Spreadsheets can be wonderful. The semi-annual Disquiet Junto music community’s “trios” sequence of weekly projects is now well underway. I love seeing how this all takes shape over time. I waited to post an example until a track from project 0747 (in which musicians uploaded solos) yielded two different tracks in project 0748 (in which other musicians turn those solos into duets), and that just happened with Tay Ploops’ “eerie bean (and a one).” (And it’s now three, added below the day after this post first went live.) I love how charting the activity in a spreadsheet provides a means of tracking the evolution of the music, as it all splinters and morphs and recombines.
Solo: Source solo track from 0747:
Duo: A duet built on it — using “three layers of broken hulusi [Chinese woodwind], throat sounds and a bit of low vibration/scraping from a metal object”:
Another duo: And a different duet built on it — “their serenading is accompanied by a chorus of their own voice. Mangled and processed using modular sampler, filter and delay”:
A third duo: “I sat down one morning and simply sang along”:
Next week, in project 0749, this week’s duets will reach conclusion as proper trios. First, though, we have 53 musicians’ solos from last week to embroider and complement. And yes, that means we’ve been doing music projects starting every Thursday for 748 consecutive weeks, since all the way back at the start of January 2012. Details (and a full playlist-in-progress) at disquiet.com/0748.
The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio.
/ By Marc Weidenbaum
Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions.
Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align.
Disquiet Junto Project 0748: And a Two (2/3) The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio.
Please note: While this project is the second of a semi-annual three-part sequence that will unfold over the course of three consecutive weeks, starting last week, you can participate in any or all three of those weekly parts.
There are two versions of the instructions for this week’s project — one very short, the other very long, should clarifications prove useful. (You can do two tracks this week, if you’d like, just be sure to read the longer set of instructions if you elect to.)
. . .
Very short version (about 35 words): Select a track from last week’s project (disquiet.com/0747), pan it to the left, and add your own line to the right, leaving room in the center for someone to eventually turn it into a trio.
. . .
Very long version of the instructions (about 600 words):
Step 1: This week’s Disquiet Junto project is the second in a sequence intended to encourage and reward asynchronous collaboration. This week you’ll be adding music to a pre-existing track, which you will source from last week’s Junto project (disquiet.com/0747). Note that you aren’t creating a duet, precisely — you’re creating the second third of what will eventually be a trio. What that means is: Leave space for what is yet to come.
Step 2: The plan is for you to record a short and original piece of music, on any instrumentation of your choice, as a complement to a pre-existing track. First, you must select the piece of music to which you will be adding your own music. There are tracks by numerous musicians to choose from (over 50 as of last count). There is a full list of them in this read-only spreadsheet:
(Note that it’s possible another track or two will pop up in — and some may disappear from — that playlist and the related discussion on llllllll.co. Things are fluid on the internet.)
To select a track, you can listen through all those and choose one, or simply look around and select, or you can come up with a random approach to sifting through them.
It’s fine if more than one person uses the same original track as the basis for their piece (more on this in Step 5 below).
You’ll note that in the spreadsheet, almost every track has two URLs. The first URL is where the given track appears online, so you can download it and add to it. The second URL is the place on the llllllll.co message board where the project discussion took place. It is strongly encouraged that you look at that discussion link for the track you select, because many of those posts include additional contextual information there, such as BPM, key, and instrumentation.
Step 3: Record a short piece of music, roughly the length of the piece of music you selected in Step 2. Your track should complement the piece from Step 2, and leave room for an eventual third piece of music. When composing and recording your part, don’t alter the original piece of music at all, except to pan the original fully to the left if it hasn’t been panned left already. In your finished audio track, your new part should be panned fully to the right.
To be clear: The track you upload won’t be your piece of music alone; it will be a combination of the track you selected in Step 2 and yours.
Step 4: Also be sure, when done, to make the finished track downloadable, because it will be used by someone else in the third phase of this Junto project series.
Step 5: You can contribute more than one track this week. In normal circumstances, Junto projects have a one-track-per-participant limit. You can do two this time. For the second, it’s appreciated if you try to work with a solo that no one else has used yet. An updated list in maintained in this Google Drive document of what has been utilized:
The goal is for many as people as possible to benefit from the experience of being part of an asynchronous collaboration. That, foremost, is the spirit of this project.
Tasks Upon Completion:
Label: Include “disquiet0748” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.
Upload: A person participating in the Disquiet Junto should post only one or two tracks this week (SoundCloud account preferred but not required). If you feel inspired to post more than two tracks (whether to a single account or across multiple accounts), you should clarify which are the two “main” renditions for consideration by fellow members and (if on SoundCloud) for inclusion in the SoundCloud playlist.
License: It’s preferred (but not required) to set your track as downloadable and allowing for attributed remixing (i.e., an attribution Creative Commons license).
Please Include When Posting Your Track:
More on the 748th weekly Disquiet Junto project, And a Two (2/3) — The Assignment: Record the second third of a trio — disquiet.com/0748.
Another fine 15-minute slice of ambient modular synth from the appropriately named Modular Ambient station/channel/account/ethos/vibe on YouTube, all shimmering tones and light glitch that throbs and pulses, shifts and drifts, in accordance with the lights of various bits of kit. It’s been a while, for whatever reason, since I added a video to my massive YouTube playlist of (currently 225) live ambient performances, but this one made it immediately.
I don’t often go to the movie theater these days, but when there’s a new Steven Soderbergh joint, you can bet I’m gonna do my best. I really dug The Christophers, in no small part due to the director’s renewed collaboration with the excellent composer David Holmes, who also scored Soderbergh’s Black Bag, from last year, but prior to that the two hadn’t worked since 2017’s Lucky Logan. Holmes’ second professional film score was Out of Sight, in 1998, and a few years later he famously set the tone for Ocean’s 11, and returned for the two sequels. The score in The Christophers was particularly prominent, in part because of the numerous sequences that otherwise silently surveyed various artists’ homes and studios. Also prominent: a certain considered debt to Radiohead.
