Code to Decode

Software and other insights on unpacking the "Ford Madox Ford Page 99 Remix"

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The latest Disquiet Junto finds music hidden in everyday books. The project began Thursday evening, November 7, and ends this coming Monday, November 11, at 11:59pm. It ends not at midnight but at 11:59pm, as do all Junto projects, because early on in the Junto series it became clear to me that when you type “midnight Monday” sometimes people don’t know if you meant the midnight that began Monday or the midnight that ended Monday. These sorts of distinctions are important, because the framing structure of the Junto is as much a set of rules as are the rules of a given project.

If there were two key rules about writing rules they would probably be:

>1. Make sure the rules work.
>
>2. Make sure the rules aren’t likely to be misinterpreted.

Each of the weekly projects has its own vibe, its own likely/intended audience of participants, and its own surprises, and when it comes to surprises — especially in the form of generous contributions of code from participants — this week is no exception. A few notes follow regarding this week’s project, which involves transforming into music 80 characters selected from page 99 a book selected by the musician. The page number, 99, was selected from a comment by the author Ford Madox Ford (more details at the [project page](https://disquiet.com/2013/11/07/disquiet0097-page99remix/)).

1: Shortly after project’s announcement, I got a note from Junto member David Wilkins, who has done text->music work in the past. He directed me to his website [wilkinsworks.net](http://www.wilkinsworks.net/), from which [this is excerpted](http://myplace.frontier.com/~evaew/wilkinsworks/NoteAlpha.html):

>The earliest known version of this system appeared in the Renaissance as a technique called soggetto cavato, first used by Josquin des Prez around 1500, and later named by Zarlino in his 1558 treatise Le institutioni harmoniche as soggetto cavato dalle vocali di queste parole, or literally, a subject ‘carved out of the vowels from these words.’ des Prez only used the vowels, mapping them to the solmization syllables, and using the resulting notes as the cantus firmus for the Missa Hercules dux Ferrariae and other works. …
>
>My first foray into this idea occurred in 1976 while an undergrad music student, waiting for a recital to begin. There is a famous organ work by Bach, based on his own name, which gave me the idea in the first place. In German, B is B flat and H is B natural. Being an American I wanted to use the A through G as is, so had to start with H as something else. Being a trombonist I tend to favor flats over sharps, so assigned H to A flat, I to B flat, and up to the first twelve notes. Start over again with M assigned to A, and so on for the remaining letters.

2: Junto participant Mutagene posted to [github.com](https://gist.github.com/mutagene/7372289) a script in the Ruby language to help automate the process of changing letters and punctuation into notes:

3: And Junto member Defaoieclan wrote a piece of software in Processing that would likewise assist in the transform. Full piece at the [track’s page](https://soundcloud.com/defaoiteclan/disquiet-2ndgo?in=disquiet/sets/disquiet0097-page99remix). Here’s the opening part:

20131109-juntocode

4: And Junto member Inlet wrote something in Supercollider, available at the [track’s page](https://soundcloud.com/inlet/when-the-sky-becomes?in=disquiet/sets/disquiet0097-page99remix). Here’s the opening part:

20131109-superc

The 97th Disquiet Junto project is housed [here](https://disquiet.com/2013/11/07/disquiet0097-page99remix/).

Student Work: Yoga Breathing

Four tracks from my sound course

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The work shared below is a segment of a project by a student, Karina Saroyan, enrolled in the course I teach at the Academy of Art here in San Francisco. The course is about the role of sound in the media landscape. Saroyan’s four audio tracks were part of an in-class presentation she gave this past Wednesday. Each of the course’s students (there are a dozen or so) give a short, ten-minute presentation at some point during the semester. The presentations don’t begin until several weeks in, at least until we’ve gotten the initial three class sessions done — those are focused on learning to listen, in part through exercises and in part through reflections on history, media, commerce, physiology and other useful perspectives.

The in-class student presentations are research projects, but the instruction is to focus the research on something that is already important to the student: i.e., don’t go researching the physiology of the human ear if you’re not already a biology nut; instead, pay attention to the sounds in your hobby (painting), or favorite sport (tennis), or place of employment (there was a great presentation several semesters back about the cosmetics counter). Saroyan focused her presentation on yoga, in particular on the breathing, and as part of the project she uploaded these four audio tracks of her performing key breathing practices: ujjahi, alternate nostril, lion’s breath, and skull shining breath:

As someone who has practiced yoga on and off for close to two decades, and who recently has begun exploring tai chi, I was reminded in Saroyan’s work that for all the physicality of breathing, there is a specifically sonic aspect by which one can gauge one’s form. It was also a useful reminder than not all vocal sounds are verbal — that, in fact, some aren’t even produced in the same manner we generally associate with vocal sounds.

