I thought about the stockings that Willy buys for the other woman, and I thought, If those stockings had a sound, what would it be? Or when Willy talks about his admiration for an older salesman who settles down in the evening with his green velvet slippers: If those green velvet slippers had a theme of their own, what would that be?
That is composer Caroline Shaw speaking in New Yorkmagazine with Justin Davidson about her score for the revival of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.
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▰ Chasing Waterfalls
Trump’s phone could be heard ringing during a recent press conference in which he discussed a proposed 50 percent tariff on Apple. The familiar sound of the default “Reflection” ringtone—you know the one, the synthesized waterfall of xylophone tones—was a reminder that the tariffs targeted the company that makes his beloved device.
That is Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer (with additional reporting from Jonathan Lemire) in The Atlantic on the sitting president’s phone, security concerns, and the history of White House inhabitants’ affection for making and taking calls.
These following sound-studies highlights originally appeared in the May 20, 2026, issue of my Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter, This Week in Sound. This Week in Sound is the best way I’ve found to process material I come across. Reader support provides resources and encouragement. Most issues are free. An occasional annotated mixtape is for paid subscribers. Thanks.
▰ Keeping Tine: “In order to document bird songs, Mathews hiked through the thickets of the heavily forested White Mountains with a tuning fork and a notebook. Some contemporaries toted a stopwatch, too. He would have had to listen for birds calling repeatedly and long enough to decipher them. He might have tapped the tuning fork with a mallet to determine the key of the bird’s song. Then it was penciling each note onto the staff. Ironically, he called his notations ‘recordings’—not recordings in the analog or digital form, but a handwritten record of each song.” (From the always excellent newsletter This Week in Birding, by Bob Dolgan.)
▰ Round the Bend: The sound of a Siemens automotive called the Taurus makes when getting going is something to behold: “The power converters have to adapt the current from the overhead line to convert it to the three-phase motors of the locomotive, and that generates a rising tone. The engineers decided to change the logic to increment the tone in precise few steps resembling a musical scale, rather than allowing it to rise continuously.” (From Marchin Wichary’s Unsung.)
▰ Volume Control: “Now we can add a new gripe [about data centers] to the list: in addition to just being noisy, a sustainability nonprofit called the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) is claiming that data centers are emitting ultra-low frequencies [or “infrasound”] — think the powerful sub-bass at an EDM festival — that, while not picked up by a conventional decibel meter, cause an unsettling rumble for nearby residents.” (From Krystle Vermes at futurism.com.)
▰ Button Mash: The new video game controller from Steam has some tricks up its plastic and metal sleeve: “[A user] recently discovered that one of those easter eggs is how the controller literally screams when you drop it. More specifically, it will recreate the Wilhelm scream, which originated in a 1950s Western and is now considered the ‘most famous scream of all time.’”
▰GRACE NOTES: (1) Lip Service: Tips on controlling your phone with your voice (Wired). ▰(2)Wave Form: Why not build yourself a radio wave detector with aluminum foil? (Wired). ▰(3) Sound Art: Jeff Koons’ iconic “balloon dog” sculpture is now a speaker. ▰(4) Smoking Jacket: “Experimental clothing brand Vollebak has created the prototype Sonic Jacket, which is fitted with 180 inward-facing speakers.” ▰(5) Dynamic Duo: A pair of pristine WWII-era radio transmitters “survived the war in brand new condition in their original shipping crates.” ▰(6) Public Venture: Industrial-music legend JG Thirwell (Foetus) has a Tumblr and apparently he sees music performances all the time and posts clips of them, among other things.
The festival will run in Bern, Switzerland, from September 2 – 6, and we’ll be doing four projects in advance, playing in various ways — direct and indirect — with the theme for this year’s events, which is «Blitz» (or “Lightning”), and we’ll be responding, as well, to concepts introduced by various composers and musicians involved this coming season. Some of the music we create over the course of these projects may also end up being part of one of the festival’s many sound installations. The first of these Junto x Bern projects will likely occur next week, for Disquiet Junto project 0752, which will begin on May 28.
Read more about the festival at musikfestivalbern.ch. This will be the eighth year in a row that the Junto has collaborated with Musikfestival Bern. It’s always a pleasure and a privilege, and precisely the sort of creative connection-making I love to happen for the Junto community.
