Disquiet – Page 451 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Disquietude Podcast Process

Taking stock

April 3, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I’m really digging doing this podcast, Disquietude. A few monthly episodes in, the structure feels good: intro, then half an hour or so of music uninterrupted (multiple artists, all with their approval), then track-by-track commentary, including audio interview elements, plus an essay. I want to play with the format more as I proceed. Main thing I was reminded of this time around was to do the work over time, not try to do it all in one day. Keeps it simpler, and leaves room to fine-tune. Also: record my voice at night, when the world is quieter and I’m calmer. I really enjoy the transitional audio elements, 12 seconds each, during the track commentary, reminding the listener about the individual tracks as they’re described. Main thing I want to do next is make the audio essay at the end more audio-ish, using sound as part of the story, not overkill, but as light additions.

Soundbites: Audio Branding Audio, Ikea Podcast, De-gendered Siri

Recent reads (etc.) on sound

April 2, 2021April 2, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

These are the sort of items I’d usually put in the This Week in Sound email newsletter ([tinyletter.com/disquiet](https://tinyletter.com/disquiet)), but I’ve been super busy, too busy for a new issue, and so at a friend’s suggestion I am initially noting some here.

▰ The serial-fiction audio/text hybrid company Serial Box has changed names. It’s never a particularly good idea to make such an announcement on April 1, as Realm (né Serial Box) elected to do, but there was nothing inherently funny in the company’s blog post, so no reason to doubt it. The name change arrives with other changes, like the availability of some Realm shows as podcasts. Next up: “some fancy brand sounds,” de rigueur for many companies these days, and virtually essential for a company whose product line is largely sonic itself. The key thing isn’t the name. The key thing is how complicated it is to characterize Realm, because it was never just audiobooks, or just a publisher of original fiction, and now it’s that plus podcasts. It’s all those things, wrapped in a new subscription service, with a la carte fees retained for some titles. A new name for the company is a step forward. But what Realm may really need is a name for what it is. (And if you’ve read this far, I recommend the series *Ninth Step Station*.)
[https://www.realm.fm/blog/serial-box-is-now-realm](https://www.realm.fm/blog/serial-box-is-now-realm)

▰ Also not an April Fools joke (and announced in March, anyhow) is that Ikea has rendered its catalog as a podcast, having previously done so, two years ago, in Swedish for the hometown audience. In a piece for Quartz, Anne Quito connects the move to phenomena like lockdown acculturation to podcasts and a rise in “the voice shopping feature on Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant.” (Via Rob Walker)
[https://qz.com/1982468/ikea-replaced-its-print-catalog-with-an-audiobook/](https://qz.com/1982468/ikea-replaced-its-print-catalog-with-an-audiobook/)

▰ It’s said that you can judge a culture by how it treats its most vulnerable. So, too, its AI. To wit, Apple’s Siri now has more voices than ever, but more newsworthy is the removal of a female voice as the default. No less than the U.N. has called out Siri and Alexa for what could be called, quite literally, codified sexism. The default of the subservient role in many countries to a female voice was one among a larger set of symptoms. From an earlier [New York Times piece](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/siri-alexa-ai-gender-bias.html) by Megan Specia on the topic: “The [U.N.] report borrows its title — ‘I’d Blush if I Could’ — from a standard response from Siri, the Apple voice assistant, when a user hurled a gendered expletive at it. When a user tells Alexa, ‘You’re hot,’ her typical response has been a cheery, ‘That’s nice of you to say!'”
[https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/31/apple-adds-two-siri-voices/](https://techcrunch.com/2021/03/31/apple-adds-two-siri-voices/)

▰ “In 1878, Thomas Edison recorded — on a piece of tinfoil — 78 seconds that may be the oldest playable recording of an American voice and the earliest known recording of a musical performance.” That’s from a Library of Congress announcement of new audio added to the National Recording Registry. (Via Lowell Goss)
[https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-21-015/](https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-21-015/)

Early-Morning Rumble

Soundmarks, and learning to listen

April 2, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

A soundmark of this neighborhood is a steady, stationary, early-morning rumble of what I take to be a motorcycle somewhere far enough away to be difficult to triangulate, and sometimes initially mistaken for anything from construction work to rattly fridge to passing seaplane. This [morning](https://twitter.com/disquiet/status/1377986108122783744), “early” meant right after 7am.

I love this helpful guide: [“Top 6 Strange Motorcycle Noises and What They May Mean.”](https://ultimatemotorcycling.com/2016/03/29/top-6-strange-motorcycle-noises-what-they-may-mean/) The author breaks such sounds into six types:

1. Tick, tick tick
2. Bump & grind
3. Creepy krink
4. Boo hiss
5. Ring, ding, ping boom
6. Snap, crackle, pop

And no, I don’t ride a motorcycle, myself. Vehicle noises were simply, in deep retrospect, an early entry point for me into sound as a subject, and into onomatopoeia as a means of exploration (beginning, for me, with my mom striving to communicate with a mechanic).

Here’s a related panel on the topic from a comic ([“Mentors”](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/13/mentors/)) I did with Hannes Pasqualini a year ago this month. If you click through to the final of its [four panels](https://disquiet.com/2020/04/13/mentors/), the intent is to show these were examples from my childhood.

RIP, Gregory Kondos (1923-2021)

A life by the river

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021 / By Marc Weidenbaum

RIP, painter Gregory Kondos, known for his blue-skies depiction of the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. (I heard the news via [Scott Gilbert](https://www.scottgilbertart.com/), a friend and artist.) I had the pleasure of interviewing Kondos at his Sacramento home shortly before he turned 90. He has died at 97.

I’d spoken with Kondos previously, while researching a story on his old friend, painter Mel Ramos, and I then mentioned to my excellent editor at the magazine Sactown that I wanted, when appropriate, to interview Kondos again, because he had been so outspoken. It was, as expected, a blast.

I love this childhood memory Kondos shared about his early years in Northern California, after moving at age 3 from Massachusetts, where he was born to Greek immigrants who, as he told me, didn’t speak a lick of English: “I fished all the time. But my dad had to catch a fish, I didn’t. If I caught a fish, fine. But if I didn’t, fine, didn’t matter. I just sat there and looked at the river and the trees.”

The full piece is at [sactownmag.com](https://www.sactownmag.com/true-blue/).

Disquiet Junto Project 0483: Type Set

The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.

April 1, 2021April 1, 2021 / 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, April 5, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 1, 2021.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0483: Type Set

The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.

Step 1: You’re going to use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music.

Step 2: Give some thought as to what you’re going to type. You might re-type something that already exists. You might type freeform, just associating ideas. You might type randomly. Arguably, the best thing to do is to think of something you want to write about, and then type that: Typing something you’re writing in your head will lead to momentary pauses where you consider things, and that will be infused into the cadence.

Step 3: Record yourself typing the text you decided upon in Step 2.

Step 4: Use the unedited recording from Step 3 as the rhythmic and underlying percussive element of a piece of original music. It’s preferable that you retain the recognizable sound of the typing.

Seven More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: Include “disquiet0483” (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 “disquiet0483” (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-0483-type-set/](https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0483-type-set/)

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, April 5, 2021, at 11:59pm (that is, just before midnight) wherever you are. It was posted on Thursday, April 1, 2021.

Length: The length of your finished track will be as long as the story you choose to tell.

Title/Tag: When posting your tracks, please include “disquiet0483” 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 483rd weekly Disquiet Junto project — Type Set (The Assignment: Use a recording of yourself typing something as the underlying rhythmic track for a piece of music) — at:

https://disquiet.com/0483/