Disquiet Junto Project 0097: Ford Madox Ford Page 99 Remix

The Project: Decode the music in a phrase from a book.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131107-fordmadoxford

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

This assignment was made in the afternoon, California time, on Thursday, November 7, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, November 11, 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 0097: Ford Madox Ford Page 99 Remix
>
>This week’s project takes as its source a comment attributed to the author Ford Madox Ford: “Open the book to page ninety-nine and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.” We will convert text from page 99 of various books into music.
>
>Step 1: Pick up the book you are currently reading, or otherwise the first book you see nearby.
>
>Step 2: Turn to page 99. Confirm that the page has enough consecutive text in it to add up to 80 characters.
>
>Step 2a: If the page is blank or otherwise has no text, turn to page 98. Continue this process of moving backward through the book until your find an appropriate page.
>
>Step 2b: If you are reading an ebook that lacks page numbers, or a book that happens to lack page numbers, then use the first page of the main body of the book (i.e., not the Library of Congress information or the table of contents) or flip to a random spot/page in the book.
>
>Step 3: When you have located 80 consecutive characters, type them into a document on your computer or write the down on a piece of paper.
>
>Step 4: You will turn these characters into music by following the following rules:
>
>Step 4a: The letters A through L will correspond with the notes along the chromatic scale from A to G#. To convert a letter higher than L, simply cycle through the scale again (i.e., L = G#, M = A, etc.). Capital letters should be played slightly louder than lowercase letters.
>
>Step 4b: Any spaces and any dashes/hyphens will be treated as blank, as a silent moment.
>
>Step 4c: A comma or semicolon will signify a note one step below the preceding note.
>
>Step 4d: A period, question mark, or exclamation point will signify a note one step above the preceding note.
>
>Step 4e: All other punctuation (colon, ampersand, etc.) will be heard as a percussive beat.
>
>Step 5: Record the piece of music using a digital or analog instrument.
>
>Step 6: Set the pace for the recording to between 160 and 80 beats per minute (BPM). In other words, the track should be between 30 and 60 seconds in length.
>
>Step 7: Add any desired underlying music or sound bed, and any additional instrumentation, but the melody resulting from Step 6 should be the most prominent sound.
>
>Deadline: Monday, November 11, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>Length: Your track should have a duration of between 30 and 60 seconds.
>
>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. Name the book and share the 80 characters that were the source of your melody.
>
>Title/Tag: Include the term “disquiet0097-page99remix”in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.
>
>Download: Please consider employing a license that allows for attributed, commerce-free remixing (i.e., a Creative Commons license permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution).
>
>Linking: When posting the track, be sure to include this information:
>
>More on this 97th Disquiet Junto project, in which music is decoded from a phrase in a book, at:
>
>https://disquiet.com/2013/11/07/disquiet0097-page99remix/
>
>More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Image via [wikipedia.org](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Madox_Ford).

When a Noise Force …

... meets an unsuitable playback medium

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131106-deadwood

Noise music has an indeterminate quality, a quality that defies common conceptions of sonic reproduction. By striving for a level of volume, intensity, and texture that veers toward decay, noise music challenges the listener — especially the listener to recorded noise music — to locate the proper listening environment. When a sound is intended to signal a destructive force, how can its “proper” reproduction be gauged. This live performance by the Scotland-based musician Deadwood, aka Adam Baker, has the unique ability to sound like it is shredding your speaker even when played at a very low volume. If noise music played quietly is a form of ambient music, that is not to say that the sound cannot still do damage.

Track originally posted at [soundcloud.com/dead_wood](https://soundcloud.com/dead_wood/dead-wood-svartvit-script-torn). More on Deadwood, aka Adam Baker of Edinburgh, Scotland, at [blotchcreek.blogspot.com](http://blotchcreek.blogspot.com/).

Sonic “Sourcery”

Or audio alchemy

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The brief liner note reads like a recipe, or at least a shopping list of ingredients. There are six parts, each a standalone, identifiable element. The result is single minute of concatenated sound, from plucked drone through sonar ping through metallic rattle, and on into aural fragments both more and less soothing. It is exactly a minute in length and, as the title suggests, it is a piece in which mercurial action is brought about on source materials.

This is the track:

These are its contents:

>1. guitar harmonics sans attacks
>
>2. prepared banjo
>
>3. electrons+zither
>
>4. new age drone
>
>5. prepared resonator guitar
>
>6. bowed bamboo monochord

Track originaly posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/laynegarrett](https://soundcloud.com/laynegarrett/sorc). It is by Layne Garrett, more from whom at [questionthetruth.com](http://www.questionthetruth.com/noise/).