Disquiet Junto Project 0092: Room Tone Suite

The Project: Use room tone to shape a three-part suite.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131003-roomtonesuite

*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 evening, California time, on Thursday, October 3, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, October 7, 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 0092: Room Tone Suite
>
>This week’s project explores the role a room takes in shaping sound. The instructions are as follows:
>
>Step 1: Choose a recent piece of music that you have recorded. Locate a 30-second section that is fairly static and repetitive.
>
>Step 2: Choose three rooms that have different acoustics, perhaps all in the same place, such as your home.
>
>Step 3: Play back the piece of music loudly in each room and record it. This will result in three 30-second clips.
>
>Step 4: Stitch the clips together.
>
>Step 5: Upload the track and annotate with a description of the rooms and your process. Also, if available, include a link to the original version of your track, for the listener’s reference.
>
>Deadline: Monday, October 7, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>Length: Your track should have a duration of 90 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.
>
>Title/Tag: Include the term “disquiet0092-roomtonesuite”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 92nd Disquiet Junto project, in which room tone is used to shape a three-part suite, at:
>
>https://disquiet.com/2013/10/03/disquiet0092-roomtonesuite/
>
>More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
>
>Image via
>
>http://goo.gl/K2Tnhi

En Route to Timbuktu

Regional sounds and degraded signals via ShortWaveMusic

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20131001-shortwavemusic

SoundCloud has gotten so massive, it can be forgiven that accounts as fascinating as ShortWaveMusic manage to have as few as 253 followers, as was its count this morning. ShortWaveMusic, as the name suggests, is a collection of recordings of regional music from around the world. Its self-description is as follows:

>ShortWaveMusic is a global sound project dedicated to preserving the world’s musical traditions and folklore as heard on local, regional, and international radio. I started the project in 2005 from a basement in Cambridge, MA, and it has since grown into an annual expedition to various far-flung parts of the globe. Previous installments of ShortWaveMusic have been recorded in Socotra, Mali, Bulgaria, Ibiza, and the United Arab Emirates, and will continue in Somaliland in 2014.
>
>Recordings are made “on location” and then serialized over the course of 8-10 months at my Web site. My long-term goal is to tell the story of international broadcasting in the 21st century by capturing the extraordinary and varied ways in which people continue to communicate by radio, despite the advent of newer technologies. All recordings are archived and catalogued for permanent preservation, so that this living library of radiophonic sound will be available to future generations.

This “living library of radiophonic sound” has over 170 track so far, including this one, “recorded en route to Timbuktu”:

https://soundcloud.com/shortwavemusic/swm2012_preview-mp3

To say that it is well beyond the recognition databases of Shazam is an understatement. The audio is presented as a freeform medley of snatches of sound recorded around the world, like someone spinning a radio dial, albeit from the vantage of a rapidly moving satellite. The pleasure is as much in the texture of degraded signals as it is in the music itself.

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/shortwavemusic](https://soundcloud.com/shortwavemusic/swm2012_preview-mp3). The project is by Myke Dodge Weiskopf, more from whom at [myke.me](http://www.myke.me/).

ASCII Twin

Digital ephemera from the early days of the World Wide Web

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130927-aphexascii

With the Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works Volume II book’s writing behind me, the book’s release as part of the great 33 1/3 series is now itself a project. I’m sleuthing about for interested parties who might appreciate an advance galley — I think “influential readers” is the term the publicist employed — as well as for speaking opportunities. When I first started the writing of the manuscript, I thought I would be posting updates on Disquiet.com regularly about the process, but it turned out to be a far more insular exercise than I had expected — not that the book contains only my voice. No, I interviewed a heap of people for the book, and I also drew from interviews I did way back in the mid-1990s with Richard D. James and his fellow Cornwall native, Luke Vibert. In any case, a lot of ephemera surfaced during the research, and I’ll probably share bits of it as the February 13, 2014, date nears. Here are two ASCII depictions of the Aphex Twin logo, which appears on the cover of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, among numerous other Aphex endeavors. Up top is one that accompanied a long-running Aphex Twin FAQ, and here below is the signature file for Alan Parry, as it appeared on the IDM email list that was housed at hyperreal.org. Parry maintained both an Aphex Twin FAQ and a detailed discography. The IDM list began just a year before the Aphex Twin album was released. Next year marks the 20th anniversary of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, and this year, 2013, marks the 20th anniversary of the Mosaic browser, which for all intents and purposes made the World Wide Web easily and publicly accessible, although at the time only a small percentage of the public was taking advantage of it, among them university students with a keen interest not just in computers but in music made with computers and other electronics.

20130927-aphexascii2

The book is pre-order-able at amazon.com, which seems like a kind of science fiction since it’s still in early stages of copyediting.

More on the 33 1/3 series at 333sound.com.

Disquiet Junto Project 0091: Walking Music

The Project: Explore the musical qualities of footsteps.

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130926-footsteps

*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 afternoon, California time, on Thursday, September 26, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, September 30, 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 0091: Walking Music
>
>This week’s project takes as its source material that most natural and quotidian of rhythms: the sound of walking.
>
>The instructions are simple. You will make four recordings of yourself walking. You will then combine those recordings as you see fit into a single original piece of music. You will add nothing to the four recordings. You can cut up and otherwise transform the source audio as you see fit, but it should always be recognizable as the sound of walking. The resulting track will explore various themes, including texture, rhythm, percussion, momentum, and the inherent musical qualities of field recordings.
>
>Deadline: Monday, September 30, 2013, at 11:59pm wherever you are.
>
>Length: Your track should have a duration of between one and five minutes.
>
>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: Include the term “disquiet0091-walkingmusic”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 91st Disquiet Junto project, which explores the musical qualities of footsteps, at:
>
>https://disquiet.com/2013/09/26/disquiet0091-walkingmusic/
>
>More details on the Disquiet Junto at:
>
>http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
>
>Associated image found via Flickr:
>
>http://goo.gl/YFzVzA

Aphex Twin Book Status

Final draft done, copyediting ahoy, galley snapshot

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

20130925-333galley

It’s been a little quiet around here at Disquiet.com because on September 16 I submitted the final (pre-copyedit) draft of my book on Aphex Twin’s album _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_. The book will be published on February 13, 2014, as part of the 33 1/3 series, which is part of the Bloomsbury family. That book’s completion — again, with several rounds of copyediting to go — means I was wiped out, but I am now pretty much back at it. Above is an image from [a tweet made from my publisher’s Twitter account](https://twitter.com/333books/status/382956278051381248) earlier [today](https://twitter.com/333books/status/382956278051381248) of what appears to be an advance galley sampler promoting the six forthcoming titles in the 33 1/3 series. You can see the Aphex Twin book cover in the lower lefthand corner. If you tweet back at them — that is, at [@333books](https://twitter.com/333books/status/382956278051381248) — the title of which of the six books you are most interested in, this makes you eligible to win a copy of the sampler. Or as the tweet read: [“Look what just came in: our new sampler galley. To win a copy, tweet us which title you are most excited about!”](https://twitter.com/333books/status/382956278051381248)

And, er, the book is [available for pre-order on Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Aphex-Twins-Selected-Ambient-Volume/dp/1623568900/ref=pd_sim_sbs_b_2), among other places.

In related news, I am [@disquiet](https://twitter.com/disquiet) on Twitter.