This project marked the 20th week in a row of the Disquiet Junto. I had wanted for some time to employ an app in the projects, since the mobile app is, in many ways, the definition of creative restraint: each app has its own self-contained set of rules and tools, and they don’t inherently play well with each other all that often. The creators of NodeBeat were generous to provide free download codes for iOS users, and it is also available for Android, Blackberry and, in a more limited rendition, Flash. More on the app at nodebeat.com.

The assignment was made late in the day on Thursday, May 17, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, May 21, as the deadline. View a search return for all the entries: disquiet0020-nodebeat. As of this writing, there are 46 tracks associated with the tag.

These are the instructions that went to the participants:

Deadline: Monday, May 21, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

Each Disquiet Junto project explores the role that restraints can play as a springboard to creativity and productivity. This specific project explores the inherent creative limits of a mobile app. All participants will employ the same app to complete the project.

Everyone working on this project will use two instruments. One of those instruments will be NodeBeat, an app available for iOS (iPhone, Touch, iPad), for Android, for Blackberry, and as a cross-platform (Flash) implementation. The other will be an instrument of the participant’s choice; this second instrument should fall into the broadly defined category of “traditional” — i.e., a keyboard, a guitar, woodwind, percussion, etc. More on NodeBeat at nodebeat.com.

(Please note: the NodeBeat app is not free, but it is inexpensive, between 99 cents and four dollars, depending on which platform you use. Also, there is a free, though more limited, version for desktop/laptop use. And I also have 25 free codes for the iPhone/Touch and 25 for the iPad, available on a semi-first-come basis, weighted a bit for folks who have already participated in a Junto project. Shoot me an email at marc@disquiet.com if you’d like one.)

The project employs three steps:

Step 1: Create a piece of music to your liking in NodeBeat.

Step 2: Record a segment of that music no shorter than 30 seconds and no longer than four minutes.

Step 3: Use that segment as the basis for a track employing one additional instrument.

Additional techniques are certainly allowed, including editing/transformation of the NodeBeat audio and of the second instrument. However, the NodeBeat audio and the second instrument should retain some semblance of recognizability.

Length: Please keep the length of your piece to between two and four minutes.

Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0020-nodebeat” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: As always, you don’t have to set your track for download, but it would be preferable.

Linking: When you post your track, please include this information:

This track employs the app NodeBeat, created by Seth Sandler, Justin Windle, and Laurence Muller. More information on NodeBeat at nodebeat.com.

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

The project also included the instructions translated into Turkish and Spanish respectively by M. Emre Meydan and Norma Listman:

Instructions in Turkish:

Disquiet Junto Projesi 0020: App Beat

Talimatlar:

Son Teslim Tarihi: 21 Mayıs pazartesi, 23:59 (bulundugunuz ulkenin saatine gore)

Her Disquiet Junto projesi, kisitlamalarin yaraticilik ve uretkenlik uzerindeki tetikleyici etkilerini kesfetmeye yoneliktir. Bu seferki proje, bir mobil uygulamanin yaratici limitlerini arastiriyor. Tum katilimcilar ayni uygulamayi kullanacaklar.

Bu proje uzerinde calisan herkes iki enstruman kullanacak. Bunlardan ilki NodeBeat adinda bir uygulama – iOS (iPhone, Touch, iPad), Android, Blackberry, ve platformlar-arasi bir Flash uygulamasi versiyonlari mevcut. Diger enstruman ise katilimcinin sectigi bir enstruman olacak, bu ikinci enstrumanin “geleneksel” diyebilecegimiz bir kategoriden olmasi gerekiyor: klavye, gitar, uflemeli calgi, perkusyon vs gibi. Nodebeat hakkinda daha fazla bilgi icin nodebeat.com.

