The Disquiet Junto project for this week assigned us an excerpt of a geological/topographical map of the San Andreas fault line. Mine is below: There were many map excerpts, but this one was mine. I started out with no real idea as to how to approach this, but soon found myself making a detailed markup […]
This week’s Disquiet Junto project had us downloading four sound sources from freesound.org, one for each of the classical elements (earth, air, fire and water). I used Audiomulch for this one, along with a couple of the Korg Legacy Collection VST plugins (specifically, the filter bank section of an emulated Korg M-20 –which I find […]
This week’s Disquiet Junto had us remix three Creative Commons pieces to create a new one. Did this with Ableton Live, and the (to me) new Novation Zero SL mkII (still using the Korg nanoKey to trigger clips, though).
Last week’s Disquiet had us perform another set of random processes to determine which Line from which Book of this translation of The Odyssey (well, technically Ulysses… this version uses the Roman names). We were then to use speech synthesis and processing to render the line we had chosen: This is from Book 7, Line […]
For the first handful of years to my life, Patriot’s Day just happened to be the Monday of April vacation week (most Massachusetts schoolchildren have this week off, and most businesses are closed today as well). There was a Marathon or something, it was a Boston thing, it was all over the local news. It […]
Given the essential sadness of the 66th Junto Project, I’ll just point to that; and to the 65th.
I’ve been playing around with Audiomulch for a couple of months now, to the point where it has managed to replace my aging copy of Ableton Live (v5.2.2… get off my lawn!!!) as my go-to environment for electronic noodling. I like the ‘level’ Audiomulch inhabits– it’s not the ubiquitous high-level, strip-chart style DAW– it’s not […]
Between dayjob demands and dealing with a seemingly non-ending stream of weekly blizzards, I’ve been lax at updating. Here’s the last two Disquiet Junto projects I participated in. Last week, everyone built a piece using three sine waves as the building blocks: And this past weekend, folks were asked to use a source track (Italian […]
After yesterday’s rant on the Great Inevitable Future of Work, I stumble onto this article in WiReD about ‘Indie Capitalism’. This article, itself, quotes another article in Businessweek on the same subject– arguably a more mainstream/non-techie publication, which indicates that the idea has ‘arrived’, I suppose. So, ‘Indie Capitalism’ now has a name. Which means […]
Just wanted to make note of an interesting article by sci-fi author Damien Walter in aeon magazine about the possibility of a ‘creative culture’ arising in the near future, as the natural result of increased automation and our current, inexorable shift towards a pure-knowledge economy. The article falls in line with current thoughts and assumptions […]
I had started last week’s disquiet project, but then nature intervened with three feet of snow. That said, this week’s project had us using our own voices for raw material. This worried me (singing is not exactly my forté), plus I intentionally forced myself to use Audiomulch, which I barely know, as part of the […]
SOTU is in a half hour or so. To my mind, this is when the second Obama Administration begins (everything since the election –Hagel, Brennan, drone memos, the fiscal cliff– has just been the usual noise and aftermath, at this scale). That just seems to be part of the national rhythm. Between that, and exhaustion, […]
Disquiet #0057 had us working with voice samples from three languages. Pick four words from each, and do something with the twelve. The full set is posted here. In other news: Laurie Anderson interviews Brian Eno in this article. And some Boston organization I’ve never heard of before is asking for funding to have another […]
This was last week’s Disquiet, I wanted to post it here before I forgot (busy week): Process details are over there, no need to repeat them here. Used a simple drawing tablet as a ‘controller’ (ie pen) for Live. The pen doesn’t work well at all for adjusting volume/effect/etc controls, but those are already mapped […]
Haven’t had much time to write on here. I had to skip last week’s Junto, but managed this week’s (even with Arisia over the weekend). This week’s exercise (disquiet0055-twoscrews) had us rework two pieces (Do and Re) from Nils Frahm’s Screws: Done with Ableton Live (yes, still stuck back in 5.2.2) and Audacity. Project details […]
This week’s Disquiet exercise: More fun with Ableton Live.
My second attempt at a Disquiet Junto project. I had to sit out last week’s junto as that called for a ‘musical diary’ using work from throughout the year, and I’ve only been doing this again since June. Embarrassing, that. Fortunately, there’s no pressure, so I’ll just do it as I can. So, for this […]
I’d been lurking (and listening) to the Disquiet Junto group over at SoundCloud for a few weeks, and finally grew the stones to post something: This week’s assignment had us generating a core rhythm using an arbitrary phrase, put into Morse code, and then building on that. The bar’s pretty high over there, but I […]
…another shooting. This one at a school in Connecticut. Twenty young kids, dead. Even the President, himself with kids in school, tears up a little as he talks about it. I have nothing to add or say that hasn’t been added or said. I just want to remember that (at this time, anyway) the Consensus […]
From this article in The Quietus: Modern pop music began as the ultimate expression of democratic populism in the post-war years, but it is now some way into its decadent, baronial phase. When things have become so damnably hierarchical, it’s no wonder there hasn’t been a society-wide countercultural upsurge in years. We haven’t been getting […]
Uploaded two more drafts to the soundcloud site, minor remixes from the 2002 material: industry and comes pale horse. This one is built on some AM radio samples. Mostly random news/talk radio late one night in the Christmas season, whatever sounds I happened to slew by as I moved the radio dial back and forth […]
An old piece from 2002, remixed.
…to the day, I just realized. Obama and the Quants won. Now we’re four-weeks deep into the ambiguous aftermath, headed towards what has been billed as the ‘fiscal cliff’, a time bomb strapped to economy by the lame-duck Congress of 2010. No one can agree what that means, exactly. All seem to agree that it […]
Almost everybody is exhausted, and just wants it the hell over with. Even a lot of people who wouldn’t normally care about such things. The Quants like Nate Silver and the rest say that Obama’s a statistical lock. The Reality-Creators have already coronated their next Reagan, and are eager for the 1980s to return. Most […]
The wind had died down by morning. There were leaves and large branches strewn everywhere, as you’d expect. Also more than a few asphalt roof shingles scattered all over the street and sidewalk. I did my best to look around and color-match them to the roofs around me, and more than I liked looked like […]
So there’s a hurricane post-tropical cyclone going on outside. First high tide was about noon, the harbor looked like this. Too soon to say, but it’s looking like this area’s main issue will be the wind. Basically an October Nor’easter, like 1991. Or a February storm without the snow. I was worried about storm surges […]
Watching the pre-game chatter on CNN. It’s the sound of Middle America, gazing up its own ass, remarking upon what it finds there in wonder and amazement. I described at the old place about how, all at once, everyone just Decided to Pretend. This is what it felt like.
Found this recently, for $2. Scratched but listenable. I don’t seem to hear or read much about twelve-tone music anymore. Or about the late-classical era at all. It just sort of melted into the underpinnings of pop culture, much as the old Roman Empire just sort of melted into the Catholic Church. Yes, I am […]
So Biden did, indeed, win the debate as only he could have. Triumph and rejoicing in many circles, though he apparently laughed and grinned more than allowed for a Democratic VP during a debate. Accusations that the tea-totaling Biden was ‘drunk’, or ‘losing control’ were the GOP spin of the day today. Offensive, frankly: You […]
Just realized that I pick up exactly where I left off at the old place. Symmetry is always an omen. We’ve built up these debates to the level of gladiatorial combat. It must have started with the Republican primary debates. The energy (and expectations) built up there carried over to this current cycle of cross-party […]
no peanuts in church... 