

“Moths Drink the Tears of Sleeping Birds”

A string quartet by Anna HÃ¶stman

February 1, 2016February 1, 2016 / By Marc Weidenbaum

When you think string quartet, certainly you think about creepy flying life forms in Africa that feed of the tears of other flying life forms. That is the scenario that informs Anna Höstman’s tensile and invigorating string quartet “Moths Drink the Tears of Sleeping Birds.” Premiered on November 14 of last year, the work is as slow and steady as you might expect of something that preys on things far larger than itself. The work moves from slow sawing to angular, intense slashing. At 15 minutes, it produces an impression of the scenario that is thick with drama. Certainly there is an intensity in the brief moments of fierce action, but the real beauty comes from the patience, both in the composition and the performance, to layer textured, paper-thin lines atop one another for extended periods of anxious near-silence.

Look closely at this image (from [newscientist.com](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10826-moths-drink-the-tears-of-sleeping-birds/)) and you’ll see the moth’s dagger-like nose stuck into a bird’s eyelid:

moth02

Here’s an extreme closeup, from the National Institutes of Health ([nih.gov](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2375961/figure/fig2/)), that provides eerie detail of the moth’s sharp nose:

moth01

A brief program note by Deborah MacKenzie provides further background:

>Scientists have recently revealed that a species of moth in the Kirindy forest of Madagascar drinks tears from the eyes of birds. Birds can usually fly away from these predators, but not while sleeping. The Madagascan moths were observed on the necks of sleeping magpie robins and Newtonia birds, with the tip of their proboscises inserted under the bird’s eyelid, drinking avidly. Sleeping birds have two eyelids, both closed. So instead of the soft, straw-like mouthparts found on tear-drinking moths elsewhere, the Madagascan moth has a proboscis “shaped like an ancient harpoon,”with hooks and barbs. It is inserted under the eyelid where the barbs are used to anchor it in place. The team does not yet know whether the insect spits out an anaesthetic to dull the irritation. They also want to investigate whether, like their counterparts elsewhere, the Madagascan tear-drinkers are all males who get most of their nutrition from the tears.

The piece by Höstman brings to mind another recent work of chamber music that has its basis in the dark corners of the natural sciences, [“Euphorbia,”](https://disquiet.com/2015/09/28/ylva-lund-bergner-poisons-ears/) composed by Ylva Lund Bergner, heard in a performance by the Curious Chamber Players. Her piece’s name, and mood, come from [a deadly plant in Denmark](https://disquiet.com/2015/09/28/ylva-lund-bergner-poisons-ears/).

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/annacomposer](https://soundcloud.com/annacomposer/moths-drink-the-tears-of-sleeping-birds). More on Höstman at [annahostman.net](http://www.annahostman.net/). More on Quatour Bozzini at [quatuorbozzini.ca](http://www.quatuorbozzini.ca/). More on the moth at [newscientist.com](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn10826-moths-drink-the-tears-of-sleeping-birds/).