Midnight Playground

Posted on January 22, 2012 by John Keston

Midnight Playground is an interactive, kinetic, installation by Peng Wu, Jack Pavlik, John Keston, and Analaura Juarez. Peng initiated and directed the idea, Jack built the jump rope robot, and Annalaura helped refine the concept and promote the piece. My role was to produce the music and track it to the still images that Peng had selected. I ended up making a one hour video with thirty minutes of the image from the moon followed by a four second transition into another thirty minutes with an image of Mars. To produce the sound I gave Peng a list of audio excerpts that had all been previously posted on AudioCookbook in One Synthesizer Sound Every Day. He picked the two that he thought would work the best and I went back to my original recordings and processed them specifically for the piece by adding some reverb and delay to enhance the spacial properties of the music. The piece will be on display in Gallery 148 at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design through January 29, 2012.

Magnet Head

Posted on November 24, 2011 by John Keston

This experiment is called Magnet Head and features a filtered drone combined with percussive, analog spatterings all generated by the Roland MKS-80.

Magnet Head

Pro-One Sequence with Haphazard Tweaks

Posted on May 31, 2011 by John Keston

A sixteen note sequence I programmed into the Pro-One and then ran it through the Memory Man while haphazardly twirling knobs.

Pro-One Sequence

Pro-One Major Third Drone with Memory Man Delay

Posted on May 30, 2011 by John Keston

Lately I have not had the Pro-One setup in my studio since I’m using it frequently for live performances. Today I had a rehearsal for the Battle for Everyouth in my studio so afterward I decided to record something from this magnificent little machine. Here’s a drone that I programmed by tuning the oscillators to a major third, then letting them hold while the LFO swept the filter and I adjusted knobs on the Pro-One and Memory Man delay.

Pro-One Major Third Drone with Memory Man Delay

Sawtooth Modulated Sawtooth

Posted on April 28, 2011 by John Keston

This unprocessed, lawnmower-like, drone was generated on the Roland MKS-80 by modulating a sawtooth waveform with the LFO configured as a sawtooth waveform as well. I found the pitch (a low C) on the keyboard that closely matched the top speed of the LFO then manually swept the tuning of the oscillator by no more than a semitone. This is what created the phasing that can heard throughout the recording.

Sawtooth Modulated Sawtooths

Meditative Drone

Posted on April 6, 2011 by John Keston

I created this meditative drone on the MKS-80 by holding a chord down with the sustain pedal and adjusting the filter, pitch bend and modulation wheel during the 2:21 minute length of the piece. I also drenched it in an unhealthy dose of stereo ping pong delay giving it a dreamy atmosphere especially during the slow bends. Fun!

Meditative Drone

Bitstream 3X MIDI Controller

Posted on March 22, 2011 by John Keston

I just got a Bitstream 3X MIDI controller (BS3X), and have just started experimenting with it. This is a complex and fully programmable device, so I will need some time with it before I have learned the best way to incorporate it my setup. The easiest way to use it is in standard mode where no programming is required on the unit. Simply map the controls in the software you are using. However, what makes the BS3X powerful is the user mode where every assignable control can be programmed. A sophisticated editor allows the user to map these controls based on a long list of device parameters such as “Roland D50 Upper Partial 1 – TVF Cutoff Frequency”.

Just to get started with the device I used the standard mode and mapped the bulk of Roland MKS-80 parameters to it via the reKon Audio VST-AU MKS-80 editor in Ableton Live. For the VCF cutoff and resonance I used the XY axis joystick. This gave me one finger control over both of these parameters for very expressive control of the filter. I also mapped the VCF envelope LFO depth to the ribbon controller for another way to manipulate the filter. In one take using only three controls (the XY axis, ribbon, and a knob mapped to the LFO rate) I performed this drone.

MKS-80 XY Axis Drone

Eight Minute Drone

Posted on March 11, 2011 by John Keston

Here’s an eight minute drone in D. The chord is fifths with a ninth on top. I added delay and reverb to the output while manipulating various parameters in real time.

Eight Minute Drone

Juno-106 Glitchy Drone

Posted on January 13, 2011 by John Keston

Here’s another excerpt from the glitches that I recorded while the voice chip was failing on my Roland Juno-106. In this section I was just holding a note without touching any other controls, so all the variations in the sound were caused by the autonomous shorting that was going on inside the faulty 80017a voice chip.

Juno-106 Glitchy Drone

The Droning Buddha

Posted on August 17, 2010 by BlindProphet

I’ve been meaning to start an entry for ACB for a while, but only just got around to it after completing this sound. A few months ago, I stopped by Weirdo Records in Cambridge, MA while visiting some friends in Boston and I picked up a few different battery powered noise boxes. My favorite turned out to be this small chanting monk device that has a built in speaker, a headphone jack, a button to change chants, and a volume knob. I immediately found a bend on the board that doubled the speed of the chanting and made it a high pitched chipmonk chant.

Once I got back to Minnesota, I plugged it into the input on a Korg Electribe and saved the results of some crazy effect work. From there I ran the file (then a 2 minute file) through the open source paulstretch software. I slowed it down by about ten times and the end result was a 28 minute ambient drone that fluctuated and sounded something like a desolate ice cave. I used Ableton to EQ out the ear-bleeding high end and to add a bit of reverb. The end result is a haunting drone sound-bed that I’m pretty fond of. Feel free to use it for any sampling or remixing or whatever you kids are doing these days.

Droning Buddha