More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

Disquiet Junto Project 0167: Placid Cell

Another year went by....and Bassel is still incarcerated - !!
Well I composed a track a year ago, and wanted to give this one a go as well. I live in a rural area so the quietest room in my house is almost anechoic... So I recorded my kids walk-in closet were you can hear a little of the outside world. But mostly I got noise from gaining my recorder way up...so I went with that - I took the recording,  ran it through Ambient V_03 and modulated the amplitude to get the washing of waves on a beach.... a little reverb and it felt soothing to me....Enjoy


Disquiet Junto Project 0167: Placid Cell
Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing.

This project is the second time that the Junto gathered its resources to pay tribute to the wrongfully imprisoned Creative Commons advocate and coder Bassel. Sunday, March 15, marks the third anniversary of Bassel’s incarceration in Syria.

In Bassel’s honor, this week we’ll make music by taking the loneliness of a small, closed room and making something beautiful and soothing from it.

Step 1: Go into the quietest room in your home and record the room’s tone. Also record the sound of the door being closed.

Step 2: Locate in that track a suitably quiet 10 consecutive seconds. Also locate the moment when the door is closed.

Step 3: Locate in those 10 seconds a handful of signature sonic events, moments, however small or subtle, that stand out from the general silence.

Step 4: Create an original composition that begins with the door being closed, proceeds through the 10 unadulterated seconds of room tone, and after which samples of those sonic events from Step 3 are transformed into something soothing. This being a project about isolation, you cannot add any external sound elements.

Step 5: Upload the combination of your accompaniment and the foundational track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, March 12, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 16, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work should be roughly between two and five minutes.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and 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. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0167-freebassel” 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 include this information:

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

- end -


“disquiet0167-freebassel” going to the beach

Free Bassel ! 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/San_Francisco/FreeBassel_Day_2015

I mainly used EQ, tremolo, reverb, and a little soundtoy crystalizer ..
------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disquiet Junto Project 0167: Placid Cell
Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing.

This project is the second time that the Junto gathered its resources to pay tribute to the wrongfully imprisoned Creative Commons advocate and coder Bassel. Sunday, March 15, marks the third anniversary of Bassel’s incarceration in Syria.

In Bassel’s honor, this week we’ll make music by taking the loneliness of a small, closed room and making something beautiful and soothing from it.

Step 1: Go into the quietest room in your home and record the room’s tone. Also record the sound of the door being closed.

Step 2: Locate in that track a suitably quiet 10 consecutive seconds. Also locate the moment when the door is closed.

Step 3: Locate in those 10 seconds a handful of signature sonic events, moments, however small or subtle, that stand out from the general silence.

Step 4: Create an original composition that begins with the door being closed, proceeds through the 10 unadulterated seconds of room tone, and after which samples of those sonic events from Step 3 are transformed into something soothing. This being a project about isolation, you cannot add any external sound elements.

Step 5: Upload the combination of your accompaniment and the foundational track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, March 12, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 16, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work should be roughly between two and five minutes.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and 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. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0167-freebassel” 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 include this information:

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto


FreeBassel Day 2015 [disquiet0167-freebassel]

This is the inside of my bathroom, recorded on a Tascam DR-07 mkII. I edited the audio in ProTools 11. You can hear some cat sounds if you listen up!


More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

disquiet.com/forums/

Placid Cell - [disquiet0167-freebassel]

created March 2015
@ dead_shrine

paulstretch/Ableton

------------------------
-------------
-----

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/


for_bassel(2015)[disquiet0167-freebassel]

The first 2 seconds you hear my bathroom's door closing.
The next 10 seconds you hear the silence in my bathroom.
Then a heartbeat evolves, made of a reflection of the closing door.
The chords, the lead melody and the bass sound are all made using the same microsound, a very short loop near the end of the silent part.
A shaker-like sound is made out of some noise, maybe my breath because I was in the room during the recording.
I used Bitwig's sampler, a lot of filters, some delays and Verberate for the plate-hall.
It took me about 2 hours to get the whole track done.
So I hope you enjoy it.

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:
disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/
More on Bassel Khartabil at:
http://freebassel.org/
More on the Disquiet Junto at:
disquiet.com/junto
Join the Disquiet Junto at:
soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/
Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:
disquiet.com/forums/

Bathroom Lullaby [disquiet0167-freebassel]

**Production Notes**

The most quiet room in our flat is a tiny walk-in wardrobe. I was just recording the sound of the door closing, when my daugher, which played Skyrim in the living room, cursed in frustration. 

I isolated that bit and mangled it with Ambient V_03 for a steady pulse. This treatment went into Reaktors Molekular-Effect-Plugin, which turns noises into sine waves. That’s where I got all the tonal bits from. 

Compressed, added a a bit of RC 48 Reverb... and that‘s not all....

... I really hope they free Bassel Kathabir. 

* * *

**Disquiet Junto Project 0167: Placid Cell**


Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing.

￼This project is the second time that the Junto gathered its resources to pay tribute to the wrongfully imprisoned Creative Commons advocate and coder Bassel. Sunday, March 15, marks the third anniversary of Bassel’s incarceration in Syria.

In Bassel’s honor, this week we’ll make music by taking the loneliness of a small, closed room and making something beautiful and soothing from it.

Step 1: Go into the quietest room in your home and record the room’s tone. Also record the sound of the door being closed.

Step 2: Locate in that track a suitably quiet 10 consecutive seconds. Also locate the moment when the door is closed.

Step 3: Locate in those 10 seconds a handful of signature sonic events, moments, however small or subtle, that stand out from the general silence.

