SOUND RESEARCH LOG: The Sound Design of Typing

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

“The Qwerkwriter has a very unique sound signature, due to its chrome accent as well as the mechanical switch, and the way the key caps are constructed.” That’s the pitch at the start of this video of a three-pound, tablet-friendly keyboard that combines Bluetooth connectivity with an old-school mechanism. It is unlikely anyone who worked in or near a corporate typing pool in the pre-computer, post-war era misses the cacophony, but for personal use the gadget no doubt has its charms. From the tech spec: “Cherry MX Blue switches (a modern switch that emulates the typewriter clicky feel).”

Hosted at vimeo.com and the kickstarter.com campaign, which passed its goal of $90,000 by almost 50 percent. More at qwerkytoys.com. Found via Richard Kadrey.

This entry cross-posted from the Disquiet linkblog project sound.tumblr.com.

The Geophony + Biophony + Anthrophony of Memory

Reading a listening of a Berlin cemetary

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20140708-raeallen-bw

The Berlin-based musician Micah Frank has posted this nearly two-minute recording of the Schönhauser Allee Cemetery (or Friedhof Schönhauser Allee in German). The Jewish cemetery dates from 1827. Frank’s annotation is simple. He marks it as a stereo recording, and he lists what he hears. What’s especially of note in regard to what he hears is less the sonic objects he finds distinct within the soundscape, so much as how he categorizes those objects. Seemingly drawing from the work of Bernie Krause, the notes here divide the sonic content into three complementary fields:

>Geophony: rain, wind
>
>Biophony: birds, insects
>
>Anthrophony: air traffic, city noises

The words are fairly self-explanatory. “Anthrophony” refers to sounds made by humans. “Biophony” refers to sounds made by any other living organisms. “Geophony” refers to the remaining elements of nature. What makes them useful, and worthy of greater adoption by people who post field recordings, is how they usefully break down the sounds in a way that gives them context, makes them comprehensible, knowable, memorable. One might take issue with the difference between “anthrophony” and “biophony,” suggesting it creates a false dichotomy, but given that the intended listener is a human, the focus on “anthrophony” helps give the listener the sense of a broader role in the sound of the world.

There are numerous field recordings on Frank’s SoundCloud page, including ones from Puerto Rico:

And Woodstock, New York:

And the Baltic Sea near Rostock, Germany (“Geophony: waves”; “Anthrophony: beach cleaning equipment”):

Sometimes Frank plays with the source audio, as in this modified recording of his father-in-law’s home distillery (“My field recorder,” he writes, “picked up all of the bubbling and percolations in great detail”):

Berlin track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/micahfrank](https://soundcloud.com/micahfrank/soundscape-ecology-judischer-friedhof-schonhauser-allee). More on the historic cemetery at [jg-berlin.org](http://www.jg-berlin.org/en/judaism/cemeteries/schoenhauser-allee.html). More from Frank at [twitter.com/micahfrank](https://twitter.com/micahfrank).

*(Photo by Rae Allen from [flickr.com]((https://www.flickr.com/photos/raeallen/13937595880/in/photolist-neBPFf-dW9UkX-dW9UtP-dW9Zwc)), used via Creative Commons license.)*

Disquiet Junto Project 0132: Posthumous Nofi Trio

The Assignment: Collaborate with the late Jeffrey (Nofi) Melton using a previous tribute track.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130404-nofi

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

This assignment was made in the mid-afternoon, California time, on Thursday, July 10, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, July 14, 2013, as the deadline.

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 0132: Posthumous Nofi Trio

This week’s project is a tribute to the late Jeffrey Melton, the talented musician, best known on SoundCloud and Twitter as @nofi. The project builds on the Disquiet Junto Project 0066, which took place 66 weeks ago.

The Disquiet Junto Project 0066 had participants perform live over a segment of a live recording of Melton himself playing solo. The result was a series of posthumous duets. This week we’ll produce a series of posthumous trios. The steps are as follows:

Step 1: Choose one of the tracks that resulted from Disquiet Junto project 0066:

Step 2: Listen to your chosen track several times, to get to know it.

Step 3: Extend the file by 10 to 15 seconds.

Step 4: Record yourself performing live along with the track. Any instrumentation is fine. Just no voice. Be sure to play alone for approximately 10 seconds after the original track ends.

Step 5: Upload the track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud, following the directions below.

Background: Melton passed away March 30, 2013, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he lived with his wife and seven-year-old son. He was 42. Melton had been involved with the Disquiet Junto since the very first Junto project, back in January 2012, and he early on volunteered to create a Twitter list of the handles of participating Junto members.

Deadline: Monday, July 14, 2014, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Length: The length of your finished work will be 10 to 15 seconds longer than the track you selected.

Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, 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.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0132-posthumousnofitrio” 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 link to the source track from project 0066, and to include this information:

More on this 132nd Disquiet Junto project — “Collaborate with the late Jeffrey (Nofi) Melton using a previous tribute track”— at:

Disquiet Junto Project 0132: Posthumous Nofi Trio

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

The Disquiet Junto Project List (0001 – 0639 …)

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

https://disquiet.com/forums

My Aphex Twin Talk at CCRMA/Stanford

Full video from February 19, 2014 – plus techno.stanford.edu

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The first talk I gave on my book *Selected Ambient Works Volume II*, in the 33 1/3 series, on the Aphex Twin album of that name was back on February 19 of this year, a few days after the book’s official release date. This is full video of that talk. It took place at Stanford University’s CCRMA, the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics:

One cool thing that came out of the event was the reviving of a URL that played an indirect but influential role in the history of the album. My book is as much about the cultural afterlife of *Selected Ambient Works Volume II* as it is about the album itself. Part of that afterlife took place online, with particular vitality on email discussion groups. The ones housed at Hyperreal.org were frequented by Greg Eden, whom I interviewed in the book, and who is the individual bearing primary responsibility for the words associated as track titles for the album (on which with one exception, the tracks are officially untitled). As background for the book, I interviewed Hyperreal.org founder Brian Behlendorf, who among other things explained to me that before Hyperreal got that name, it was running on “a dedicated box at the Medical Information Systems Group.” The URL for the boards was [techno.stanford.edu](http://techno.stanford.edu). This was on a Sun Sparcstation 1+. The Hyperreal lists IDM@ and Ambient@ started on techno.stanford.edu in early 1993.

Speaking to the hometown crowd, I mentioned the techno.stanford.edu URL in my talk. Shortly after the event, Carr Wilkerson at CCRMA managed to get the URL — which had long since gone 404-error dormant — to redirect to the CCRMA home page.

Oh, and two facts to correct:

1: Toward the beginning I mention Jonathan Lethem’s entry in the 33 1/3 series, about the Talking Heads album *Fear of Music*. It is #86, not #89, in the series.

2: And very close to the end, in response to a question from the audience, I can’t recall the name of a sculptor whom John Cage compares his compositions to in his book *Silence*. The sculptor of wire works is Richard Lippold.

The video is housed at [youtube.com](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmdX3WVFU38). Original event listing at [ccrma.stanford.edu](https://ccrma.stanford.edu/events/marc-weidenbaum-cultural-afterlife-form-of-change-two-decades-of-aphex-twins-selected-ambient).