Disquiet Junto Project 0514: Chord Channels

The Assignment: Take two chords and connect them over time.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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 the end of the day Monday, November 8, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 4, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0514: Chord Channels

The Assignment: Take two chords and connect them over time.

Step 1: The goal of this project is to produce a slow piece of music in which you move back and forth between two chords. Choose two chords that have at least one note in common.

Step 2: Map out the notes of each chord.

Step 3: Compose a piece of music in which the individual notes of each chord slowly appear and disappear, so that at any point in time part of one chord, or part of both chords, or perhaps even both chords in their entirety can be heard.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0514” (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 “disquiet0514” (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:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0514-chord-channels/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0514-chord-channels/)

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:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 8, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 4, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you. Longer may be better.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0514” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

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 514th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Chord Channels (The Assignment: Take two chords and connect them over time) — at: https://disquiet.com/0514/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0514-chord-channels/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0514-chord-channels/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

Disquiet Junto Project 0513: Ghost OST

The Assignment: Play that spooky music.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group, 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 the end of the day Monday, November 1, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 28, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0513: Ghost OST

The Assignment: Play that spooky music.

There is just one step for this project. It is Halloween. Make some holiday-specific background music.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0513” (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 “disquiet0513” (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:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0513-ghost-ost/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0513-ghost-ost/)

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:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, November 1, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, October 28, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0513” in the title of the tracks, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

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 513th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Ghost OST (The Assignment: Play that spooky music) — at: https://disquiet.com/0513/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0513-ghost-ost/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0513-ghost-ost/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

Before a Drama Unfolds

An outtake from Nathan Moody

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Nathan Moody has shared this outtake from his 2020 *De/Still* album, for which I wrote the liner notes, [““Palimpsests All the Way Down.”](https://disquiet.com/2020/07/04/nathan-moody-de%e2%80%8b-%e2%80%8bstill/) The track opens with field recordings of everyday noises and equally quotidian conversation, and a guitar line that feels less like part of the whole and more like an introduction. At first, the guitar feels almost like a brief opening cue before a drama unfolds. Then the guitar doesn’t so much fade in as come into focus, like it was always there but has deigned to make its presence truly felt, to become part of the production, to become the production. There’s something in Moody’s mix that, at least through my speakers, sends some of the voices off into the distance, so it’s as if they’re commenting from the fringes rather than appearing center stage. He’s right that the piece doesn’t entirely make sense in the context of *De/Still*, which is a series of sonic reactions to the work of photographer TJ Norris. This track is its own thing, and it’s great it’s out in the world.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/noisejockey](https://soundcloud.com/noisejockey/destill-guitar-outtake). Check out the album a [flagdayrecordings.bandcamp.com](https://flagdayrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/de-still).

Mike Dayton’s Music for Scarier People

In time for Halloween

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Get your Halloween on early with Mike Dayton’s [*Scarier Music for Even Scarier People*](https://mikedayton.bandcamp.com/album/scarier-music-for-even-scarier-people-2), a 12-track collection that is part Radiophonic Workshop alien invasion, part *Blair Witch Project* quotidian horror. The mix of whirligig synthesizers and everyday noise, of whizzy scifi sound effects and the creaking and scraping of your worst home-alone nightmares, is the perfect soundtrack for the upcoming annual festivities and, you might say, every other day, as well. Definitely check out the overwhelming choral onslaught of “Otherworldly Assemblage,” interrupted by anxiety-provoking stuttering that is, as time passes, totally consumed by the drone.

More from Dayton, who is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at [twitter.com/dayton_mike](https://twitter.com/dayton_mike).

Current Favorites: Score, Drone, Cover

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them.

▰ The score to a short film, *Jim of Earth*, [composed by Coma Calling](https://thecomacalling.bandcamp.com/album/jim-of-earth-original-score/), aka Kyle Cramb of Wichita, Kansas. Some richly suggestive atmospheres, full of tension and narrative.

▰ Three tracks by mora-tau, aka Takenori Iwasaki of Utsunomiya, Japan, comprise the album [*Memorial*](https://kalaminerecords.bandcamp.com/album/memorial). The key track is the opening one, “Into Secret,” an 18-minute drone with varying textures.

▰ A synthesizer cover of Aphex Twin’s [“Avril 14th”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tyy348r3GE) by Perplex On (based in Munich, Germany), with a musicbox-like quality to it: