Disquiet Junto Project 0646: Empty Orchestra

The Assignment: Interpret the literal translation of "karaoke."

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
The cover image for this week's project is a picture of an empty symphony hall with the name and number of the project superimposed

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.

Tracks are added to the SoundCloud playlist for the duration of the project. Additional (non-SoundCloud) tracks also generally appear in the lllllll.co discussion thread.

These following instructions went to the group email list (via juntoletter.disquiet.com). 

Disquiet Junto Project 0646: Empty Orchestra
The Assignment: Interpret the literal translation of “karaoke.”

Step 1: You may or may not be familiar with the literal meaning of the word “karaoke.” The first two syllables are the Japanese word for “empty.” The final two syllables are an abbreviation of the Japanese word for “orchestra.” Consider how the term “empty orchestra” connects with the idea of karaoke.

Step 2: Think about the term “empty orchestra” on its own, apart from its association with karaoke. Come up with a new meaning for it. What kind of genre or musical form would “empty orchestra” be on its own?

Step 3: Record a piece of music exemplifying the ideas that arose to you during Step 2.

Tasks Upon Completion:

Label: Include “disquiet0646” (no spaces/quotes) in the name of your track.

Upload: Post your track to a public account (SoundCloud preferred but by no means required). It’s best to focus on one track, but if you post more than one, clarify which is the “main” rendition.

Share: Post your track and a description/explanation at https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0646-empty-orchestra/

Discuss: Listen to and comment on the other tracks.

Additional Details:

Length: The length is up to you. 

Deadline: Monday, May 20, 2024, 11:59pm (that is: just before midnight) wherever you are.

About: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Newsletter: https://juntoletter.disquiet.com/

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 646th weekly Disquiet Junto project, Empty Orchestra — The Assignment: Interpret the literal translation of “karaoke” — at https://disquiet.com/0646/

The depicted theater in the cover image is the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex in Caracas, Venezuela.

Darren Harper’s Generation Ship

And a new instrument at its heart

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

Darren Harper’s second most recent track on his SoundCloud account dates back a year, so the one that popped up today may be the first in a long time — or he has deleted some others to make room. Either way, “Generative.01~Spring” is a welcome arrival. The 18-minute piece marks a new direction for Harper, who explains, “I’m embarking on a new project series that will focus on long-form generative eurorack pieces.” Powering his pursuit is a relatively new piece of equipment called Generations, which is a generative MID controller. The creator of Generations, who goes by Innesti, has explained that the device “creates the patterns autonomously once the user has configured the starting conditions.” Harper’s track is a slowly evolving collection of tones, such as hushed piano and picked guitar, as well as orchestral swells and deep drones. There are also gentle processes applied to these sounds, resulting in a lovely and cohesive suite.

You can watch an overview of the Generations tool in the following video. The device, currently sold out, first became available at the start of February 2024.

Keeping a Modular Synth Journal

My latest attempt may be a keeper

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

It’s been just shy of 10 years now that I’ve fiddled with a slowly growing, sometimes contracting, and always morphing modular synthesizer. The playing has greatly informed my work interviewing and collaborating with and writing about musicians — and it’s a lot of fun. I know this anniversary is coming up because Marcus Fischer sent me a photo a few days ago from when I gave a talk in Portland, Oregon, at Powell’s Books, an event at which he performed, along with Brumes (aka Desiree Rousseau) and the OO-Ray (aka Ted Laderas). Fischer used a modular synthesizer for his piece, and the next day he took me by the store Control Voltage, tucked off of N. Mississippi Avenue, to look at what felt to me, for the first time, as meaningfully proximate and approachable — and, yes, enticing.

In the intervening years, I’ve regularly failed at one thing in particular in this regard, which is documenting for myself my experiments with the synthesizer. Recently, I’ve come upon a system that works for me. Now, those last two words are the most important ones: “for me.” There are lots of different ways to track one’s work, and what I’m outlining here is just something that I’ve found works for me. For context, I am a big note-taker, but I am not a big written-note-taker. I jot words on paper regularly, but just as loose fodder for typing. I’ve typed for far too long to be a written-journal keeper. Also, I like the opportunities that computer files provide for searchability and cross-linking.

So, what I use is Obsidian, a free cross-platform document-editing tool that works with files in the markdown (.md) format (if it’s not familiar, more here). I format my synth journal documents very much like the one I use for my daily personal journal, though in this case also employing embedded images. (My personal journal is all text, no pictures — though my success with this Obsidian synth journal may feed back, so to speak, and inform my personal journal efforts down the road.) My system is to keep one file per month, with an entry within that file for each day, including a running checklist of next steps to pursue. (There’s also a separate to-do list for longer-term activities.) The approach yields a page that looks like this:

And if you have had success keeping a synth journal, I’d love to know what works for you.

Music for and from the End

A tribute by Loren Chasse

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I’m writing this under the assumption that the “sr” to whom the new Loren Chasse track, “The Sun and the Earth Together,” is dedicated is, in fact, the late musician Steve Roden, as the music is very much in the “lowercase” mode that Roden helped pioneer, and because the years in the accompanying liner note, 1964-2023, align with the span of Roden’s time on the planet, as does the characterization of the final phase of his life (that he was “in a long state of transition before passing on this past fall”). It’s a beautiful tribute to Steve (who was also a friend of mine), the cycling passages of droning tones overlapping and drifting. Nearly 12 minutes long, it takes its time, and asks you to drift along with it.

“The Sun and the Earth Together” was released on the Petit Bardo label (petitbardo.xyz), which has also put out work by Francisco López and Gregory Whitehead, among others. Fitting to the subject at hand, half the label’s earnings from sales go “to end of life care organizations.” The label’s modus operandi is a heavy one: “The artists were asked to create a sound work that can be heard by a person in existential finitude (in a relatively short period of time) or a sound work to be heard while someone dies or a sound work that the artists themselves would like to listen to while they die.”

https://petitbardo.bandcamp.com/album/the-sun-and-the-earth-together

On Repeat

Home/office playlist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ Wodwo is the alias with which Derbyshire novelist Ray Robinson signs his recorded music. Requiem, released earlier this month, is a collection of alternately somber and wistful instrumental works that each seem to emerge from a thick fog.

https://rayrobinson.bandcamp.com/album/requiem

▰ I’m a sucker for music that sounds like it’s melting, music that supplies an illusion that you’ll never hear it again, that each note is disintegrating in real time, such as in this live piece by the London-based musician who goes by Still Fades. (Of course, it doesn’t disappear. You can replay the video as often as you like.)

▰ Tuonela’s “S&S Drone” has the endlessly sawed strings of a Hollywood score, gaining in intensity as it proceeds, eventually becoming like a threatening swarm of insects. It’s both thrilling and frightening.

▰ “シミ” seems to translate as “stain,” and it’s the title of a new track from the tireless Japanese producer Corruption, who is rapidly reaching the 2,000-recording milestone. It feels like a sampled wooden flute sent through an exteme reverb, but there’s a lot more going on it its brief, half-minute length, what sounds like distant voices and pneumatic street work. As always with Corruption, it is enigmatic to the core.