More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Image associated with this project is by Anthony Easton and it is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/2U3Zr8

Disquiet Junto Project 0231: Field Complement

I guess Marc wants us all to break our piggy banks and buy some field recording gear. I mean that's good, some of my best friends are field recorders. I used this crowd noise from freesound 189821__blaukreuz__goal. I chose it because it definitely had some different things going on, even a little James Brown. I trimmed it to a minute. I made notes of when the crowd comes in for the goal and some of the cheering spikes. I chose the Auturia B-3 organ cause it goes well with sports cheers here in America even though this took place in Germany. I had to use the stop watch on my cell phone because my keyboard doesn't face the screen. I just played with my organ watching the the time. I knew I wouldn't sync exactly but I wanted to match the mood and the end part ended up syncing well. I like this idea very much cause there is no way to sync to everything as our memories are not stopwatches but ghosts.
More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Image associated with this project is by Anthony Easton and it is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/2U3Zr8

Goal! (disquiet0231)

See http://bassling.blogspot.com/2016/06/disquiet-junto-0231-field-complement.html for track discussion and video.

More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at:
http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:
http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:
http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:
http://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
http://disquiet.com/forums/

Rainy Day [disquiet0231]

The hardest part of this project for me was finding a good place to make a field recording! I tried a number of places near where I live, but found myself searching for quieter and quieter places, just so that there were few enough sounds going on that I could pay proper attention to them. I experimented with a number of methods for notetaking during the recording, but settled on simply jotting a few indicators of sounds as they came to my attention against a series of time markers on graph paper.

One thing I decided fairly early on was that I wanted one element of the composed part of the track to be a spoken text describing sounds happening on the field recording. I wrote these out on a sheet of paper against a column of ten-second intervals and got my wife (who had not been present at the making of nor heard the field recording) to read it out a couple of times. By doing this I created a disconnect between actual events, my notating of them, my recolection of them, and their recounting, so that events and thier description don't necessarily coincide. The three cello tracks are to varying degrees reflections of the sounds in the recording and my response to them.

More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Image associated with this project is by Anthony Easton and it is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/2U3Zr8

On Federation Road [Disquiet0231]

Here is an experiment utilizing a one minute field recording of the Silver Beach Carousel in Saint Joseph Michigan:

http://www.silverbeachcarousel.com/

I made the field recording after listening to the ebb and flow of the space near the shore of Lake Michigan for several minutes. An earlier recording featured just the carousel music with no announcements and I found that a bit same-y over the length of the recording. This one, with the announcer reminding the patrons to stay seated until the ride came to a stop had a bit more variety so I chose to work with it. 

The instructions for this Disquiet Junto found me frantically trying to scribble some meaningful notations about what I was hearing whilst recording. I broke this part down by writing the numbers 5 to 60 in increments of five. This broke my minute into five second intervals and I noted things happening in the recording like "annoucement," "organ music,"  "vocal whoops," and "seated." 

Then, when I returned home, I set out to complete the compositional element of this Junto. I fired up the Oberheim and fed a variety of CVs from it into the Elements. I settled on a bell-ish/drum-ish sort of sound and tried to imitate the sounds and patterns that I recalled while looking at my field notes for timing information. 

I then combined the two sources in Ableton, trimmed to precisely one minute, and uploaded the results to soundcloud where I then first listened to the results after working partially blind/deaf through this. Neat!

More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Video

Field Complement (Giddy Giddy Carousel Outing)[disquiet0231]

nicely serendipitous this; i was recording the birds outside for a minute for last weeks naviar haiku and i happened upon an fx chain that really closely approximates a bird call the other day (eg. https://sevenism.bandcamp.com/track/jungle-thrush)
thought about re-using the recording but then was away this weekend in the stereotypical bucolic english countryside (Somerset) and the birds were going mad and there was a bee buzzing around.
hopefully it's quite difficult to tell the difference between the digital birds and the carbon-based ones

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Disquiet Junto Project 0231: Field Complement
The Assignment: Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound.

This week’s project’s theme involves how composing relates to memory. It is recommended that you read through all the steps in the project before proceeding to attempt to execute it.

These are the steps:

Step 1: Find a place, preferably outdoors, where you can sit for 5 to 15 minutes without being disturbed. This place should have a fair amount of inherent noise to it, and that noise should be variable, not static — i.e., not the long held drone of an overwhelmingly loud HVAC system, but the bustle of a street corner, or of a playground, or, if weather or other circumstances keep you indoors, perhaps of a busy cafe.

Step 2: Bring with you a portable recording device as well as something on which you can quietly take a small number of written (or typed) notes. You may wish to do a test recording to be certain that your note-taking isn’t part of the audio recording.

Step 3: Settle into the space and get a sense of its sounds. Listening closely.

Step 4: Make a field recording of one full minute, or a little longer, of continuous sound in this place. While recording the sound, use time codes to make note of any memorable sonic instances. Keep track not only of when a sonic instance begins, but also of its duration.

Step 5: Trim the field recording to exactly 60 seconds.

Step 6: Without listening back to the field recording, compose and record a 60-second piece intended to complement it. Refer back to your time-code notes to align composed instances with those real-world instances that you recall having distinguished your field recording. You can use whatever instrumentation you like, but it is recommended that you use no more than one or two instruments. You should not employ any field recordings in your composed piece. Sonically, the “composed” material should be distinct from the field audio.

