This week's Disquiet Junto prompt was "Make some music using only the online Omnichord as your sound source."  I was vaguely but intimately aware of what an Omnichord was.  I noodled around with https://onlineomnichord.com/ and thought it was neat that typing letters played chords, and then I began experimenting with turning sentences into chord progressions.
I wrote a short poem that tried to be a concise poem and also an interesting sequence of chords. I found myself trying to repeat words and/or segments of letters, which is an interesting way to write.
I recorded the output (putting my phone next to my laptop speaker) and then added some piano accompaniment. I thought about creating a lead sheet for myself of the chords I used, but decided not to .... which may not have been a great decision :D  Finding a melody by ear was tough!
I started out trying to map the chord changes and the piano part to a strict pulse, but decided that having them both somewhat freely was more interesting. Sometimes the piano leads and the chords follow, and sometimes the chords lead.
Disquiet Juntos during the holiday season are a great opportunity to use plug-ins purchase on Black Friday, so I used Nudistort on the piano, and Aberrent DSP's Cataclysm and Lair on the pads.

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More on the 726th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Chord of Omnis — The Assignment: Make music with a browser-based Omnichord as your sole sound source — at https://disquiet.com/0726/.


Nordic Ohm (disquiet0726)

a melody vanishes over time, then rhythm follows suit.

More on the 728th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Note Down — The Assignment: Delete a note at a time — at https://disquiet.com/0728/.

disquiet0728 how to disappear.wav

More on the 728th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Note Down — The Assignment: Delete a note at a time — at https://disquiet.com/0728/.

I am so out of the zone with audio/music/art making so this was like pulling teeth for me. But of course the Vince Guaraldi Trio's A Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack has been filling me with that melancholy/haunted Christmas feeling I find so cozy. I decided to play a loose rendition of the melody to Christmas Time Is Here over a slightly off-kilter chord layer. I didn't change anything about the chord layer to match the missing notes as they fell away so the timing and the dissonance get more chaotic. And then bells. Bells at the end because that's the only way you know it's Christmas music. 

Christmas time is here and gone (disquiet0728)

I found myself in an office supply store after dark, dark coming early this time of year, mid-December. The plan was to purchase some take-out Chinese food around the corner for dinner, but first came this errand. I wandered the aisles, items large and small on shelves that occasionally flirted with the emptiness one might associate with bankruptcy. A palpable emptiness defined the place, a single floor taking up a substantial portion of a city block, yet nearly devoid of people. There were two other customers: one on his phone, the other standing in a corner saying "hello" repeatedly in hopes of earning the attention of the two present employees, one of whom was stationed at the register, the other also wandering the aisles. At times the five of us were spread out as if we had claimed some portion of the known territory as our own. The customer who wasn’t saying “hello” was on his phone narrating his day to someone else, what seemed to be a close friend. This customer apologized to the friend for having been “irrespective” of his interlocutor’s recent emails. I wandered over to what I came to understand was my corner of the store, from which I could barely hear the repeated hellos or the phone conversation, and in that emptiness a sound caught my ear — two sounds, in fact: a pair of repetitive clicks. I drew closer to several rows of hanging backpacks, all connected by lengthy cabling, and each affixed by a plastic alarm. I came to understand that this clicking was somehow the result of the shoplifting-prevention system. The clicks circumnavigated the modest gallery of backpacks, the pair of them running at ever so slightly different speeds, so they came in and out of phase with each other. In the background, amid the muffled sound of traffic and the rumble of the HVAC, you can just make out people talking, and as well as the sharp ping of a distant cash register.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro using the standard Voice Memos app.

Retail Phase

It hasn’t rained in ages, and then overnight the modest tides of the colloquial atmospheric river shifted, and drops began to accumulate on the ground. Around 3:45am, I wasn’t sleeping well, which is unusual for me. In retrospect, the rain must have begun, the unfamiliar nocturnal noises registering louder than they actually were. Likewise, after I woke, I wasn’t yet aware rain had fallen or, for that matter, continued to fall. Strange little plinks and pops registered as background texture, disparate as stray thoughts, until I raised a window blind and saw the gentle precipitation. The street in particular sounds different during the rain. Cars creep along like footsteps on Saran wrap, and they are more likely than generally to obey the nearby four-way stop sign. Far less chatter passes by, as morning walkers stay home, perhaps hoping for a respite later in the day. This goes as well for rattling skateboards and chiming bicycles. There is a squish and crunch and a mushy whir to the city when it is waking to the rain. This is what it sounds like, through the living room window, which overlooks the street from the second floor.

Recorded in San Francisco's Richmond District at 8:42am on Wednesday, December 17, 2025.

Play Misty

Early this morning, right when doing so became legal according to local noise ordinance standards, construction began down the block, by “down the block” meaning what was being attacked by a small army of workers was the entire next block and then continuing around its far corner and down the subsequent hill. The rattling was constant, like the world’s largest coffee grinder on a coarse setting. I set about recording the goings-on, but too many other morning noises conflicted. I set down my phone and got to work. The phone and I were eventually drawn back to the window by the sort of beeping that signals a vehicle is backing up. Each time this bulbous alert sounded, everything else quieted down: traffic, footsteps, construction clatter. It was real-world sidechain, in which the relative seeming volume of one set of sounds seemed to drop in inverse correlation with the rise of another sound, in this case the warning beeps. I never did manage to get a good recording of the rattle caused by all the hammering and digging, but if there is anything I am confident of, it is that this morning will not have been the last of that.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 9:20am on Thursday, December 19. 2026.

Block Chain

The drone and click and whir and rattle of the devices that populate home often recede into the background — at least until the machines emitting those sounds break. When they break, the rupture in service is evidenced by a change in tonality. Drone becomes whine, click becomes clatter, and whir becomes squeal. Until then, the sounds attain a level of familiarity that verges on the audible realm’s equivalent of near invisibility. In many cases, the sounds are not merely sounds, but hints at sounds, ventures toward sound. The noise of a dishwasher midway through a cycle hints at the internal oceanic turbulence. Same goes for a dryer and for a refrigerator. I wondered what our refrigerator sounds like from the inside, so I set my phone to record, put it on a shelf between some milk and hummus, and closed the door. The result, the fridge's internal monologue, feels like something in motion, like a long, slow conveyor belt going off into the distance. If you set this file to loop, the seam created when it repeats will display just how much higher the tone is at the end of the recording than at the beginning. This snippet is just a part of a longer recording, during which the pitch shifting is even more varied. The inner life of the refrigerator is, indeed, more compelling than might be suggested by the light drone one hears through walls from several rooms away.

Recorded on an iPhone 17 Pro at 7:57am on Friday, December 19, 2026, in San Francisco’s Richmond District.

Internal Monologue

By John G. Cramer, University of Washington: https://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/BBSound.html

Related story: http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/1857/11/a-brief-history-of-noise/422481/

Frequency Spectrum From the Big Bang (WMAP Satellite Data)

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Frequency Spectrum From the Big Bang (WMAP Satellite Data)

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