(Nodebeat uygulamasi ucretsiz degil ama ucuz, hangi platformu kullandiginiza bagli olarak fiyati 99cent ile 4 dolar arasinda degisiyor. Ayrica masaustu/laptop bilgisayarlar icin ucretsiz ama daha kisitli bir versiyonu da mevcut. Elimde 25 adet iPhone/Touch icin, 25 adet de iPad icin ucretsiz kod var, bana ilk ulasanlara bu kodlari dagitacagim, onceki Junto projelerine katilmis olanlara oncelik saglanacak. Eger ilgileniyorsaniz bana mail atin: marc@disquiet.com )

Bu proje uc asamadan olusuyor:

1. Adim: NodeBeat uygulamasinda istediginiz gibi bir muzik yaratin.

2. Adim: Bu muzikten en az 30 saniye, en fazla 4 dakikalik bir bolum kaydedin.

3. Adim: Yaptiginiz bu kaydin uzerine sectiginiz ikinci enstrumani ekleyin.

Elbette ek teknikler kullanabilirsiniz, bunlara NodeBeat’in ya da ikinci enstrumanin sesini degistirmek/donusturmek de dahil. Fakat NodeBeat ve ikinci enstrumanin sesi taninabilir halde kalmali.

Uzunluk: Lutfen yaptiginiz parcanin uzunlugunu 2-4 dakika arasinda tutun.

Bilgi: Lutfen yaptiginiz parcayi paylasirken, bu parcanin planlama, besteleme ve kayit sureci ile ilgili bilgi de verin.

Isim / Tag: Yaptiginiz parcayi Soundcloud.com’daki Disquiet Junto grubuna eklerken, lutfen “disquiet0020-nodebeat” kelimesini hem parcanin isminde, hem de tag olarak kullanin.

Download: Her zamanki gibi; parcanizin indirilebilir olmasi gerekmiyor, ama oyle olmasi tercih edilir.

Linkler: Yaptiginiz parcayi paylasirken, lutfen su bilgiyi ekleyin:

This track employs the app NodeBeat, created by Seth Sandler, Justin Windle, and Laurence Muller. More information on NodeBeat at nodebeat.com.

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

Instructions in Spanish:

Disquiet Junto Proyecto 0020: Aplicación Ritmo

Instrucciones:

Fecha limite: Lunes 21 de Mayo a las 11:59pm del lugar donde te encuentres.

Los proyectos de Disquiet Junto exploran el rol de las restrixiones y como estas son un trampolin hacia la creatividad y la productividad. Este proyecto en particular explora lis limites creativos y los que desemboca una aplicación para telefonos celulares. Todos los participantes deberan usar la misma aplicación.

Todos deberan usar dos instrumentos. Uno de los instrumentos es NodeBeat, una aplicación disponible para iOS (Iphone, Touch o iPad), Andreoides o Blackberrys y para implementar como una plataforma alternativa (Flash). El otro instrumento sera de tu eleccion y debera “caer” dentro de la categiria de tradicional, por ejemplo –guitarra, percucion, piano, etc.

Para mas informacion acerca de NodeBeat ve a nodebeat.com.

Favor de tomar en cuenata que NodeBeat no es gratis, sinembago es muy barato de 99 centavos a 4 dolares, dependiendo de la plataforma que uses. Tambien hay una, pero mal limitada que se gratis para computadoras o laptops. Tambien tengo disponibles 25 codigos gratuitos para iPhone/Touch y 25 mas para iPad, e participado en Disquiet Junto antes y se los dare a los primeros en contactarme (marc@disquiet.com).

Pasos:

1) Crear una pieza musical usando NodeBeat.
2) Graba un segmento de esa pieza de un minimo de 30 segundos y un maximo de 4 minutos.
3) Usa ese segmento como la base para una nueva pieza, pero ahora agregando un instrumento.

Puedes usar tecnicas adicionales como edicion/transformacion del audio en NodeBeat, asi como de el segundo instrumento. Lo unico que te pedimos es que ambas alteraciones deberan retener semejanza a la pieza original.

Duración: Favor de mantener tu pieza de dos a cuatro minutos.

Información: Incluir una descripcion de tu proceso de planeacion, composicion, y grabacion.

Titulo: Porfavor incluye el termino “disquiet0020-nodebeat” en el titulo de tu track cuando lo subas al grupo Disquiet Junto en Soundcloud.com, tambien usalo como tu tag cuando lo quieras busacar.