Step 7: When your composed piece is completed, layer the two tracks together into one new 60-second work. They should be played back at equal volume, more or less. You can adjust a little to achieve the impression of balance between the field recording and the composed work. The only editing you can do is to fade in and out, if that is so desired.

Step 8: Upload your completed track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 9: Annotate your track with a brief explanation of your approach and process.

Step 10: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here:

tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

disquiet.com/forums/

somer morn (disquiet0231)

Like most suburban areas bordering on rural, my neighborhood is not lacking in wildlife.  One thing I can count on every morning is a seemingly endless variety of birdsong.  I recorded 60 seconds of my neighborhood birds.  As I listened to the recording, I started to notice a natural rhythm in the call and response of the different early morning songs.  I programmed a patch in Absynth that followed this perceived rhythm, then placed it alongside the recording of the birds.

5:30 AM {Disquiet 0231}

Ride your bike to your favorite spot by the Wisła on Sunday morning, sit sweating in the sun, take some water. There are a few birds flying low, some flies, and many clover mites (first time noticing those). Take your phone out and make the recording, a little over a minute. Just stay quiet, remember some notes to type in after the recording is done: birds, tiny red ant things, passing cyclists discussing some election. That’s it for sound, really: why this is your favorite river spot.

Go home, hydrate, eat some pizza. Watch an episode of "Bloodline." No composition ideas come to mind. But you remember another field recording you made about two years prior, at a spot further down the river to which you rode on a bike you no longer have. This recording was also mostly birds and insects, but you made it while walking your bike through the grass. Could the sound of the bike wheel spinning run in parallel to the bird sounds you just recorded?

Throw that old sample into Ableton’s Granulator: this is the instrument with which you compose against the memory of the field recording made that morning. Add resonator, delay, chorus, EQ, compression.

Two samples, two memories. The passing cyclists were discussing Poland’s “partially free election” of June 4, 1989, the anniversary of which was just marked with a huge anti-government protest march in Warsaw. Many more memories at play there.

---

More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Częściowo Wolne Wybory = Elective Affinity (disquiet0231 Field Complement)

Disquiet Junto Project 0231: Field Complement
The Assignment: Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound.


The field recording is a group of children at a local beach with occasional sounds of wind and traffic. I derived the timing notes back in my studio by putting the audio into Audacity and noting the time and shape of some particularly loud utterences as well as a car passing by.  

The composed piece is a tone recorded on a reel to reel tape recorder. I moved the tape by hand back and forth across the playback head while referring to the notes trying to catch specific moments and shapes and adding a bit of improvisation in between (sort of a human voltage follower). Some came out well, some not at all. The output of the recorder went through a voltage controlled delay modulated with a stepped random voltage that roughly grainularizes the sound. I aligned the tracks so the composed piece follows a bit behind the field recording. Sounds like electronic seagulls.

Equipment employed: iPad (for field recording), Ampex 601 tape deck, voltage controlled delay (Ray Wilson design), Wogglebug (for random, stepped modulation). Assembled in Audacity. 

Creative Commons license granted.

More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at: http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: http://disquiet.com/junto/

Field Complement [disquiet0231]

Initially, I had aimed to use a recording of a busy cafe complete with rhythmic music in the background. However, I was struck by the simplicity and true happiness I felt while sitting in a park with my two friends. I decided the present soundscape of the park would act as my field recording that I would use in this week's project. On the technical side, I used a sine wave track put together by a Triple Oscillator in Linux Music Making Software. 

_____________________________________

More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Image associated with this project is by Anthony Easton and it is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/2U3Zr8

Strawberry Street Park - Disquiet 0231

A little late on this one, but I love the idea, so I had to do it.  This assignment was to create a one-minute field recording, jot down at what time significant sounds happened, and then create a piece of music working from just your notes.  The final step is to layer your field recording back in so that you can hear the original sounds that inspired your interpretation.

On a very busy Monday I ducked into a Starbuck's and recorded exactly one minute of audio and wrote down at what time various things happened.  I then spent a couple of days creating a short piano piece based on what I wrote down.

I recorded the piece using MIDI, which let me change the sounds later to the synthesizer sounds you hear in this recording.

The hardest part of this process was notating the "significant" events that happened while making my field recording - there was so much background noise, it took some concentration to figure out what would be "significant" in that soundscape.  (In fact, my memory of the sounds that occurred during my recording is significantly different than the actual audio recording!)

I really enjoyed this assignment because it's a blend of two of my favorite music-making projects: G. Douglas Barrett's "A Few Silence [location, date, time of performance] (http://gdouglasbarrett.com/music/A_Few_Silence_score/A_Few_Silence.pdf) and Assignment 1.2.2 from MIT's OpenCourseware class, Composing with Computers  (http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/music-and-theater-arts/21m-361-composing-with-computers-i-electronic-music-composition-spring-2008/assignments/tech_composition/) (for which I made a graphic score of my backyard's soundscape that I translated into tape music) (https://soundcloud.com/triermusic/graphic-score-realization if you're interested!)

More on this 231st weekly Disquiet Junto project — “Compose a piece to align with, from memory, 60 seconds of everyday sound” — at:

http://disquiet.com/0231/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto/

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Subscribe to project announcements here:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Image associated with this project is by Anthony Easton and it is used thanks to a Creative Commons license:

https://flic.kr/p/2U3Zr8

The Branford Starbucks (disquiet0231)

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.