Sound Ledger¹ (Ecosystems, Airplanes, Loudspeakers)

Audio culture by the numbers

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

1/3: The percentage of the day that the Indian state of Karnataka now requires government approval for the use of a loudspeaker (10pm to 6am)

11,000,000: The amount, in $U.S., raised by the startup Rain to help companies “conceive, build, and manage voice experiences that integrate with brand services and ecosystems”

10: Reportedly how much higher the airplane noise from Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport is than that “represented by the airport”

________
¹Footnotes

Karnataka: [hindustantimes.com](https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bengaluru-news/karnataka-bans-use-of-loudspeakers-from-10-pm-6-am-users-must-seek-permission-101652238189615.html). Rain: [venturebeat.com](https://venturebeat.com/2022/05/13/rain-nabs-11m-to-build-voice-products/). Rocky: [thedenverchannel.com](https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/boulder-county-district-court-judge-opens-the-door-for-noise-lawsuits-against-rocky-mountain-metropolitan-airport).

Current Favorites: Fahey, Hsu, Richter/Vivaldi

Heavy rotation, lightly annotated

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

My weekly(ish) answer to the question “What have you been listening to lately?” It’s lightly annotated because I don’t like re-posting material without providing some context. I hope to write more about some of these in the future, but didn’t want to delay sharing them:

▰ More power to drummer José Medeles for this upcoming tribute to John Fahey, featuring guitarists Matt Ward, Marisa Anderson, and Chris Funk: [*Railroad Cadences & Melancholic Anthems*](https://josemedeles.bandcamp.com/album/railroad-cadences-melancholic-anthems-a-drummers-tribute-to-john-fahey). Three tracks online so far, and each hits the murky, crepuscular, Fahey-ian mark in its own way. Medeles is based in Portland, Oregon.

▰ There’s one track up so far from Yenting Hsu’s forthcoming [*Flash 須臾*](https://ashinternational.bandcamp.com/album/flash). “Unknown 未知” mixes industrial, textural, and droning sounds into a single, focused, contemplative track. Mesmerizing. She’s from Taiwan. The label is the London-based Ash International.

▰ Hard to believe its been a full decade since Max Richter reworked Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons as part of Deutsche Grammophon’s Recomposed series. He’s newly revisiting the music. There are several videos up on [his YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-n5eIZ0AecwjWyXYeSwXkA), including [this one](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJnDEd65omg), featuring violinist Elena Urioste and the musicians of Chineke! Orchestra:

twitter.com/disquiet: Burrell, OP-1, Mastodon

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, 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](https://disquiet.com/2022/05/13/james-turrell-three-gems/) in expanded form or [otherwise](https://disquiet.com/2022/05/08/back-catalog/) 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.

▰ There’s a special place in hell for people who steal instruments from touring musicians

▰ Among the more difficult aspects of learning Kenny Burrell’s “Chitlins Con Carne” is not accidentally straying into Nat Adderley’s “Work Song.”

▰ The 13th novel I’ve finished reading thus far this year Victor LaValle’s *The Ballad of Black Tom*: I really dug the first half of this: mid-1920s NYC musician couriers arcane objects while learning the power of the blues. The second half was a more straightforward Lovecraftian complement (portals, rituals, snakes/tentacles, madness).

▰ Misread “10PM show” as “10BPM show” and realized just how into a 10BPM show I would be.

▰ I’m digging Todd Elliott’s new book blog, [thelithole.com](https://thelithole.com/2022/05/10/bottoms-dream-the-narrative-of-arthur-gordon-pym-finishing-or-not-finishing-something-you-hate/):

▰ I believe if you play the theme of Kenny Burrell’s “Chitlins Con Carne” about 200 times you can begin to get Nat Adderley’s “Work Song” out of your head. It took me about that long.

hashtag guitar class

▰ Blog posts with these tags are my happy place.

▰ Glad the updated Teenage Engineering OP-1 is keeping my [radio-as-an-instrument research](https://disquiet.com/2021/08/18/the-radio-as-musical-instrument/) current. (And yes, I did initially misread that to mean country music radio.)

▰ All I know is Michael Keaton’s character in *Night Shift* would have loved using voice-to-text on his cellphone to leave himself messages.

▰ USB-C would be nice on a phone, but mostly I want the power cable to connect at the top so I can prop up my phone and still have it being charged.

▰ It’s difficult enough to choose a community if you’re entering Mastodon from the “I wanna try Mastodon” direction rather than interest in a specific instance. Here’s a suggestion: maybe don’t follow people until you’ve posted a bit yourself. Otherwise accounts have limited sense of who you are.

▰ And on that note, have a good weekend.

– Support a local bookstore.

– Give Mastodon a go (I’m at [http://post.lurk.org](http://post.lurk.org), but by definition your instance won’t matter much).

– Revisit some LPs with proper liner notes.

– And make some 10BPM techno: [disquiet.com/0541](https://disquiet.com/0541).

Disquiet Junto Project 0541: 10BPM Techno

The Assignment: Make some snail-paced beats.

/ 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, May 16, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 12, 2022.

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

**Disquiet Junto Project 0541: 10BPM Techno**
The Assignment: Make some snail-paced beats.

There are two ways to do this project.

Option 1: Record some 10BPM techno.

Option 2: Record what you imagine it would sound like to attend a club event of 10BPM techno, including crowd noise.

Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0541” (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 “disquiet0541” (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-0541-10bpm-techno/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0541-10bpm-techno/)

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, May 16, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, May 12, 2022.

Length: The length is up to you. Slow doesn’t necessarily mean long.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0541” 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 541st weekly Disquiet Junto project — 10BPM Techno (The Assignment: Make some snail-paced beats) — at: https://disquiet.com/0541/

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-0541-10bpm-techno/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0541-10bpm-techno/)

Image used thanks to this license: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grapevinesnail_01.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Grapevinesnail_01.jpg).