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.

Ostraka with Miditerranean

Posted on November 29, 2011 by John Keston

I recorded this all analog synthesizer jam recently while my friend and fellow synthesist Michael Moline, otherwise known as Miditerranean, was visiting. I played an arpeggio on the Roland MKS-80 while Michael made noises on my Pro-One. In addition I played a few notes on the Roland Juno-106 for some additional melodic content.

Ostraka_with_Miditerranean

Morning Music and Coffee Consumption

Posted on June 28, 2011 by John Keston

This video documents an improvised piece recorded on June 26, 2011 with David Andree, John Keston, and Jared Smyth. I was playing the Roland June-106, triggering the Roland MKS-80 with the GMS, and playing a few notes on the piano. David was playing acoustic guitar, cassette loops, reel-to-reel loops, percussion, and melodica. Jared was on a Monome running Grainslide, and live looping. Checkout Jared’s original post here.

Original Audio

Arpeggiated Self Resonance Part 2

Posted on February 10, 2011 by John Keston

Here’s another example of arpeggiated self-resonance from the Juno. This time instead of adjusting the settings on the synthesizer, I made adjustments to the arpeggiator. Basically I adjusted the style, steps, and distance in Ableton Live’s arpeggiator. It includes a total of eighteen unique arpeggiator modes or styles. I used “Pinky UpDown”, “Thumb UpDown”, “Random Once”, “Random”, “Chord Trigger”, and “Con & Diverge”. Perhaps a couple of others as well.

Arpeggiated Self Resonance 2

Arpeggiated Self Resonance

Posted on February 9, 2011 by John Keston

This sound was programmed on the Juno-106 with the oscillators off and the VCF resonance all the way up, which puts the instrument into self-resonance as was discovered in the article Eerie Pseudo Oscillator Microtrack. Right around 0:42 I turned on the sawtooth wave and manipulated the LFO, then at 0:57 I turned it back off again.

Arpeggiated Filter Self Resonance