Briefest Disquiet Downstream File Ever (4 Seconds)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Computer programmers, like most professionals, pay heed to the small, iterative changes in their work habits that can gain them an extra chunk — even an extra sliver — of usable time in a day. The developer of the great service yubnub.org, a “command line for the web” that I long ago adapted into my daily workflow, is a fellow named Jon Aquino. Judging by his occasional blog, jonaquino.blogspot.com, Aquino is always testing new software, with an emphasis on open-source freeware and on task-specific tools that make one’s computer more tactically advantageous than it might have been otherwise.

In a post this week, Aquino provided a download to a system sound, a brief, five-note, four-second WAV file (WAV). Aquino’s entry that set the context for the file (jonaquino.blogspot.com) brings to mind some of the thoughts about real-world sound design by Ben Rubin (of Listening Post fame and earstudio.com). The point of Aquino’s post isn’t that this specific sound is especially suitable for Outlook, Microsoft’s email and calendaring tool. The point is that certain tones are more applicable to service as work alerts than are others — just singular enough to make a case for themselves in your audio-space, not so intrusive as to be distracting — and how repetition may be the key to a successful alert tone. Here’s Aquino’s post, in full:

5beeps.wav – Useful replacement sound for calendar apps

Don’t you hate how Outlook’s Reminder window is buried under your other windows, causing you to miss appointments?

Solution: Change the Reminder sound to this more noticeable set of 5 beeps: 5beeps.wav. Change it in Tools > Options > Advanced Options > Reminder Options > Reminder Sound.

It’s an unobtrusive yet noticeable alert sound. Useful for other applications as well.

(Based on the public-domain beepdoub.wav sound.)

There’s no reason to suspect that bespoke system alerts are going to supplant cellphone ring tones in the new musical economy any time soon, but it’s something worth pondering. Heck, both Brian Eno and Robert Fripp have lent their tones to operating systems.

Pulsing Buddha Machine MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It wouldn’t be a week without a new riff on the Buddha Machine, the inexpensive sound-art gadget produced by the China-based duo FM3. The Iowa City, Iowa-based musician Mark Rushton has posted another in his ongoing series of free downloads, and like the one featured as a Disquiet Downstream entry back in May 2006 (disquiet.com), this one builds an original composition out of one of the nine loops contained in the Buddha Machine. The piece’s title, “Pulse Detector,” gives some hint at its compositional strategy. By propagating, during the course of five minutes, the warm, enveloping Buddha loop with swelling tones that appear at a slow, metronomic pace, Rushton draws attention to the seams in the raw loop’s repetition — which is to say, he amplifies the original, even as he covers it with other sounds (MP3). More at markrushton.com.

Steven R. Smith Psychedelic Noise MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Under the mythic moniker Ulaan Khol, psychedelic figure Steven R. Smith finds some sort of middle ground between the proggy excesses of the 1970s and the searching minimalism of today’s extreme noise makers. One of the 10 tracks on the newly released I, all untitled (naturally — for what is psychedelia if not a plumbing of unknowable depths?), is available for free download. It’s just over five minutes of roiling guitar, dense with the crackle of overcharged electricity (MP3). Yet for all that energy, it’s deeply introspective, with moments of calm reflection amid — and, often, within — the cacophony. More on Smith at worstward.com and at the label website, softabuse.com.

Lullabye-tronic DJ Mayonnaise MP3

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

With its sing-songy beats and layers of simple sampled percussion, “Easily Distracted” by DJ Mayonnaise (aka Chris Greer), off his Still Alive collection from last year, is a perfect example of the space where instrumental hip-hop and bedroom electronica meet up and make beautiful lullabyes together. The tone is all early Aphex Twin, thanks to a fuzzy automaton foundation and a melody consisting of held notes that quaver more than they sing (MP3). Still Alive was released quietly last July on the Anticon label. More details, and MP3s, at djmayonnaise.com, including a decade-old mixtape titled I’m Not a Turntablist.

Two Hyper-Delicate MP3s from Autistici

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Two complete tracks off Autistici‘s Volume Objects album, released in January, are up for free download at the website of its label, 12k, 12k.com. The mix of field recordings and computer-generated sound is transformed with an emphasis on a kind of listening that requires attention moment by moment — the pieces are more akin, in that respect, to short stories than to songs, and they’re atmospheric short stories at that.

“Wire Cage for Tiny Birds” is a delicate construction in which tiny water drops balance with guitars whose strings are plucked with an emphasis on pristine, bright sound (MP3). “Heated Dust on a Sunlit Window” is both darker and softer by comparison; it emphasizes broader textures as it slowly gains chopstick percussion that plays in the stereo field (MP3). More on Autistici at autistici.com.