Marc Weidenbaum

disquiet. Mark Weidenbaum

I've wanted to get a white-noise module for awhile, and finally added one to my setup. This module has 7 different noise sources, including white, red, grey, and blue. Each is being triggered by a different sequence. They're all in sync, though one is slightly delayed, which lends a tiny bit of character to the cadence, I think. The only reason I skipped pink is because I don't have any pink cables right now, and the color-coded cables helped me keep track of things.

You can blame this on someone who's listened to too many Chain Reaction releases, too much Consolidated, and too many scores to Michael Mann films.

Slightly more technical information: The sequences are all in CV Toolkit (a piece of software running on my laptop), and they're getting to my modular synthesizer via an Expert Sleepers ES-3 module. The noise-source module is the Quantum Rainbow 2. The white, red, and grey sources are all receiving sequences directly from the software. The blue source is getting a slight trigger delay (and a slightly extended length to the trigger), thanks to the Doepfer A-162. The whole thing is being mixed in an ADDAC 802 VCA Quintet, and out through a Pittsburgh Outs, through a Focusrite Scarlett 2i4. It was recorded in Audacity. 

White Noise Beat

I was asked by the Dutch musician Michel Banabila to contribute a remix to Marilli Remixed, a collection of reworkings of tracks from his very first album, Marilli, released in 1983. I selected the fourth track on the first side of the LP.

The original was elegant, but had percussion throughout. I wanted the ambient quality more formalized, and the percussion a little more muted and arhythmic.

. . .  

Here are some notes on my remix. I’ll note in advance, they’re fairly technical, as a notebook entry on what went into this, and what I learned in the process.

I used the my modular synthesizer (mostly filters, and a little triggered live sampler), the software Audacity (to sequence it, and also for some effects), and my Monome (running the mlr patch in the software Max). 

First I stretched a relatively percussion-less segment of the original track to get an ambient bed, yielding in the end something about 30 seconds long. I set it to run eight times in a row, overlapping to varying degrees at each repeat. 

Then I extracted a small percussion loop from the original. I did a "live performance" of that percussion loop with the Monome (four simultaneous tracks: one straight through, two running tighter sub-loops against each other a little quieter, and one in reverse even quieter still, though it's also the last bit to fade out of that sequence, so it has a little moment in the sun). The loop ran a little slower than the original, and I used a small Novation Launch Control to manage the relative volume of the four tracks within mlr.

And then I used my modular synthesizer to create variations on the ambient bed, which I layered in at various stages. 

In the end I had eight tracks in Audacity:

The 1st and 3rd tracks are the eight sequential repeats of the ambient sound bed, each intersection overlapping to varying degrees.

The 2nd track is a filtered version of the ambient bed, which has a slow LFO on it (giving it a light Laurie Anderson–ish "ha ha ha" feel) and some echo. This was done on the modular using a filter (either the A-121 or the A-136 or the Z2040 — my notes are unclear — influenced by a digital LFO, the Hikari Sine, and then run through an Eko module).

The 4th is the "live performance" on the Monome of the percussion loop, running mlr. It has four tracks of the loop doing different things. I used a Novation Launch Control to balance the volume of those four tracks.

The 5th is a copy of the ambient sound bed, pitched lower for the full length of the loop. This gives it that deep vibe for the penultimate repeat of the ambient bed. In track 1 at that same stage the volume of the original ambient bed is a little quieter, to let the deep version sound even louder than it is, in relative terms. 

The 6th track is a copy of the ambient bed but pitched higher, and I just use it for a very short moment, a final peak before the track fades out. 

And the 7th and 8th are two different instances of the same tweak of the ambient bed, which I did in the modular using a Harvestman Polivoks. It's a tingling, slightly irritating sound, a momentary breach in the ambience.

The whole idea is it opens with this expanse, and then goes to something a little tribal, and then returns to the expanse. I'll be honest about my influences here. The ambient bed is striving toward Brian Eno's Thursday Afternoon, and the rhythmic part has Peter Gabriel's soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ in mind. The first appearance of the Polivoks "irritant" is then repeated toward the end to provide a sense of reflection on where the piece started, but in between is that percussion performance. The deep vibe in track 5 gives an orchestral sense of closure, and the peak in track 6 is little filigree, like the clouds breaking, before it all ends.

At least that's where I ended up. It wasn't where I started. When I started, it was all gonna be about this firecracker/rattle sound in the original, but in the end I went a totally different direction.

Free Album Download

"A4. Marilli Rmxd 14"

disquiet 0245
Disquiet Junto Project 0245: Practical Music
Write a piece of music for getting things done, suitable for playing on repeat.

Clean up, routine, tiding up....that leads me to repetitive stuff.
I played a simple riff on my “diaz custom5”  drake bass guitar, very repetitive and yet variations going from A to D to D/E with no real structure.
Added a synth bass drone, and a Wurlitzer A200 electric piano improvising a bit.
Then some repetitive voices (tah-tah-tah-tah...) in four part harmony/
My usual rhythmic delays played a big role, here in 1/8th and 1/4th notes.
You can loop this, there’s no lead in or lead off.
Love
DD
Recorded in Paris, France September 9th  2016.

More on this 245th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Write a piece of music for getting things done, suitable for playing on repeat” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0245/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0243-synth-trial/4288

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is by jurek d. and is used thanks to Flicker and a Creative Commons license:

http://flic.kr/p/npLwcU

clean it and loop it - disquiet0245

This is based on a Pure Data patch I made called "Oval Noise" because it reminded me of Markus Popp's ovalcommers-era sound. 

