I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
▰ To Die For: Pretty much all I’ve been listening to the past few days is the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for David Fincher’s new movie, The Killer. At the opening of the film, the title character talks about how he listens to music as a tool to concentrate. His repertoire of choice is the Smiths. Me? I listen to Reznor and Ross’ scores when I want to concentrate.
▰ Signal Booster: Glitching, atmospheric, percolating — Tomotsugu Nakamura’s new album, Antenna, on the great Audiobulb label, is endlessly listenable. And for all its gentleness, it’ll keep you alert with unexpected fissures, textures, and switchbacks.
▰ Hum Bucker: My friend Mahlen Morris recorded this excellent assemblage of “field recordings of humming sounds, from commercial refrigerators to restaurant bathroom fans to San Francisco’s cable car track, all looped and blended together.” (And he kinda named it for me, which is super nice.)
You might not recognize, due to the relatively sedate background noise of this short recording, just how many cars are in this busy parking lot. This segment was recorded at an outdoor mall in Daly City, just south of San Francisco, where I was struck by the sheer volume, color, clarity, and — foremost — personality of the many birds in a group of short trees at the end of various lanes of parking spaces. If you situated yourself properly, you could focus on the pinging back and forth of a conversation — a squabble, perhaps, or the start of a scheme, more likely — unfolding just out of view. Inherent in the humor of the moment was that the birds did a good job of disguising themselves, virtually indistinguishable as they were from the brush in which they were ensconced. At first, the beeping of a car backing up seemed to violate the purity of their intraspecies communication, but when listening back to the recording, I couldn’t help but note how the beeping seemed to fit naturally amid the bird calls. The birds seemed to, at times, match the tone of the beeping, and at other times leave space for the beeping, so they could talk, as it were, around it. Which is to say: the birds seemed just as cognizant of and, for better and worse, inured to the vehicular noise as are the rest of us.
Photo is a detail of a larger image by Richard F. Lyon (aka Dicklyon on Wikipedia), used thanks to a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
The Assignment: Rebuild a complicated rhythm from scratch.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five 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 and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 13, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 9, 2023.
Disquiet Junto Project 0619: Beat Accrual The Assignment: Rebuild a complicated rhythm from scratch.
As is generally the case with any instructions, it’s best to read all the way through before beginning.
Step 1: Create a complicated beat (define “complicated” as you see fit). Keep track of the individual parts.
Step 2: Record a track in which the beat from Step 1 slowly accrues over time. For example, break the original beat into its constituent parts and then add one at a time, repeating the arrival of each addition for four beats (assuming you’re doing the project in 4/4). That’s just one way to accomplish this.
Also: You might adorn the beat with other elements while it’s accumulating, or after, or you might simply leave it on its own.
Seven Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0619” (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 “disquiet0619” (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 track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
Step 5: Annotate your track 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.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 13, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 9, 2023.
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 619th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Beat Accrual (The Assignment: Rebuild a complicated rhythm from scratch), at: https://disquiet.com/0619/
A new set of tracks collected on her listen.camp show, Big Grey Sun 2.0
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
For the November 4, 2023, episode on her listen.camp show, Big Grey Sun 2.0, the L.A. musician/producer Lola G. (aka Death Hags) played tracks from the third of three Disquiet Junto projects that participants did this year in collaboration with Musikfestival Bern, as well as some of her own music. The theme of this project, number 0599, Minimal(ish) Blend, was: Make a piece of music that combines self-contained minimalist parts.
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have just under five 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 and interest.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 2, 2023.
Disquiet Junto Project 0618: Burying the Lede The Assignment: Turn old news into new music.
Step 1: Locate an old news article, the less dramatic perhaps the better, from roughly 50 years ago. Try to find something local to where you live now or have lived.
Step 2: Use a text-to-speech tool to convert the article to audio. There are numerous such software applications, and no doubt discussion in the Junto thread on llllllll.co will yield suggestions should you require one.
Step 3: Set to music the voice recording that resulted from Step 2. A length of two and a half to five minutes is recommended. Use an article sufficient to that length — you may end up not using the entire text. As the piece goes on, have the voice slowly get subsumed by the music, until by the end the voice is no longer intelligible — perhaps not even audible.
Note: In case the word isn’t familiar, a “lede” is “the opening sentence or paragraph of a news article, summarizing the most important aspects of the story.”
Seven Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0618” (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 “disquiet0618” (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 track in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:
Step 5: Annotate your track 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.
Note: Please post one track for this weekly Junto project. If you choose to post more than one, and do so on SoundCloud, please let me know which you’d like added to the playlist. Thanks.
Additional Details:
Length: The length is up to you. It will largely be determined by the length of the text you select.
Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 6, 2023, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 2, 2023.
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 618th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Burying the Lede (The Assignment: Turn old news into new music), at: https://disquiet.com/0618/
