Category: field notes

Most weeks, a given Disquiet Junto music community project essentially runs itself. Nearly 15 years into the process, the scenario is set: I post the prompt shortly after midnight, Pacific time, on Thursday, and folks who see it online or receive it via email have until the following Monday at 11:59pm to post a track in response to the prompt. As of this week’s project, we’ve done it 747 times in a row, week after week.

The one time a year I have to keep a close watch on things is when we do this current “trios sequence,” which is the one where someone posts a solo, and then the next week someone adds to it, and the week after that someone completes the piece as a trio. Except it’s more than one solo, one duo, one trio. The first week there are dozens of solos, and the second week there may be multiple duos based on individual solos, and so on the third week with the trios based on various duos. To facilitate the process, I maintain a close watch on the tracks as they’re added, and I regularly update a public matrix of the activities, a detail of which appears below.

This year I’ve added something to the matrix, which is that alongside the track URL, which is usually on SoundCloud, I share the message board link for the Lines (or llllllll.co) BBS, where discussion takes place. Those Lines posts are where there is often additional information about a given track, such as key, BPM, chord changes, and instrumentation. More details on this week’s project at disquiet.com/0747.

This paragraph appears in the Disquiet Junto email newsletter that will go out shortly after midnight, Pacific time, via juntoletter.disquiet.com

The short version of this is that if you have subscribed to this email list for some time and have yet to do a Disquiet Junto project, then this one, the one starting on April 23, 2023, is one to consider doing. The gist is this: this week you record a solo piece of music, not a complete piece, but a piece that will be added to, potentially, by other musicians over the following two weeks. Next week, many if not most of the tracks recorded this week will become duets, thanks to the additions by musicians other than yourself — again, with space left intentionally. Then finally two weeks from now, other musicians will add something else, completing a trio. The process can feel magical, especially when the same solo becomes numerous duets, and the same duet, multiple trios — which does happen sometimes. But what really happens is simpler: by recording music that leaves room for other music, you learn something about constraints, and listening, and sharing. And when you fill that space in a subsequent week, you learn the same things, from a radically different perspective.