Scratch Pad: Pirie, Mastodon, AI

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the little comments I’ve made on social media during the preceding week. I tend to think of social media — Twitter especially, though I’m taking a break, and Facebook to a degree, and increasingly [Mastodon](https://post.lurk.org/@disquiet) — as my public scratch pad. It’s informative to revisit a week of thinking out loud in public. Also, knowing you’ll revisit what you say pulls in the reins a bit, in a good way.

▰ Just an occasional reminder that my inbox is certainly open to new music releases for potential review, but I simply can’t respond personally to them all due to the sheer amount of inbound communication. Follow-up emails don’t help, I assure you.

▰ Mastodon has retired the term “toot,” per Dell Cameron at [Gizmodo](https://gizmodo.com/mastodon-toot-retired-twitter-tweet-equivalent-1849786221). I think it’s a good move. Per my earlier comments (which preceded the announcement, about which — to be clear — I knew nothing in advance), this helps reinforce that Mastodon isn’t just a Twitter replacement. It’s something else. (I mentioned this [back in early May](https://disquiet.com/2022/05/02/how-i-got-from-mastodont-to-mastodon/), when I wrote that people would maybe less often confuse Mastodon’s posts with Twitter’s tweets if Mastodon didn’t refer to its posts as “toots.”)

▰ Person 1: The problem with AI is it’s too easy. Those images you post look great, but they’re too easy. It’s gonna take over because it requires no effort.

Person 2: I had to do several rounds of coaxing the prompts each time, and I learn a bit more each time I do it. There’s a lot of trial and error, and paying attention.

Person 1: That’s the problem with AI: it takes too much work. It won’t take off until it gets easier.

▰ If you’ve done any Disquiet Junto projects and wanna be on a Mastodon list (I’ve not yet experimented with Mastodon lists), lemme know and I’ll put one together.

▰ A local cemetery is advertising on television. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a television ad for a cemetery before.

▰ “A low down disturbing pest / But, as of now, I’m gonna pluck this pest off my chest” —The Fat Boys’ [“Trouble!”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PowrdHySIXY) (which samples Sam and Dave’s “Hold On! I’m a Comin'”)

▰ The subtitles in this TV show, *Karen Pirie*, keep saying how the car’s handbrake “croaks.” Is that a Britishism, or a car thing, or a British car thing? (I’m illiterate in all three.)

Reznor and Ross, Bones and All

A new score

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

There is a new movie score out from the team of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: Bones and All, the “coming-of-age romantic horror road film” by director Luca Guadagnino (*Call Me by Your Name*, *Suspiria*) and screenwriter David Kajganich (*The Terror*, *Suspiria*).

Early on in Reznor’s film-score career, 20-plus years after the debut of his band, Nine Inch Nails, he made a comment about how he didn’t intend to do many scores. I need to find the reference, but he was quoted as saying something along the lines of not necessarily having enough “ideas” (I believe that was his word) to do more than maybe one a year, if that. Fortunately, his ideas have flourished, and we’ve had another 14 scores — all with Ross, who has numerous of his own, as well — since the breakthrough that was 2010’s *Social Network*.

*Bones and All* is an hour and nearly a quarter of characteristically exquisite attention to detail. The melodies are simple. The textures are rarely muddied. The motifs are persistent. And it’s all committed as if the microphones are inside the instruments. Just when you think a particular string part is getting routinized, you realize the sheer variety of nuance with which Reznor and Ross are working.

And then there is “Unfinished Business,” the 22nd of the *Bones and All* soundtrack album’s 24 tracks. It is hypnotic, even darkly psychedelic, with its industrial noises, plucked strings, warped vocals, and shimmering faulty-circuit feedback. And then those voices come fully into sonic view, and they are, by all appearances, lifted straight from the movie itself. Diegetic and non-diegetic — on-screen and off — converge emphatically. These are horrific sounds (it is a horror film; it is about cannibalism), all gnashing and moaning. The voices peek out of the thick noise bed like arms violently grasping for prey.

And then they disappear. At one point in “Unfinished Business” there’s a gap, a pause, a near silence, just the quiet of what I presume to be the dark of night, and then the score comes back strong. It’s a startling moment in a score that otherwise hints at rather than underlines the goings-on. I’m not a big horror-movie viewer, even though I do count George A. Romero’s *Dawn of the Dead* as one of my favorite movies of all time, but I’ll be watching *Bones and All* at some point soon for sure.

Disquiet Junto Project 0568: Slumber Mill

The Assignment: Make music inspired by a key chord from sleep research.

/ 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 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 21, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 17, 2022.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks appear in the [llllllll.co discussion thread](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0568-slumber-mill/).

