This collage blends 3 sound files, each edited and overlapped at different times:

1) Crackle from an LP record
2) The onset of a hailstorm, turning to rain and fading
3) Birds singing in early morning sunshine

disquiet0479 SonicSplendor vinyl rain birds

This is not a definitive statement of my 2021; my recordings cover only a fraction of the year and the lesser part of my listening--no recorded music! That said, a distinct POV seems to seep through: a west-coast life rich with loving family and friends. A life lived during pandemic and civic unrest. The arc of the year: vaccination...even travel! A college tour of NYC with my daughter. And a dark, quiet fall, the year ending in delicious snow.

0:00 - environs of my friend's new house in Hawaii
0:06 - TV broadcasts from Washington D.C. on January 6
0:40 - my daughter's laughter
0:43 - boiling maple syrup to make maple candy
0:48 - dad-daughter Seahawks time
0:52 - roofers in Seattle's Green Lake neighborhood
1:03 - a train screaming by the Tacoma waterfront where my family and I were walking
1:15 - snow crystals hitting my daughter's jacket during late winter snow
1:26 - woodpeckers at the walls!
1:31 - summer means Porchfest: different streets, different bands. This is Tissue.
1:43 - different daughters, different instruments
1:51 - sighting humpback whales from the secret beach in Tacoma
2:06 - the annual Pride celebration in Davis, CA [local reggae band]
2:17 - 4th of July with family in Maine
2:37 - surf at night, back shore, Chamberlain
2:50 - singing sisters
2:58 - fun with cousins, aunties, and grandmas
3:16 - setting out with neice and daughter for the sun rise (night, lobster boats)
3:23 - dinner outdoors in NYC at Brooklyn Vegan Kitchen
3:29 - with teammates in Oregon for the Hood to Coast relay race
3:35 - Portland, Oregon mid-race
3:59 - a greeting from my sweetheart over:
4:03 - a creek at Meadowdale Beach Park, our winter wonderland on New Year's Eve

Disquiet0522 SonicSplendor 2021 Diary

I wanted something to represent not merely the arrival of light but its cyclical nature: dawn, naturally, but maybe something closer to actual hope. I drew from the layered, mournful sound of a train horn (nighttime connotations) which gives way to bass clarinet ("bright" harmonics) punctuated by chimes to herald the arrival of daylight. A single flute note, always a hopeful and usually a "morning" sound for me, closes the piece. All samples were from others' shared recordings, a fun way to approach sonic tapestry. Assembled in Adobe Audition.

More on the 647th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Day Drone — The Assignment: Make some daylight drones for Drone Day — at https://disquiet.com/0647/

Samples used:

1.

TRAIN FOG HORN LONG WYOMMING by andybrannan -- https://freesound.org/s/145622/ -- License: Attribution NonCommercial 3.0

2.

CircularBreathBassClarinet.wav by HerbertBoland -- https://freesound.org/s/29860/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

3.

finger_cymbal_1 by lwoods-cameron -- https://freesound.org/s/718140/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

4.

Flute - expressive sustain - A6 (LDFlute_expvib_A5_v1_1.wav) by sgossner -- https://freesound.org/s/373304/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

5.

Rheyne Rhodes 3 by rheynemusic -- https://freesound.org/s/417814/ -- License: Creative Commons 0

Disquiet0647 Ring Of Light

Recorded using Zoom H4N, 48/16
Digital amplification and head & tail fades in Adobe Audition
No compression, limiting, or EQ

Identical gain processing (input + mastering) as
https://soundcloud.com/user-896893536/disquiet0436-mikesell-balcony-20200509-5-am

I made two recordings early in the weekend of 8-10 May 2020 in Lake Forest Park, WA, just north of Seattle.

The first and shorter piece was late Friday night/early Saturday at 1 am. My apartment building sits off a normally busy street, Ballinger Way NE, which runs SE/NW between Interstate 5 and the northwest corner of Lake Washington. I'm a mile and a half from the freeway, a mile and a half from the lake.

I describe Ballinger Way as "normally" busy. Since the COVID-19 pandemic it sees noticeably less traffic at most hours of the day. It still gets busy in the mid-morning and -afternoon, but after sunset it's practically dead.

The night and morning of my recordings fell at the cusp of the warmest, most summery weather we've had in an unusually sunny spring. This meant, in my analysis, more motorcycles, and maybe a sea plane off to left near the end of the 5 am piece.

My apartment has a balcony out back, which means any street noise has to find its way around the bulk of my building. And: Instead of a parking lot off my bedroom, I get a lovely view of the trees that buffer my complex and the neighboring houses. 

In the 1 am piece, I was curious to hear just how much "silence" I could capture. While the sounds of vehicles on Ballinger are normal, before I stood for this recording I had never before noticed sounds from the interstate (heard at times on the right), nor had I ever been aware of traffic noise from the comparatively minor Lake City Way (very quiet, way off to the left). There are occasional clicks from the roof contracting after the relative heat of the day.

I chose the night-morning interval between recordings knowing that at 1 am I'd hear no birds and little street traffic. And while I was expecting the cacophony of birdsong we hear at 5 am (actually 5:15-5:30), I was blown away by the accompanying street traffic at 5 o'clock on a Saturday! That, in my assessment, is a direct result of the incredible day we were about to have—to say nothing of people's increasing desire to leave the confines of their homes as Washington State "flattens its curve" and the weather invites frolicking.

