Band name, logo, and album cover all in one tidy readymade package
Disquiet Junto Project 0531: Noise Sculpt
The Assignment: Listen for a mirage of your music within white noise.
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, March 7, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 3, 2022.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
**Disquiet Junto Project 0531: Noise Sculpt**
The Assignment: Listen for a mirage of your music within white noise.
Step 1: You’ll be listening closely, intently to white noise (or some other noise type: pink, brown, the ocean, wind, etc.) for this project. Select a noise source.
Step 2: Listen closely for an extended period of time to the noise source you selected in Step 1. Try to get lost in it.
Step 3: Listen for music in the noise you selected in Step 1. Listen for some hint of — a mirage of — pattern or melody.
Step 4: Create an original piece of music that builds on the melody or pattern or other mirage of music you heard in Step 3.
Eight Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0531” (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 “disquiet0531” (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-0531-noise-sculpt/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0531-noise-sculpt/)
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, March 7, 2022, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, March 3, 2022.
Length: The length is up to you. What do you picture in the noise?
Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0531” 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 531st weekly Disquiet Junto project — Noise Sculpt (The Assignment: Listen for a mirage of your music within white noise) — at: https://disquiet.com/0531/
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-0531-noise-sculpt/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0531-noise-sculpt/)
When Tonality Is the Excursion
A live set by Eivind Aarset and his band
Norwegian musician Eivind Aarset opens this piece for his quartet (featuring bassist Auden Erlien and two credited drummers, Wetle Holte and Erland Dahlen, though one of them, Holte, only spends some of the time drumming) with syrupy held notes, Aarset’s electric guitar’s tone extended beyond the instrument’s inherent, unmediated possibilities. Delays that slowly fade keep notes in play, clock-like pings becoming whisps, strums becoming halos. There seems to be a precognition of this early on: right at the start, it’s as if another performance is layered under this one, if you listen closely — perhaps bleed from a nearby room, perhaps an intended substrate, perhaps a bit of something caught in the digital buffer of one of those tools arrayed in front of Aarset. A drummer’s soft-ended sticks provide muted thumps amid brush strokes. The bassist plots the contours. Though credited in the video with drums, Holte is clearly up to something else, playing what appears to be a lap steel or pedal steel guitar. It’s a stately performance: jazz more concerned with tonality than with melodic excursion; pop more interested in sonic potential of phrases than in the rigor of repeated verse and chorus. Which is to say, it is Eivind Aarset through and through.
Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hS7lRhegX4g).
Sounds in an Absence
More expressions of hearing in fiction
One more (for now, at least, since I’ve finished reading the book) from Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. This occurs shortly after William Shakespeare’s wife, Anne/Agnes Hathaway, moves into the home he (largely in absentia) has purchased for the family.
This Week in Sound (Ocean Gaming, Sound Radar)
A lightly annotated clipping service
These sound-studies highlights of the week are lightly adapted from the February 28, 2022, issue of the free Disquiet.com weekly email newsletter This Week in Sound ([tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet)).
As always, if you find sonic news of interest, please share it with me, and (except with the most widespread of news items) I’ll credit you should I mention it here.
▰ I am in my happly place when I come upon a forum of video game devs discussing the nuances of deploying ocean sounds: “The setup process can be automated if the environment is not changing, so I pre-generate zone sounds depending on the water level and placed or generated objects. If you have day-night cycle with dynamic weather conditions you have to consider more options.” ➔ [gamedev.net](https://www.gamedev.net/forums/topic/711862-how-to-place-ocean-sound/5445762/)
▰ “Cornell University developed a wearable smart camera that can detect voice commands even when the user doesn’t mutter a sound.” Writes Andrew Liszewski, “The camera points upwards, capturing high-contrast video of the wearer’s chin movements, which, after some training, can be used to figure out what someone is saying without them making any sound.” ➔ [gizmodo.com](https://gizmodo.com/seechin-wearable-smart-camera-voice-commands-1848548036)
▰ “The bill would permit law enforcement to use x-ray vans and wall-piercing radar as well as voice recognition tools.” The bill in question is being supported by the Chief of Police in New Orleans. It is also a reversal of restrictions that are barely a year old. And such reversals are not unique to New Orleans. Jim Nash’s reporting notes moves in Californa and Virginia, as well. ➔ [biometricupdate.com](https://www.biometricupdate.com/202202/the-tide-on-face-biometric-bans-is-turning-and-keeps-turning)
▰ “The simulation of a medical interaction as a caring, stress-free, and even de-stressing experience may be why some people use ASMR content to self-soothe before heading to a dreaded doctor’s appointment.” And now practitioners are looking to how ASMR can play a role in healthcare, writes Molly MacGilbert. ➔ [medscape.com](https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/969005)
▰ Air raid sirens were among the early signals of the active Russian war on Ukraine. ➔ [msnbc.com](https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/watch/air-raid-sirens-sound-in-lviv-ukraine-134104645561), [cnn.com](https://www.cnn.com/videos/world/2022/02/24/kyiv-ukraine-air-raid-sirens-chance-intl-dlt-vpx.cnn)
▰ Spotify has created its first hardware device, the Car Thing. Yes, that is what it is called. “It mounts to your dash, with the goal of bringing a better way to safely stream music to drivers missing one of those fancy infotainment systems — no dashboard teardown or new car required,” writes Joan E. Solsman. If you’re of a certain age, you recall the need for actual devices in your car to play things like CDs and cassettes, all of which sort of evaporated when anyone could connect their phone to the car’s stereo with a cable or (finicky Bluetooth gods willing) wirelessly. ➔ [cnet.com](https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/features/spotifys-car-thing-is-about-to-face-the-music/)
▰ If you’re hoping for a CD revival, one thing you may mention to friends is how streaming audio isn’t the same sound quality as CDs. That is slowly changing, as streaming services, such as Apple Music, adopt “lossless” delivery. In addition, the company says “says that more than 50% of Apple Music subscribers are now listening in Spatial Audio.” ➔ [macrumors.com](https://www.macrumors.com/2022/02/16/apple-music-spatial-audio-lossless-interview/)
▰ “Ford is testing a new system in Europe that pairs automatic hazard detections with in-car sound effects so drivers are aware of hazards before they actually see them.” ➔ [gizmodo.com](https://gizmodo.com/ford-is-testing-in-car-sounds-to-alert-drivers-to-hazar-1848554184)
▰ “Sound radars” are all the rage among local governments deraling with vehicle noise pollution: “The sensors can detect and take pictures of vehicles making excessive noise, a problem that officials say has gotten worse in recent years. The hope is to eventually set a noise-pollution limit and fine those motorists exceeding it.” (As a primarily pedestrian, I think speed is more an issue than noise, but I defer to the locals.) This report, by Emma Bubola, focuses on France. ➔ [nytimes.com](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/world/europe/france-street-noise.html)
▰ Siri has added its fifth voice for American users. “The voice has arrived a little under a year after Apple added its last two American Siri voices, and stopped defaulting to using a female-sounding voice.” Also: “it was recorded by a member of the LGBTQ+ community, though the company didn’t offer any further details on the voice actor’s identity.” ➔ [theverge.com](https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/23/22947150/ios-15-4-quinn-siri-voice-5-american)
▰ Clubhouse, once an audio-only social network, now lets users text each other. ➔ [9to5mac.com](https://9to5mac.com/2022/02/24/clubhouse-now-let-users-interact-in-voice-rooms-with-text-chat/)