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0568: Slumber Mill
The Assignment: Make music inspired by a key chord from sleep research.

Thanks to Glitcher for proposing this project.

Step 1: We’re going to make music inspired by recent research on sleep habits. Read the article here:

[https://www.sciencealert.com/nightmares-can-be-silenced-with-a-single-piano-chord-scientists-discover](https://www.sciencealert.com/nightmares-can-be-silenced-with-a-single-piano-chord-scientists-discover)

Step 2: Think about the hallmarks of a nightmare.

Step 3: Spend some time with the C6/9 chord. The notes are C E G A D. (In other words: the root, major third, perfect fifth, major sixth, and major ninth.)

Step 4: Create a piece of music that begins with the hallmarks of a nightmare and then gradually transforms into a more positive piece through the use of piano chord C6/9.

Note: Feel free to use other chords or whatever but keep C6/9 primary in the transformation.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0568” (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 “disquiet0568” (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-0568-slumber-mill/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0568-slumber-mill/)

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.

Step 8: Also join in the discussion on the Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [email protected] for Slack inclusion.

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 21, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, November 17, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. Keep sleep in mind.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0568” 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 568th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Slumber Mill (The Assignment: Make music inspired by a key chord from sleep research) — at: https://disquiet.com/0568/

Thanks to Glitcher for proposing this project.

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-0568-slumber-mill/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0568-slumber-mill/)

The cover image for this project is from DALL·E 2, where “piano chord, sleep, vaporwave, green, pink” was the prompt.

This Week in Sound: “Extending the Musical Worlds of the Films”

A lightly annotated clipping service

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

A friend asked how I can tell when the newsletter is going well. I mentioned how cool it’d be if I had an issue where every recommended This Week in Sound item came from a reader. That, as it turns out, is this issue (which apparently came close to maxing out Substack’s allowed length). Thanks, folks!

These sound-studies highlights of the week originally appeared in the November 15, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound: [thisweekinsound.substack.com](https://thisweekinsound.substack.com).

▰ CLIMATE MEDIATION: More from Karen Bakker (mentioned here in recent weeks), supporting her recent book, The Sounds of Life: “Digital technology is so often associated with our alienation from nature, but I wanted to explore [how digital technology could potentially reconnect us](https://e360.yale.edu/features/bioacoustics-nature-sounds-digital-technology), instead, and offer measured hope in a time of environmental crisis.” (Thanks, Jason Richardson!)

▰ MUFFLIATO!: I’m not a Potterite by any means, but I am certainly fascinated by the hold those stories have on people. An article ([“‘A Magic Beyond All We Do Here’: Musical and Sonic Worldbuilding at Harry Potter Tourist Attractions”](https://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/2799)), by Daniel White, looks at four in-person spinoffs of the books (a concert series, a studio tour, the Universal Orlando tourist destination, and the Cursed Child theatrical play) for how they use “music and sound in distinct ways, drawing on or extending the musical worlds of the films, or creating worlds of their own.” It includes this interesting chart about different types of experiences — as I understand it, originally from The Experience Economy, by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore. (Thanks, Mike Rhode!)

▰ CLOUD ATLAS: This project looks unlikely, at the moment, to get funded, but it’s an admirable attempt to translate the beauty, the presence, of clouds for those lacking sight. The creator hopes for funds to “[build a working prototype](https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/cloud-scanner-1) of a handheld device called a cloud scanner which reads clouds and converts the signal into sound which is then converted to a haptic signals which can be felt.” (Thanks, Daniel Weir!)

▰ CAPTION CRUNCH: “Television today is better read than watched,” [writes Matt Schimkowitz](https://www.avclub.com/television-film-sound-audio-quality-subtitles-why-1849664873): “Huge scores and explosive sound effects overpower dialogue, with mixers having their hands tied by streamer specs and artist demands. There is very little viewers can do to solve the problem except turn on the subtitles.” (Thanks, Rich Pettus!)

Sound Ledger¹ (Subtitles, Thailand)

Audio culture by the numbers

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

50: Percent of TV viewers using subtitles

55: Percent who find TV dialogue hard to hear

189: Number of noise complaints to Thailand’s Pollution Control Department this year from Bangkok, the capital (and noisiest city in the nation), out of a total of 718 (down from 766 last year)

________
¹Footnotes

Subtitles: [avclub.com](https://www.avclub.com/television-film-sound-audio-quality-subtitles-why-1849664873?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email), [preply.com](https://preply.com/en/blog/americas-subtitles-use/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email). Thailand: [bangkokpost.com](https://www.bangkokpost.com/thailand/general/2437922/capital-leads-the-nation-in-pollution-complaints?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email).