GMS Performance in Downtown Minneapolis

Posted on May 8, 2009 by John Keston

I’ve been scheduled to perform live using my GMS this Wednesday night, May 13, 2009. I’ll be projecting against the Western wall of Art Institutes International. The reactive music will be amplified along with the projection as it is produced in real-time. Here’s the publicity statement that went out about the event.

John Keston will be performing using his gestural music sequencer or GMS on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 in the parking lot next to Art Institutes International Minnesota, 15 South 9th Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The GMS was written in Processing.org by Ai instructor, Unearthed Music recording artist, and AudioCookbook.org founder John Keston. His tool analyzes video input and converts it into a sequence of musical information in real-time. The live video image will be projected on the building while the musical response to the images is amplified through a sound system. For more information about the GMS visit audiocookbook.org/tag/gms/. All Ai students, staff, alumni, and the public are welcome to attend this free performance. A drawing will be held (for WDIM students only) giving away two passes to this years Flashbelt conference.

Here’s a segment from a practice session today to give you an idea about what sort of output the GMS can produce. All of the percussion, melodic lines, and bass were generated by the sequencer, then live looped to produce the results.

GMS Practice Piece in C Sharp

Microtrack of Recycled Rhodes, Beats and Bass

Posted on May 7, 2009 by John Keston

Lobby Lovingly mixed on cheap ear buds, this micro track consists of a cut up chunk of low frequency Rhodes running through auto pan and a bit of amp modeling, out of key FM synth bass, and frosty beats that were partially programmed using the GMS (Gestural Music Sequencer). It’s not a habit of mine to mix blind (or would that be deaf?), so I hope there aren’t too many nasty surprises when I hear this through proper speakers.

Recycled Rhodes Microtrack

Unprocessed Rhodes Loop at 138.72bpm

Posted on May 6, 2009 by John Keston

This segment of unprocessed Rhodes was used in Processed Rhodes Pedal Noise. Why 138.72 BPM? The reason is that when the Rhodes was originally recorded I was using tap tempo to beat match another musician during a late night recording session. Obviously, naturally produced music is played in fractional tempos, so it’s funny what you end up with for locked-in tempos in electronic music using this technique. Update: just replaced the loop with a version that matches the zero crossings and doesn’t click.

Unprocessed Rhodes at 138.72bpm

GMS Live Loop Experiment

Posted on May 5, 2009 by John Keston

Today while testing some code I had written to help lock in the GMS with external MIDI synchronization, I made a brief recording of live looping the output from the sequencer by capturing the notes in Ableton Live. Ableton was also acting as the clock source. The new feature works by initializing start times to the nearest quarter note. This way if the sequencer produces an odd number of fractional durations a simple start and stop of the GMS with the space bar will lock it back onto the quarter notes provided by the master clock. This may be a precursor to how I end up using this instrument once it is a complete package.

GMS Live Loop Experiment

Lofi Mono Glitch Loop

Posted on May 3, 2009 by John Keston

I looped a section of high speed GMS glitches, similar to what I’ve used in a few previous posts, to make this awkward pattern of percussion based micro-samples.

GMS Glitch Loop

Acoustic Modem Glitch

Posted on May 2, 2009 by John Keston

Here’s another glitch created with the GMS running at an unreasonably high tempo. This time it sounds a bit like the racket that comes from an acoustic modem as it makes a connection. Remember those things that people used to use to log on to the internets?

Acoustic Modem Glitch

GMS Audio Captured During MAW Outing

Posted on April 30, 2009 by John Keston

This eight minute segment of audio generated by the GMS is from the first eight minutes of our most recent MAW (minneapolisartonwheels.org) outing.

This was my first chance to take advantage of the presets feature, but the performance led me to expand the octave setting to include adjustments for the top and bottom octaves. During this performance the octave setting was limited to only allowing the top octave to be lowered. This made it so that instruments with a limited range, like drums, are difficult to play since much of the screen might be inactive.

MAW Outing Segment

Presets Feature Added to the GMS

Posted on April 29, 2009 by John Keston

The latest feature I have added to the GMS is a way to store ten presets. Each preset holds thirty-four distinct settings including all twelve note probability values, all seven duration probability values, note probabilities on/off, duration probabilities on/off, sustain on/off, free time mode vs bpm, dotted notes on/off, video mirroring on/off, tempo in BPM, note durations, transposition, scale, MIDI out channel, dotted note probabilities, note randomness, and octave range minimum and maximum. The presets can be changed by clicking a radio button, or pressing control plus the preset number. This feature makes it possible to instantly and dramatically change the behavior of the GMS. I also added a primitive save and load feature to mantain the content of the presets. Here’s a segment from a test recording.