Together these from a compact portrait of life at the fringes of the suburban Pacific Northwest, a mini bardo (a transitional state between death and rebirth) within the broader bardo of life during the threat of the novel coronavirus.

disquiet0436 SonicSplendor balcony 20200509 (1 am)

Recorded using Zoom H4N, 48/16
Digital amplification and head & tail fades in Adobe Audition
No compression, limiting, or EQ

Identical gain processing (input + mastering) as
https://soundcloud.com/user-896893536/disquiet0436-mikesell-balcony-20200509-1-am

I made two recordings early in the weekend of 8-10 May 2020 in Lake Forest Park, WA, just north of Seattle.

The first and shorter piece was late Friday night/early Saturday at 1 am. My apartment building sits off a normally busy street, Ballinger Way NE, which runs SE/NW between Interstate 5 and the northwest corner of Lake Washington. I'm a mile and a half from the freeway, a mile and a half from the lake.

I describe Ballinger Way as "normally" busy. Since the COVID-19 pandemic it sees noticeably less traffic at most hours of the day. It still gets busy in the mid-morning and -afternoon, but after sunset it's practically dead.

The night and morning of my recordings fell at the cusp of the warmest, most summery weather we've had in an unusually sunny spring. This meant, in my analysis, more motorcycles, and maybe a sea plane off to left near the end of the 5 am piece.

My apartment has a balcony out back, which means any street noise has to find its way around the bulk of my building. And: Instead of a parking lot off my bedroom, I get a lovely view of the trees that buffer my complex and the neighboring houses. 

In the 1 am piece, I was curious to hear just how much "silence" I could capture. While the sounds of vehicles on Ballinger are normal, before I stood for this recording I had never before noticed sounds from the interstate (heard at times on the right), nor had I ever been aware of traffic noise from the comparatively minor Lake City Way (very quiet, way off to the left). There are occasional clicks from the roof contracting after the relative heat of the day.

I chose the night-morning interval between recordings knowing that at 1 am I'd hear no birds and little street traffic. And while I was expecting the cacophony of birdsong we hear at 5 am (actually 5:15-5:30), I was blown away by the accompanying street traffic at 5 o'clock on a Saturday! That, in my assessment, is a direct result of the incredible day we were about to have—to say nothing of people's increasing desire to leave the confines of their homes as Washington State "flattens its curve" and the weather invites frolicking.

Together these from a compact portrait of life at the fringes of the suburban Pacific Northwest, a mini bardo (a transitional state between death and rebirth) within the broader bardo of life during the threat of the novel coronavirus.

disquiet0436 SonicSplendor balcony 20200509 (5 am)

This is my first audio diary, culled from sources I was delighted to find on hand when I heard about this wonderful project. Pulling together this clip occasioned the 2020 reflecting and tying up that I'd been grasping after!

I'm amazed at how my recordings from January and February seem to reflect a different epoch of civilization. Also, at how vividly the clips of early morning birdsong and summer storms recalled my early months of the pandemic — my claustrophobia, isolation, and pronounced desire to open up the apartment and let the outside in.

Equipment and sources:

	• Zoom H4N recorder (field recordings)
	• iPhone 8+ (videos, Voice Memos)
	• Adobe Audition (editing/post production)

Segments:

0:00 - Night-club performance, downtown Seattle (Jan)
0:11 - Describing the end game in my task to arrange my library (Jan)
0:18 - FRST Inversion Quartet rehearsal (Feb)
0:23 - FRST Inversion Quartet performance (Feb)
0:36 - Espresso pour, of which there were many! (Mar)
0:43 - A daughter documenting our dicey trip home with deck chairs dangling from the car trunk (Mar)
0:49 - Reading the Robinson Jeffers poem "Carmel Point" for my partner (Apr)
0:54 - A daughter shuffling sheet music (Apr)
0:59 - Late-night rain on my deck (May)
1:04 - Morning birdsong from my deck (note the pair of heavy, resonant drips) (May)
1:15 - Different morning, same birds (presumably) (May)
1:26 - On Seattle's Lake Union, marveling at fellow boaters out socializing and playing tunes (Jun)
1:35 - Black Lives Matter rally on Aurora Ave. in Shoreline. Listen for the little girl leading the chant! (Jun)
1:43 - The sound my fridge makes once in a while — a constant refrain during this (I mean that) year at home (Jul)
1:50 - Late-night crow caw (Aug)
1:58 - Filling the espresso basket (Aug)
2:03 - That marvelous first sip of morning brew (Aug)
2:09 - Book and screenplay characters always give low whistles. How low can I whistle? (Aug)
2:16 - Indoor drummer on N. 61st Street, Seattle ("Bullet the Blue Sky"?) (Aug)
2:32 - A daughter practicing flute on a windy late-summer afternoon (Sep)
2:41 - A sea plane flying from or to Lake Washington, a mainstay of NW summers (Sep)
2:47 - Birds and wind as backdrop for a less localized summer song: the sports car, which in 2020 seemed more vociferous than ever (Sep)
3:03 - Thunderclap following an early autumn hail storm (Oct)
3:19 - Parking lot downpour glimpsed from a bedroom window (Nov)
3:26 - A tribute. One among millions, but by and for someone dear to me. (Dec)

SonicSplendor

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