Descarga: Es preferible que tu mezcla se pueda descargar, pero no es necesario ( es tu decision).

Enlaces: Cuando subas tu track, por favor incluye la siguiente información:

Esta grabacion usa la aplicación NodeBeat, created by Seth Sandler, Justin Windle y Laurence Muller. Para mas informacion ve a nodebeat.com

Mas informacion en Disquiet Junto:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/info

• Make that The 20 Seasons. The first 5 entries are up: http://t.co/lSzme8ob #disquietjunto #
• It makes sense there’s a @daemonnetwork bot, but I’d expect directions not repetition. in reply to daemonnetwork #
• “Location 300 of 9005″: the quasi-sisyphean pagination of the ebook #
• Finally starting reading the third and, sadly, final volume of Mira Grant’s Newsflesh series of zombie novels. #
• Final sentence of form letter I use when replying to music PR: “And yes, this is a form letter, as is most of the PR I receive.” #
• Café cashier probably didn’t know my sonic predilections before he asked me this riddle. Q: What gets broken when you speak? A: The silence. #
• In the future we will spell *spoilers* with asterisks, just like the name of Sarah Jessica Parker’s character in LA Story. #
• The @soundcloud podcast about Disquiet projects — Junto, Instagr/am/bient, LX(RMX) — has passed 15,000 listens: http://t.co/m6zfyHoE #
• Not a speaker. (But some sort of infrastructure exhalation was audible.) http://t.co/w40jXJHD #
• Catching up on Person of Interest. Digging how “room tone” plays central role in the episode titled “The Fix.” #

• The neighbor’s wind chime does an impressive impression of an ice cream truck when the wind off the ocean is strong. #
• Instructions to 21st weekly Disquiet Junto project now live: http://t.co/XdREURGZ #seasons #samples #
• 21st weekly Disquiet Junto project goes to email (http://t.co/f2a6ojd6) & the SoundCloud group momentarily. #seasons #samples #
• This week’s Disquiet Junto project theme is The Four Seasons. #
• No kidding. It’s as if Sunn O))) consulted on building design. RT @dizzybanjo: @disquiet think you might like this one https://t.co/lyiJLhKz #
• The new Online panel on (the next) @soundcloud may just be about messaging, but it has underlying promise of realtime collaboration. #
• Disquiet Junto now has a volunteer German translator. That’s seven languages, including Czech, English, French, Japanese, Spanish & Turkish. #
• Rudimentary UI question: Is there a way in @twitter to navigate from a DM to the correspondent’s account? I don’t see it. #
• If it’s not too much to ask, I’d like HTML5 audio to be solid enough that we’ll want to celebrate its birthday someday. #
• Still can’t believe David Bowman (author, not 2001 character) is dead. #
• Our house will be 100 in two years. #
• The Gmail “important” tag has a weird mix of lag and clairvoyance via IMAP. #
• Reminder there’s now the @djunto Twitter account specific to Disquiet Junto activity. I’ll note stuff here on occasion, but that’s the hub. #
• Man, the @mapmap track from Instagr/am/bient is just shy of 7,000 listens now: https://t.co/xymq7hG6 #
• Which is which? RT @DETXL: can’t tell where Prokofiev’s Kije ends & twittering of birds outside begins. Lovely accompaniment to lovely music #
• If all goes according to plan, the Tuesday noon siren will be muted by the controlled chaos of a dim sum lunch. #
• RIP, Frederick J. Brown (b. 1945), painter of many musicians: http://t.co/GZAeeI9A #
• Enjoying standalone @twitter account for Disquiet Junto activity, @djunto. Focuses it for musicians. Returns @disquiet to observation mode. #
• When floor tiles resemble Conway’s Game of Life. (At the Ice Cream Bar in San Francisco.) http://t.co/LMMunk87 #
• Urban moss in Cole Valley. After the concerts end, the staples remain. http://t.co/P9tuDybl #
• There’s now a Twitter account specifically for Disquiet Junto. It’s @djunto. (Thanks to @lownote for the nudge.) #
• Not a speaker. (A side door’s foot-level vent.) http://t.co/0edI9qsF #
• A stack of most of my old computer hard drives. http://t.co/5Y0XQUax #
• Great (joke) public-utility UI: http://t.co/LNnRDXKX says to go to @sf311‘s site to “log on” for support. There’s no self-evident login tool #
• This electric toothbrush always sounds like it’s trying to cover “Rez” by Underworld. #
• 25 listens shy of 500 of the static I recorded on my hotel radio in Chicago: http://t.co/Yhdva67r. I love the Internet. #
• “I went with the dotted-eighth note palm mute guitar and e-bow”: @stringbot on his @nodebeat Disquiet Junto entry: http://t.co/w9VNLlW0 #
• Sorry about @strangeloup‘s trouble getting audio working for Junto. Glad to hear his “sleepy, medicated” Satie-infused http://t.co/HvHAdtx8 #
• Does this exist: affordable (yeah, a meaningless term) external SSD drive of vaguely considerable capacity (say, 256?). #
• RIP, Robin Gibb (b. 1949). Is there any music I like more as an adult that I liked less as a teen than the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack? #
• Almost 30 tracks so far in @NodeBeat project, including 4 from 1st-timers: http://t.co/lSzqLIp5 Each track pairs the app with an instrument. #
• Silence is deadly. RT @giantmecha: I wonder if anyone has ever performed a drive-by shooting using a Prius. #
• Got some post-dinner catching-up listening. Now 19 remixes (with 3 1st-timers) in the @NodeBeat Disquiet Junto: http://t.co/lSzqLIp5 #
• Detail of piano-roll scroll at San Francisco Center for the Book. (Need to get artist’s name.) http://t.co/1frk8a5Y #
• Every time someone tells me they are going to see the Avengers, I initially think they mean the band. #
• Jean-Pierre Roy painting at Sloan Gallery spot at artMRKT. http://t.co/GusvY11u #
• Card Music for John Cage at Ever Gold’s spot at artMRKT. http://t.co/6L84su5R #