The patch is a mess since I just kind of threw it together with 3 oscillators playing one of four pitches randomly, with 2 of them summed up and the other being sent to another effect along with being summed with the other 2. 

Pure Data measures tempo by millisecond, so I started at 500 (i beat every half second), then divided it by 2, 4 and 6. The last little bit is divided by 8. 

Recorded into Audacity where I cropped it and fixed some clipping issues. 

||||

More on this 246th weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece of music that increases speed in stages as it proceeds.” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0246/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co:

http://llllllll.co/t/double-quadruple-sextuple-music-disquiet-junto-project-0246/4549

There’s also on a Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Image associated with this project is by Oliver Gouldthorpe and is used thanks to Flicker and a Creative Commons license:

flic.kr/p/sMDxq

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

Latticeworks (disquiet0246)

11. "the squealing of rats and the squeaking of boards" by Marielle V. Jakobsons (aka darwinsbitch)

A remix of Disquiet's Library Drone:
http://soundcloud.com/disquiet/the-library-drone

Library SyFy Drone (20130212-ssu3012)

Sometimes quiet sounds are the most jarring, such as hearing what could be a stream while walking down a particularly cement-lined and tree-less street in a large city. It's a sunny winter Friday in San Francisco, not far from the ocean. There's a strong wind, and passing planes and cars, and yet the sound is there, for certain, the sound of a small stream. Of course, it isn't a stream, not in the general sense. It's a drain, whose holes let the passing water echo above. A struggling bit of microfoliage, tiny weeds making their way to the sunlight, confirm the liquid below. 

Track recorded on my Nexus 4 cell phone using Easy Voice Recorder Pro on Friday, February 22.

The Urban Stream

Every Tuesday at noon the Outdoor Public Warning System (OPWS) rings out around San Francisco. It has two stages. First there is a siren. Second there is a spoken announcement: "This is a test. This is a test of the outdoor warning system. This is only a test." 

As of October 2012, there are 111 speakers set up throughout San Francisco to broadcast the message. The majority have the message in English, but there are 2 in Cantonese and English and 17 in Spanish and English. See the attached image for a map of the OPWS speakers.

Because of the city's famously hilly terrain, as well as the speed at which sound travels, and the apparently inexact timing of the system's triggers, the sirens and announcement can often be heard to overlap, creating an artificial echo effect in addition to the actual echo. Also, because it rings at noon, the sound of the warning often overlays with another form of announcement: the bells of churches and other institutions.

I made this recording on Tuesday, February 26, 2013, in the backyard of my home in the Richmond District of San Francisco. This was an especially clear day. It was made on an H4n, recorded directly to a WAV file. At five of the hour I placed the H4n in the backyard and set it to record. Only after the announcement had fully trailed off and been replaced by the bird song and church bells did I approach the H4n and turn it off. Then I trimmed the length of the recording to focus on the runtime of the OPWS.

More on the OPWS system at the website of the City and County of San Francisco Department of Emergency Management: <a href="http://sfdem.org/index.aspx?page=55">sfdem.org</a>.

Outdoor Public Warning System (San Francisco, CA)

remix of disquiet's sample http://soundcloud.com/disquiet/siren-san-francisco-tuesday

working on a soloed single channel in Alchemy vst.

thanks for the audio 

Sfsiren song [disquiet remix] -alchemy

The waiting room at the doctor's office is self-enclosed. It contains a handful of chairs and is lit by two large windows, their blinds tucked just below a high, generically tiled ceiling. No one else is in the room. A tiny speaker sits on the windowsill, nearly a dozen stories up from the busy city street. The speaker emits barely perceptible music, a tinny whimper of sodden melodicism, as if the Whoville Pops is being overheard. What the speaker itself fails to do service to is further muffled by the incessant drone of the building's ancient HVAC system, and the whole resulting thick ether of white noise is punctuated by the thuddish tic of an unseen clock. 

In the audio recording made on a cellphone, the noise-like elements are greatly emphasized. They are far more prevalent and evident than they had been in person. It is as if the texture of the open road, so uniform when seen through the windshield of a fast-moving car, has been cast in high relief.

Track recorded on my Nexus 4 cell phone using Easy Voice Recorder Pro on Friday, March 1.

<i>(Image via <a href="http://pixabay.com/p-22952/?no_redirect">pixabay.com</a>.)</i>

The Waiting Room

My 33 1/3 series book about the Aphex Twin album <i>Selected Ambient Works Volume II</i> was published in 2014. The book was one of the top 5 bestselling titles for the calendar year, and in 2015 was ranked by Pitchfork as one of the "33 best" of the 100-plus books in the 33 1/3 series. It has subsequently been translated into Japanese (2019) and Spanish (2018)

Since 2012 I have moderated the Disquiet Junto group, which began on SoundCloud. More at disquiet.com/junto. 

I've written for Nature, Pitchfork, The Wire, Down Beat, Boing Boing, NewMusicBox, Red Bull Music Academy, Art Practical, the website of The Atlantic, and many other publications. 

I've exhibited sound art at galleries in Los Angeles (Crewest), Manhattan (apex art), and Dubai (DUTAC), and I had a audio-visual installation at the San Jose Museum of Art as part of its 45th anniversary.

And since 1996 I've run the website Disquiet.com about the intersection of sound, art, and technology.