Freeze-Dried Musique Concrète

Patzr Radio hits 229

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

As it nears its 250th episode, the Patzr Radio podcast continues to traffic in musique concrète with a distinctly contemporary flair. The latest track, its 229th, is by no means pop music, and yet somehow it can feel like pop, at least after the first dozen or so listens on repeat. Perhaps pop crumpled up and freeze-dried and then pulled apart with pliers, but pop nonetheless. There is something to the track’s shifty, beat-like rhythmic material, and to the pause two thirds of the way through, and to the redacted quality of the source audio, that feels as if it is responding to pop, creaking in pop’s shadow, sort of the inverse to how OG musique concrète was almost inseparable from the symphonic and chamber music it sought to occlude. The impression is fed by the opening snatch of voice, a woman in a slightly superior tone saying, “Exactly, and then they lose their function.” Lost its function, perhaps, but not its DNA. Excellent, as always.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/patzr-radio](https://soundcloud.com/patzr-radio/patzr-radio-two-hundred-and-twentynine-and-palaaka).

Not in the Forest

Nor a robot

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I spent an hour in the park and took a half dozen pictures. Then on the walk home I took [more than five dozen](https://www.flickr.com/photos/disquietpxl/). If you can’t identify any forest in these images, it’s not because you’re a robot.

What music I make often aspires to the hum of a refrigerator, and apparently my photos aspire to those of a captcha lineup.

twitter.com/disquiet: Sonic Thump, Bibimbap Sizzle

From the past week

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I do this manually each Saturday, collating recent tweets I made at [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet/), my public notebook. Some tweets pop up (in [expanded form](https://disquiet.com/2021/07/05/dan-dan-noodle-glitch/) or [otherwise](https://disquiet.com/2021/07/04/not-a-photoblog/)) on Disquiet.com sooner. It’s personally informative to revisit the previous week of thinking out loud.

▰ Replacing the sonic boom with a “sonic thump,” a new supersonic airplane gets even more streamlined. NASA is due to begin “acoustic validation” tests in two years: [cnet.com](https://www.cnet.com/news/nasa-lockheed-martin-x-59-the-quiet-supersonic-airplane-that-could-let-you-fly-faster-than-ever/).

▰ I love the sound of the city digging up the neighbor’s sidewalk with something aggressively pneumatic this early in the morning. It sounds like infrastructure.

▰ Tried to record the sizzle of the bibimbap at lunch, but too much chatter. And that’s OK. Chatter is itself a nice return to reality.

▰ I wonder if the neighbor yelling at the city employee working on the other neighbor’s sidewalk is aware the yelling is in many ways just as disturbing if not more so in the morning.

▰ Have a good weekend, folks. At this rate I’ll have 4,000 photos to cull through by Monday. And I haven’t even started shooting at night yet. Perhaps I’ll have written that many words by then, too.

Disquiet Junto Project 0497: Benjamin’s Glass

The Assignment: Pay tribute to Benjamin Franklin and his armonica

/ 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 12, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 8, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0497: Benjamin’s Glass

The Assignment: Pay tribute to Benjamin Franklin and his armonica

As the 500th Disquiet Junto project approaches, we’re revisiting some of the earliest projects. This was the third project, back in January 2012. Note that unlike later projects, it wasn’t listed as a series of steps:

This project is in honor of Benjamin Franklin, after whose Junto Society our little group was named. In an effort to expand and refine the glass harp, Franklin developed his own lathe-like glass harmonica, which he called the “armonica.” Marie Antoinette took lessons on it and Beethoven composed for it, but Franklin’s invention proved expensive and fragile, and it had a limited lifetime. And it may have given its frequent users lead poisoning.

You are not being asked to build a Franklin armonica. But like Franklin, we are going to expand on the glass harp. In our case, we are going to do so digitally.

You’re being asked to use the more common instrument, the glass harp. That involves the familiar “rubbing the top of a wine glass that has water in it” approach:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_harp)

The Junto assignment is to record a live performance on the glass harp, and to employ live processing in the performance. There should be no post-production. And there is no length limit for the piece, though I would suggest that anything over 15 minutes may limit the size of your potential audience.

There is additional information in the project’s original post, which is from January 30, 2021:

[http://disquiet.com/0003](http://disquiet.com/0003)

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0497” (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 “disquiet0497” (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 tracks in the following discussion thread at llllllll.co:

[https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0497-benjamins-glass/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0497-benjamins-glass/)

Step 5: Annotate your tracks 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.

Additional Details:

Deadline: This project’s deadline is the end of the day Monday, July 12, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 8, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track is up to you.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0497” 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 497th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Benjamin’s Glass (The Assignment: Pay tribute to Benjamin Franklin and his armonica) — at: https://disquiet.com/0497/

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-0497-benjamins-glass/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0497-benjamins-glass/)

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet) for Slack inclusion.

The image associated with this project is by Peter Roan, and used thanks to Flickr and a Creative Commons license allowing editing (cropped with text added) for non-commercial purposes:

[https://flic.kr/p/bgtGiv](https://flic.kr/p/bgtGiv)

[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/)