Disquiet – Page 795 – Listening to culture. Playing with audio. Sounding out technology. Composing in code.

Adherence as Mask for Avoidance

A steadfast beat from Starsmoke

August 4, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

The slender techno of an untitled piece by Starsmoke is a simple beat set on repeat and lightly ornamented for the duration. As it moves headlong into the future — well, toward its 4:34 end time, which will then trigger the listener to set it on loop — it never veers from the lightly tweaked boom-chika boom-chika at its core. But adherence to time isn’t entirely what’s going on. Here, seeming adherence is a mask for artful, concerted avoidance. What makes the untitled track worthy of a listen, and worthy of a title for that matter, is how it plays with that underlying rhythm as it proceeds: nudging small grace beats, hinting at backward masking, suggesting turntable effects, dropping segments to yield illusions of syncopation. It’s quite a treat.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/starsmoke](https://soundcloud.com/starsmoke/untitled). More from Starsmoke, who apparently splits time between Colorado and Wyoming, at [instagram.com/spshl_K](https://instagram.com/spshl_K/).

Singing Bowls

From an installation by Jason Charney

August 3, 2015August 3, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

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The singing bowls of Jason Charney’s recent sound installation can challenge your speakers, and your ears. They can draw you in with their textured, sinuous waves, only to suddenly veer north into a piercing high register. Use headphones with caution, and start at a low volume. But all those caveats aside, the work is a must listen.

The track is a document of his half-dozen-plus steel bowls, set to trigger themselves. The result is a quasi-random series of overlaid signals, which on occasion take on a focused sequence akin to considered composition.

Writes Charney of his procedure:

>A contact microphone and transducer attached to the bottom of each bowl creates a feedback loop, turning these bowls into resonant objects that play themselves. A computer listens and adjusts the signal flow to create a variety of sonic results. The sounds of visitors walking around the room or ambient noise from the space adds slight variation to the signal chain, magnified by the exponential nature of a feedback loop.

The work was exhibited at Eastern Bloc in Montréal, Canada, as part of Montréal Contemporary Music Lab 2015. Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/jasoncharney](https://soundcloud.com/jasoncharney/feedback-bowls). More from Charney at [twitter.com/jcharney](https://twitter.com/jcharney) and [jasoncharney.com](http://www.jasoncharney.com/).

What Sound Looks Like

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

July 31, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

This being San Francisco, when rent on my #noiseoffice went up over 50%, I figured that was part of the price of being in the city. But then friends and colleagues started directing me toward more cost-efficient options, and in the end much of what my current office’s rent included (shared conference room, waiting area, bathroom with shower) wasn’t all that necessary for me. Surprisingly quickly, I lucked out and found a place that was 40% less than my current rent (do the math regarding how much less that is than my projected rent). Anyhow, the new spot is also about 50% larger than my previous office, though lacking in some of the amenities (no street view, fewer windows, carpet instead of wood floors). For local flavor’s sake, my new office is in between that of a massage therapist and a crematorium. They don’t have an oven in the crematorium office — they just hold meetings there. This shot is the view out the one window in my office. The building neighbors a local church, whose bells ring clearly at 5pm, and likely other times of the day — when exactly I’ll find out after I move in.

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

Disquiet Junto Project 0187: Three Strands

Shift between three renditions of the same melody.

July 30, 2015July 30, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

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Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto group on [SoundCloud.com](https://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/) and at [disquiet.com/junto](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.

This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, July 30, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 3, 2015.

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 0187: Three Strands

Shift between three renditions of the same melody.

Step 1: Choose a simple melody/song/rhythm of your own creation, or that is in the public domain (or that is available thanks to an appropriate Creative Commons license).

Step 2: Record yourself performing the melody/song/rhythm from Step 1 three times, each time with a different instrument or set of instruments. Each of the three resulting tracks should be the same length, at least a full minute. (A single track can be a concatenation of multiple copies of the same recording of the segment — you don’t have to play it straight through for the full minute.)

Step 3: Make a new recording of the three tracks playing simultaneously. The only thing you can do throughout is shift between the tracks, playing either one of them, two of them, or all three of them at the same time. You can shift every few bars, or at a granular level, or anywhere in between — either with a concerted rhythmic purpose, or at random. The decisions you make about these shifts constitute the core compositional decisions you’ll make for this project.

Step 4: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

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

Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, July 30, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, August 3, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work is up to you, but it should be at least a minute.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and 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.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0187-threestrands”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

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, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 187th Disquiet Junto project (“Shift between three renditions of the same melody”) at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0187: Three Strands

What Sound Looks Like

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

July 28, 2015July 28, 2015 / By Marc Weidenbaum

I shot this last night while walking a few blocks to the local movie theater to catch a summer blockbuster. Even at 9pm, the night wasn’t dark enough for the illuminated doorbell buttons to be visible from much of a distance. They’re neither bright nor commonplace enough to provide a Christmas-tree effect. Later, after the movie, on the walk home, even though it was quite dark, they still really weren’t visible from a distance. Their light is just strong enough for when you’re near a given doorway. This one, clearly getting on in years, seems to suggest a non-existent functionality: that the apartment dwellers can turn on and off the light to signal whether or not they are welcoming visitors.

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