Disquiet Junto activity really took off in advance of the mid-April concert in Chicago, and as a result I’ve fallen behind in two particular aspects: one is getting instructions to translators in advance of the projects’ start date; the other is post-project summaries. Instead of doing these summaries after the projects are complete, I’m going to experiment with creating a post here coincident with the launch of a new project, and occasionally update it throughout the project’s development. A new project launched today, this being a Thursday, and it will run through 11:59pm this coming Monday.

There’s a number of interesting projects coming up in the Disquiet Junto series: music + 1, animation, the blues, recycling, water, instrument construction, storytelling, and the 100th anniversaries of the births of both John Cage and Conlon Nancarrow are among the forthcoming themes. But before moving forward, it’s good to take a glance in the rearview mirror. For the 21st project we’re revisiting several distinct previous themes, this time in combination; among them are original field recordings, sonic transitions, and shared samples.

The assignment was made late in the day on Thursday, May 24, with 11:59pm on the following Monday, May 28, as the deadline. View a search return for all the entries: disquiet0011-4seasons. (They will take a little while to populate.)

These are the instructions that went to the participants. To receive them via email each Thursday, sign up at tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto:

Disquiet Junto Project 0021: 4 Seasons

Instructions:

Deadline: Monday, May 28, at 11:59pm wherever you are.

For this project you will employ four distinct samples. Each sample will individually represent one of the four seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter. You will either construct your own field recordings to represent these seasons, or you will use the following provided samples:

Spring: Birdsong

http://www.freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/28312/

Summer: Thunder

http://www.freesound.org/people/Erdie/sounds/23222/

Autumn: Walking in dry leaves

http://www.freesound.org/people/HerbertBoland/sounds/33207/

Winter: Walking in the snow

http://www.freesound.org/people/Spandau/sounds/30833/

Once you have collected your four samples, you will construct one single track from them. The track will be between two and four minutes in length. Each of the four seasonal samples will be highlighted in sequence for one quarter the length of your track, and there should be discernible transitions between the four segments — that is to say, each sample/season should slowly transform into the next. The underlying sonic bed should be constructed only from the four samples in combination — and in that role, they can be transformed as much as you desire. There should be no additional sounds. While a given sample is in the foreground (that is, during its prominent quarter of the overall track) it should remain at least somewhat recognizable.