Step 4: Create an original composition that begins with the door being closed, proceeds through the 10 unadulterated seconds of room tone, and after which samples of those sonic events from Step 3 are transformed into something soothing. This being a project about isolation, you cannot add any external sound elements.

Step 5: Upload the combination of your accompaniment and the foundational track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Length: The length of your finished work should be roughly between two and five minutes.

(...) 

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:
http://freebassel.org/

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

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

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

- end -

Thoughts [disquiet0167-freebassel]

See http://bassling.blogspot.com/2015/03/disquiet-junto-0167-free-bassel.html for track discussion and video.

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:
http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:
http://freebassel.org/

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

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

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

In A Silent Room [disquiet0167-freebassel]

This is my first published attempt at being a part of the Disquiet Junto project.

March 15th is the third anniversary of the imprisonment of Bassel Khartabil[0]. Marc's request was "to mark the third anniversary of his imprisonment, we’re imaging placid sounds emanating from solitude".

All the sounds were recorded in a carpeted room, using a Zoom H1, and the track was built with Audacity and Ableton Live. The original photo of Bassel used for the artwork was taken by Joi Ito[1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bassel_Khartabil
[1]: http://www.flickr.com/photos/joi/4670781482

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

A door being closed [disquiet0167-freebassel]

The easy part : the quietest room has all but the loudest door.
The hard part : working flat face down on the noise floor...

This may be a case where what I find adequately soothing is a little unnerving to others - hope not!

Nothing elaborate here outside the actual project description; mined the quiet sample period for harmonic content; pitched, concentrated and sequenced what I found.

-----------------------------------------------------

Disquiet Junto Project 0167: Placid Cell
Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing.

This project is the second time that the Junto gathered its resources to pay tribute to the wrongfully imprisoned Creative Commons advocate and coder Bassel. Sunday, March 15, marks the third anniversary of Bassel’s incarceration in Syria.

In Bassel’s honor, this week we’ll make music by taking the loneliness of a small, closed room and making something beautiful and soothing from it.

Step 1: Go into the quietest room in your home and record the room’s tone. Also record the sound of the door being closed.

Step 2: Locate in that track a suitably quiet 10 consecutive seconds. Also locate the moment when the door is closed.

Step 3: Locate in those 10 seconds a handful of signature sonic events, moments, however small or subtle, that stand out from the general silence.

Step 4: Create an original composition that begins with the door being closed, proceeds through the 10 unadulterated seconds of room tone, and after which samples of those sonic events from Step 3 are transformed into something soothing. This being a project about isolation, you cannot add any external sound elements.

Step 5: Upload the combination of your accompaniment and the foundational track to the Disquiet Junto group on SoundCloud.

Step 6: Then listen to and comment on tracks uploaded by your fellow Disquiet Junto participants.

Deadline: This assignment was made in the evening, California time, on Thursday, March 12, 2015, with a deadline of 11:59pm wherever you are on Monday, March 16, 2015.

Length: The length of your finished work should be roughly between two and five minutes.

Upload: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud, only upload one track for this assignment, and 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. Photos, video, and lists of equipment are always appreciated.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0167-freebassel” 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 include this information:

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Two Point Four Square Meters [Disquiet Junto Project 0167: Placid Cell]

The quietest room in my flat is my bedroom; a small room at the end of the hall, filled - say two-thirds up - with, like, the second cheapest bed Ikea sold ten years ago, whatever that's called.

I set the recorder going before shutting the door and then sat on the edge of the bed whilst Alex lay reading. It was nigh-on silent, to the point that i thought about how bad my tinnitus could be said to be, and whether even that's what i could *hear*. I thought about the warm comfort of the room i was in and how it can be assumed to contrast with wherever Bassel Khartabil is obliged to remain. I thought about what to do with this silence which is as good as any afforded by my relatively cheap recorder. I thought about how it wasn't that great a silence; remembered the pleasing, amusing list of silent records in Craig Dworkin's No Medium; i even did my best to be blank, to think nothing, to do something like contemplate what it's like to be held prisoner...

To make the actual track i looped and tweaked various sections - the tens seconds immediately following the door's closing is repeated adn you can hear a dull click which is probably the door or possibly a button on my jeans hitting the edge of the bed repeated through much of the track; i slowed a section of the ten seconds down and these two percussive events begin to suggest something like a clock or clocks. Other sections of more pure silence were stretched and dragged and panned and sort of... suggest their presence in either left or right channel at various points in the track.

It's a clumsy, cheap and over-worked 'silence' and i can't imagine it truly soothing but it is also is an accurate picture of my inarticulacy in the face of the wider world and a literally mute but otherwise earnest plea for freedom for everybody held unjustly and against their will and wish for something peacable and calm in the hearts of everybody everywhere.

Linking: When posting the track, please be sure to include this information:

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

a number of the same quiet room [disquiet0167-freebassel]

Recording of an empty room in my house - the siren was completely unexpected.  Processed with PaulStretch, Mangle, Transverb, and Quadrant.  Melodies courtesy of MbiraGen.  Tracked and mixed in StudioOne.

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

More on Bassel Khartabil at:

http://freebassel.org/

More on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://disquiet.com/junto

Join the Disquiet Junto at:

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

Disquiet Junto general discussion takes place at:

http://disquiet.com/forums/

unexpected [disquiet0167-freebassel]

Ten seconds of original sound then transition into isolation. Footsteps, doors closing, quiet water, dark breaths, time.


disquiet0167-freebassel

More on this 167th Disquiet Junto project — “Marking the 3rd anniversary of Bassel Khartabil’s incarceration, turn the silence of a room into something soothing” — at:

http://disquiet.com/2015/03/12/disquiet0167-freebassel/

Free Bassel

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.