Nearly Midnight
nO passing cars
nO sidewalk chatter
sileNt movie
Colin Joyce on the Junto at Hii-mag.com
Along with Sarah Geis' Audio Playground
Major thanks to Colin Joyce, who wrote an article for [hii-mag.com](https://hii-mag.com/allposts/colinjoyceprescriptiveartpractice) about music communities that are built around shared composition prompts. The piece is titled “Prescriptive Art Practice in Sound,” and it features two primary examples. One is Audio Playground ([audioplayground.xyz](https://www.audioplayground.xyz/hello)), a project run monthly since last year by Sarah Geis, former artistic director of the excellent Third Coast International Audio Festival. The other is the Disquiet Junto. Joyce approaches the topic through the lens of the classic Oblique Strategies cards of Brian Eno and his late collaborator, the artist Peter Schmidt.
Here’s an excerpt:
>Part of the long-running success of the project seems to come from the attention and care that Weidenbaum has applied to the prompts themselves. There are never too many in a row with the same style or bent. Some are more conceptual, like #392 “Compose the national anthem for a fictional country,” while others are more practical, like #336 “Share a piece of music you’re working on in the interest of getting feedback.” Changing up the approach no doubt helps the musicians stay engaged, but it also allows everyone involved to flex different creative muscles, to push themselves in different ways, to always be trying something new. But for Weidenbaum, what’s most important is that people are spurred to action. Whether a prompt deeply resonates with a person or not, the hope is that work gets made in response.
>
>“I think inspiration is overrated,” he says. “I think work is what is important. You can only make music if you make music. You can only paint if you paint. You can only write if you write. In general, you won’t get better at it, or at anything else, unless you do it. And so you do it. I think being inspired really happens in the midst of work, not before the work.”
>
>Weidenbaum’s years of shepherding the project have resulted in a robust and engaged community. The group stays in touch through a Slack channel and a message board, encouraging one another and explaining the processes behind their pieces. It’s heartwarming in a way that feels rare in the currently decentralized state of the internet. So often making music and art can be an isolated process, especially for people who work in forms that might be deemed experimental, but projects like this allow people to connect. They’re able to push themselves but also to get in touch with others who are interested in doing the same. “The single best part of it is the people,” Weidenbaum explains. “I have become aware of so many creative individuals, and had remarkable conversations with so many of them.”
Read (or listen to)the full piece at [hii-mag.com](https://hii-mag.com/allposts/colinjoyceprescriptiveartpractice).
Disquiet Junto Project 0499: Out of the Landscape
The Assignment: Record a piece of music in which a sound emerges from a field recording.
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 26, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 22, 2021.
These are the instructions that went out to the group’s email list (at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto):
Disquiet Junto Project 0499: Out of the Landscape
The Assignment: Record a piece of music in which a sound emerges from a field recording.
Major thanks to the work on Golden Gate Bridge music by Mahlen Morris and Nate Mercereau in inspiring this project’s approach.
This project might prove among the more complicated ones, or I may be mistaken. I’ve written a short version of it, and I’ve written it as a longer, step-by-step procedure.
This is the project in one sentence: Add a subtle sound to a preexisting field recording of a soundscape, have that sound slowly gain prominence, and then let it disappear, leaving nothing but the original field recording behind at the end.
And here is the project as a series of nine steps:
Step 1: The goal is to record a piece of music in which a sound emerges from a field recording of of a soundscape. Please read these instructions through closely before proceeding with the project.
Step 2: Locate a field recording of an environment. It could be urban, rural, industrial, domestic, whatever you might choose. A recording with slight variations over time would be beneficial but isn’t necessary. You should, again, read through the instructions in full before determining what field recording you want to work with. You might use a preexisting one, or record a new one.
Step 3: Select a roughly five-minute, continuous segment of the field recording from Step 2. Set it to fade in at the start and out at the end for about 5 seconds each, so it neither starts nor ends abruptly.
Step 4: Listen closely to the field recording. Play it on repeat a few times and think about its tonality, its component parts.
Step 5: The goal for this project is to now introduce a sound at the very start of the field recording that is imperceptible as being an addition. It should fit in so well that the field recording still sounds like a field recording. Plan for this addition to play for roughly 15 seconds before doing anything further with that sound.
