twitter.com/disquiet: Takahashi, Strange, Stephenson

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, usually in the morning over coffee: collating most of the tweets I made the past week at [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet), which I think of as my public notebook. Some tweets pop up sooner in expanded form or otherwise on Disquiet.com. I’ve found it personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud. This isn’t a full accounting. Often there are, for example, conversations on Twitter that don’t really make as much sense out of the context of Twitter itself. And sometimes I tweak them a bit, given the additional space. And sometimes I re-order them just a bit.

▰ Level of tired: I looked at my desk before going for a walk and thought “My earbuds are charged, but are my sunglasses?”

▰ Familiar moment where someone nearby is doing construction work and my first thought is, “I have this record somewhere.”

▰ Next week marks the 550th consecutive weekly Disquiet Junto music community project. Here’s [a list](https://disquiet.com/2012/01/27/the-disquiet-junto/) of the 549 projects to date, from the first (making music out of the sound of ice in a glass) to the latest (getting intentional with stereo).

▰ RIP, Yu-Gi-Oh! creator Kazuki Takahashi, just 60 years old. I got to meet him when I was editor-in-chief of the English language edition of Shonen Jump. It’s hard to overstate the impact of the manga, anime, and games.

▰ Wonderful to see Allen Strange’s classic book, *Electronic Music: Systems, Techniques, and Controls*, coming up for a long-overdue reprint, thanks to the Kickstarter campaign of Toronto Metropolitan University professor Jason Nolan: [kickstarter.com](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/jasonnolan/allen-stranges-electronic-music/)

▰ I’ve read all of Neal Stephenson’s novels, excepting the Baroque Cycle, which I tried several times. It’s safe to say that this time around I’m digging it. From Book 1, *Quicksilver*:

▰ I’m certainly not alone wondering what song would work if Vecna had me in its sights. I’ve come down to two options: Fugazi’s “Waiting Room” or Brian Eno’s *Thursday Afternoon*. (The former’s length is roughly six seconds under three minutes. The latter: one minute over an hour.)

Note-taking Process

A note about Junto notes

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Junto participants have been doing a great job recently of including at least a short description of their efforts when posting project tracks, which has been super — not only helpful to your fellow Junto members, but also just a good practice in general. You won’t necessarily, down the road, remember everything you did. Notating it a bit for future reference is a good habit. In fact, just noting it in the first place gets it in your brain in a way it wouldn’t otherwise, even if you never subsequently choose to look back.

Disquiet Junto Project 0549: Sidelines

The Assignment: Get intentional with stereo.

/ 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, July 11, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 7, 2022.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0549: Sidelines**
The Assignment: Get intentional with stereo.

Step 1: Think about stereo for a moment.

Step 2: Now think about it a bit more — specifically, think less about using stereo as a means to give a sense of a physical space to a recording, and more about using stereo as a compositional tool.

Step 3: Record a piece of music in which you engage with stereo based on the ideas you formulated in Step 1 and Step 2.

Also: When posting the track, describe a bit of your thinking and process.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0549” (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 “disquiet0549” (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:

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: [https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0549-sidelines/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0549-sidelines/)

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, July 11, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 7, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. One channel may end before the other.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0549” 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 549th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Sidelines (The Assignment: Get intentional with stereo) — at: https://disquiet.com/0549/

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-0549-sidelines/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0549-sidelines/)