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

Speaker Rattling Filter Sweep Saw Octaves

Posted on February 7, 2011 by John Keston

This is part of the bass line from a synthesizer waltz that I’m composing. The sound was played on the Roland Juno-106, which I can’t seem get enough of these days. No processing was applied. All you hear is the chorus along with the LFO modulating the VCF for a long, slow filter sweep. Oh yeah, and I was manually tweaking the cutoff, and probably the envelope amount as well.

Speaker Rattling Filtered Saw Octaves

Resonant Wobble

Posted on February 6, 2011 by John Keston

One thing I hadn’t explored yet on the Roland Juno-106 is how well it produces synthesizer effects. This is the sort of sound that I would normally create using my Sequencial Circuits Pro-One, and admittedly the filter on the Pro-One is a little more agressive, but I decided to give it a go on the 106. This sound was made using the filter self-resonance discussed in detail in the article Eerie Pseudo Oscillator Microtrack. Using the LFO on the VCF creates the wobble, then I adjusted the LFO manually for speed modulation.

Resonant Wobble

Synthetic Guitar

Posted on February 5, 2011 by John Keston

I found this synthetic guitar-like sound on my Roland Juno-106, tweaked it a little bit, and then ran it through some delay and reverb. The envelope gives it a similar sound to an electric guitar played clean. If I wanted it to sound more realistic I would stagger the attacks and perhaps distort the signal, but I like the synthetic nature of it. If I wanted a realistic guitar, then I’d record some guitar. Imitating acoustic or even most electro-mechanical instruments with synthesizers is something that was a necessary step in the evolution of synthesis and modeling. These days we appreciate how synthesis sounds apart from the modeling and reproduction of traditional instrumentation.

Juno-106 Synthetic Guitar

Portamento Pattern

Posted on February 3, 2011 by John Keston

This pattern at 122 beats per minute was produced on the Roland Juno-106 with the portamento enabled.

Portamento Pattern

Lost and Found Arpeggiated Polysynth

Posted on February 1, 2011 by John Keston

I found this arpeggio that I created in Ableton Live and rendered on the Roland Juno-106, in a temporary folder weeks after I had deleted it from the set I was working on. I listened to it and decided it was worthwhile using it for today’s synthesizer sound. It includes some nice manual filter sweeps as well as some other tweaks. I added an un-synched delay to give it some depth, but that was it for processing.

Lost Arpeggio Passage