Step 6: Now, around the 15-second mark, have that additional sound very slowly make itself more apparent. By 30 seconds, it should have risen in prominence and stand out and somewhat apart from the original field recording.
Step 7: For almost the entire remainder of the piece, have that additional sound do more. Have it morph and vary, and continue to stand out and apart from the field recording, though make sure the field recording is still audible.
Step 8: Around 45 seconds before the end of the piece, have the additional sound slowly return to its original state, as it was at the opening, when it was indistinguishable from the field recording. By the time the piece is about 30 seconds from the end, it should sound as it did when the piece started.
Step 9: When the piece is 25 or so seconds from the end, suddenly mute the additional sound. It should disappear entirely, so that for those final 25 seconds (well, 20, and then the piece will fade out for the final 5 seconds), we hear the unadorned original field recording for the first time.
Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:
Step 1: Include “disquiet0499” (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 “disquiet0499” (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-0499-out-of-a-landscape/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0499-out-of-a-landscape/)
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.
Note: Please only post one track per 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 26, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, July 22, 2021.
Length: The length of your finished track is up to you. Around five minutes is recommended.
Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0499” 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 499th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Out of the Landscape (The Assignment: Record a piece of music in which a sound emerges from a field recording) — at: https://disquiet.com/0499/
Major thanks to the work on Golden Gate Bridge music by Mahlen Morris and Nate Mercereau in inspiring this project’s approach.
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-0499-out-of-a-landscape/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0499-out-of-a-landscape/)
There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to [twitter.com/disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet) for Slack inclusion.
Orchestra Room
An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt
Exterior entrance
Duets with the Golden Gate Bridge
Nate Mercereau becomes one with the hum
Perhaps you’ve heard the news about the how the Golden Gate Bridge here in San Francisco, where I live, has taken to singing. Repairs to the bridge led to a unique teachable moment about the physics of sound: high winds cause it to drone mellifluously (or annoyingly, according to some locals, though not me) all around the city. The drone is hard to capture because, by definition, it happens when the winds are themselves making noise. The bridge also sounds different depending on where you are. I’ve posted [footage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upohR-iLH90) from my [backyard](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwlr_1xAGDM), not that my cellphone captured anything remotely like what it is like to stand there. It is truly alien, the thermin of the gods.
Much as nature abhors a vacuum, alien music abhors isolation. And thus the Golden Gate Bridge has drawn to it some local musicians. This isn’t the first track I’ve heard in which someone tries to play along with the bridge, but it’s certainly among the most beautiful. Nate Mercereau, as I learned in a [news story](https://datebook.sfchronicle.com/music/how-one-musician-recorded-a-series-of-duets-with-the-golden-gate-bridges-ghostly-hum) in yesterday’s issue of the San Francisco Chronicle, has recorded a four-song EP, *Duets*, on which he plays live along with the bridge. There’s also a video, shown up above, in which he sits perched in the Marin Headlands with the bridge in the background. As Mercereau told the Chronicle’s Aidin Vaziri, “It’s the largest wind instrument in the world right now.”
The video opens with an extended sequence of the bridge on its own. Nearly a minute passes before Mercereau, eventually seated on a stool behind a battery of pedals, begins to intone slow, aching tones that meld beautifully with the bridge itself. He is careful to keep the playing subtle, quiet. It never threatens to overcome the bridge. Instead, it flows in and out of the underlying hum.
The playing on the *Duets* EP pushes a little further. On “Duet 1,” the guitar sounds at times almost like a flute. On “Duet 2,” a more full-bodied part suggests some hybrid of violin and saxophone. On “Duet 4,” Mercereau posits drones that sit in contrast with the main source audio. Throughout, the bridge just sings on. Perhaps when Mercereau is done, another musician will take his seat on that stool.
This is the latest video I’ve added to [my ongoing YouTube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAgCxRbmR1MJxihgJkCPEnehAPvjoF71-) of fine live performance of ambient music. Video originally posted at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LroMn5UpIvk). More from Mercereau at [howsorecords.com](https://howsorecords.com/), [instagram.com/natemercereau](https://www.instagram.com/natemercereau/), and [twitter.com/natemercereau](https://twitter.com/natemercereau).