Disquiet – Page 688 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Disquiet Junto Project 0264: Time Travel

Record a piece of music that plays with the perception of time.

January 19, 2017January 20, 2017 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Each Thursday in the [Disquiet Junto group](https://disquiet.com/junto/), 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.

Tracks will be added to this playlist for the duration of the project:

This project’s deadline is 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, January 23, 2017. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, January 19, 2017.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0264: Time Travel

Record a piece of music that plays with the perception of time.

Step 1: Recorded music is, generally speaking, a fixed object. It’s a document. It proceeds linearly, over time. It is, in the terminology of fine art, “time-based.” That said, music has the power to change one’s perception of time. Slowing and speeding tempo alone can alter a listener’s understanding of what is happening. Backward masking, sublimated hints of themes yet to come, the sound of a tape in fast forward mode — those are just a few ways that a composer can suggest that time is not moving linearly. Now, consider for a moment the tools available to give an impression of time doing things other than proceeding in a steady forward motion.

Step 2: Record a short piece of music that takes time travel as its theme, using ideas that resulted from the consideration in Step 1.

Five More Important Steps When Your Track Is Done:

Step 1: If you hosting platform allows for tags, be sure to include the project tag “disquiet0264” (no spaces) in the name of your track. If you’re posting on SoundCloud in particular, this is essential to my locating the tracks and creating a playlist of them.

Step 2: Upload your track. It is helpful but not essential that you use SoundCloud to host your track.

Step 3: In the following discussion thread at llllllll.co please consider posting your track:

http://llllllll.co/t/music-for-time-travelers-disquiet-junto-project-0264/6157/

Step 4: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 5: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This project’s deadline is 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, January 23, 2017. This project was posted in the morning, California time, on Thursday, January 19, 2017.

Length: The length is up to you, but two to three minutes sounds about right.

Title/Tag: When posting your track, please include “disquiet0264″ in the title of the track, and where applicable (on SoundCloud, for example) as a tag.

Upload: When participating in this project, post one finished track with the project tag, and 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 preferable that your track is set as downloadable, and that it allows for attributed remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).

Linking: When posting the track online, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 264th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Time Travel:
Record a piece of music that plays with the perception of time”:

https://disquiet.com/0264/

Bell Increments

Five tracks of overtones on overdrive

January 18, 2017August 8, 2018 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Until yesterday evening I had never uploaded audio before to Bandcamp.com, despite being a longtime user, and despite investigations of the service playing a role in the course I teach on the role of sound in media landscape.

Anyhow, I recently added a new module to my modular synthesizer, and in the process of testing it out, I thought I would go and post some of the results. Those results became the collection, two and a half minutes total — five tracks of modulated bell tones. Below is the embedded sound and the information from the [disquieteditions.bandcamp.com](https://disquieteditions.bandcamp.com/) page:

<a href="http://disquieteditions.bandcamp.com/album/bell-increments">Bell Increments by Disquiet</a>

This is a collection of five variations on the same bell sound. The bell is being run through a modular synthesizer, with an emphasis on a module called the ADDAC601. The ADDAC601 is a filter bank. It divides the inbound audio into eight bands across the audio spectrum, and then allows those bands to be worked upon by any manner of inputs. In this case the inputs are a variety of LFOs, or low frequency oscillators, often working in combination. Sine waves and triangle waves and saw-toothed waves consort and, in turn, exaggerate the source audio. The LFOs put the overtones into overdrive. These five tracks, each more complex than the previous, are excerpts from a larger collection that accumulated after I added the ADDAC601 to my small modular synth rig. They explore incremental changes as LFOs pile up and the variations take on more internal complexity. Because they were recorded in sequence without pause, each retains echoing, refracted elements of the previous track.

The source audio is a bell recorded by Freesound.org participant Sarana and uploaded for communal reuse on October 14, 2009. The source audio was pitched down a bit before being worked upon by the modular synth, and it also is run through a digital delay before hitting the ADDAC601. Here is the source audio, for comparison:

[www.freesound.org/people/sarana/sounds/81832/](http://www.freesound.org/people/sarana/sounds/81832/)

The track is licensed under this Creative Commons license:

[creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)

Natalie Braginsky’s Noise Vexations

Two exercises in sonic disturbance

January 17, 2017January 17, 2017 / By Marc Weidenbaum

Natalie Braginsky uploaded some serious noise about two weeks ago, two tracks of digital vexations. There “.linexp,” five minutes of brief shots of razor-edged pixel disturbances, and “total emotional collapse number four,” which embraces a thick screen of randomness. The latter focuses on the sort of sounds that often suggest the roiling sea but here seem more like an avalanche on — to borrow and bend a phrase from Godflesh — looped repeat. It takes awhile to get underway, opening with short bursts of fireworks that eventually fill the sky, the whole thing running for four-plus minutes. It’s “.linexp” that presents itself as ready for more general consumption. The noise miniatures bring to mind road-side snapshots of robotic collisions and sad-toned circuits failing in public.

Tracks originally posted at [soundcloud.com/nataliebraginsky](https://soundcloud.com/nataliebraginsky/). More from Braginsky, who is based in New York City, at
[twitter.com/ntkvby](https://twitter.com/ntkvby) and
[instagram.com/ntkvby](https://www.instagram.com/ntkvby/).

The Ecstatic Ambient of Nuun

Check out the "Expanding Universe"

January 16, 2017January 16, 2017 / By Marc Weidenbaum

There are many ambient sounds and musics, from the everyday soundscape to the barely-background of ambient techno. Somewhere amidst all that is what I’ve come to think of as “ecstatic ambient.” Ecstatic ambient amplifies the pulses inherent in tones and maximizes the surface textures, and in turn it yields what could be mistaken for one of Terry Riley’s electric ragas or one of Philip Glass’ early solo organ riffs. Such is “Expanding Universe” from Nuun. In just under two and a half minutes, it shreds the air, pushing saw-toothed waveforms and jittering static, and breaking it up with glitching beat-like demarcations. In a sense it’s noise music, but it’s entirely absent anything like a negative impulse. If it’s noise, it’s a joyful one.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/nuunnuun](https://soundcloud.com/nuunnuun/expanding-universe-sketch).

What Sound Looks Like

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt

January 16, 2017January 16, 2017 / By Marc Weidenbaum

There are nine buttons at the front gate of this multi-unit building. All but two are unidentified. Of the sole two with addresses labeled, one displays the unit information three times (look on the underside), perhaps for emphasis, perhaps to make up for the way you can convince yourself you accidentally wrote a four when you meant to write a nine, the top bit of connective typographical tissue ambiguous in regard to its solidity. The buttons here come in two sets, one of four, the other of five. Presumably the five came first, as they are built into the gate’s metal structure. They’re organized in a manner that may correlate with the layout of the building, or they are defaulting to some semblance of symmetry. The set of four is plastic, set atop wood, which is then bolted on: plastic on wood on metal, a Ponzi scheme of relative material strength. Whether there is overlap between the two sets of buttons is unclear. A call to the locksmith’s latest phone number (note evidence of at least two earlier ones) might yield answers.
When I shot this photo a woman was stepping out of an adjacent doorway. “What are you doing?” she asked me. “I take pictures of doorbells,” I said. Her tone shifted in an instant from accusatory to bemused: “Oh, that’s a first.”

An ongoing series cross-posted from instagram.com/dsqt.