Length: Please keep the length of your piece to between two and four minutes.

Information: Please when posting your track on SoundCloud include a description of your process in planning, composing, and recording it. This is an essential element of the communicative process inherent in the Disquiet Junto.

Title/Tag: When adding your track to the Disquiet Junto group on Soundcloud.com, please include the term “disquiet0021-4seasons” in the title of your track, and as a tag for your track.

Download: As always, you don’t have to set your track for download, but it would be preferable.

Linking: When you post your track, please include this information:

If you use any of the four provided samples, please include the source link as reference (per the Creative Commons agreement).

More details on the Disquiet Junto at:

http://soundcloud.com/groups/disquiet-junto/tracks

The image up top shows Vivaldi, composer of the original The Four Seasons.

Piece originally posted at soundcloud.com/yasuoakai.

The embedding feature on SoundCloud isn’t working at the moment, but the track is available for streaming and free download at soundcloud.com/wndfrm. More on wndfrm, aka Tim Westcott of Portland, Oregon, at twitter.com/wndfrm.

The album preview is a staple of commercial music, often coming in the form of collections of snippets of various tracks. In many cases, this is abbreviation in service of tantalization, but in the end it just causes frustration. The snippets are more teases than tastes, and the abruptness of the cuts between them has a stronger sensibility than do any of the assorted individual parts, let alone the collective whole.

But certain musics lend themselves more naturally to brevity. The preview of the album El libro de los árboles mágicos, due out from Tokyo-based label Home Normal label on June 15, is seven short ambient-infused slivers in sequence, each fading into the next. By all appearances, these individual tracks are more drone than song, and thus the segmented view serves to highlight distinctions between them — distinctions that might in fact be less evident when the work is listened to in the more immersive long-form situation of the full release. There is backward masked light noise, and looped bird song, and spectral guitar, and rain heard against what could be a child’s toy piano, and they all combine into a sonic slideshow. The intent of the preview is to forecast what is coming, but the subdued sounds of the music, not to mention the broader concept of an album itself in this day and age, lends the enterprise a lovely tinge of nostalgia. The music is by Federico Durand, and three of the tracks show him in collaboration: track 1 with Chihei Hatakeyama, 3 with Fuqugi, and 4 with Ian Hawgood.

Track, ten minutes in all, originally posted at soundcloud.com/homenormal.

More on Home Normal at homenormal.tumblr.com and twitter.com/homenormal. More on Durand himself at federicodurand.blogspot.com.

Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/phillipwilkerson. More on Wilkerson at phillipwilkerson.com.

More (in Spanish) about the move from sound to image to sound at mediateletipos.net. More on null66913 at null66913.net and twitter.com/null66913.

Site: Argantek Industrial State, AIII Motorway, km 23, MAD ESP.

A landscape of scrapheap hills, rusty heavy-duty machinery, abandoned building sites sheltering engine cults’ followers. A constant metallic buzzing interferes with encoded technical transmissions and radio spectrum “white spaces” while, high above, floats a chaos of frequencies.

Two short wave radio broadcasters establish contact through these airwaves, their dialogue sent back to the listeners of the area who are unaware of such free-form vibrations coming from their speakers.

Nonetheless, their mundane fantasy of subverted communication has a rich narrative groove to it, not the groove of metrically coherent rhythm but the groove of sequence, of found sounds paced and given associative power through contrast and accrual. The slow fade-out is a bit of a cheat in most experimental music, but here, as the sounds wind down, there’s a sense of the disparate noises, bonded by chance intervention, finally giving way to entropy.

Track originally posted at theradius.tumblr.com. More on Desh at digikampradesh.wordpress.com and on Ekis at facebook.com/ard2music.