John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research.
John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.
Yet another example of stacked polyphonic synthesizers. The hollow square wave arpeggio, courtesy of the Super Jupiter, is augmented by a glassy pad provided by the Roland D-50 Linear Arithmetic synthesizer.
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!
Here’s the second in a series of stacked polyphonic synthesizer experiments. Once again I used the Roland D-50 and the Roland MKS-80. The percussive sound that fades in and out was made by by the D-50, and the evolving synth texture came from the Super Jupiter while manipulating parameters with the Bitstream 3X. My goal is to eventually have control over D-50 with the BS3X as well.
Today I updated my studio with the inexpensive yet feature rich MOTU Audio Express interface. I haven’t had time to put it through its paces yet, but I did manage to get it configured in time to use it for the synthesizer sound of the day. Creating this sound would have been more difficult prior to owning this interface because I did not have as many available inputs with my M-Audio Firewire 410. To create this sound I stacked two polysynths – the Roland D-50 and the Roland MKS-80. With the Audio Express I was able to plug in both instruments in stereo and play them simultaneously using the D-50 as the controller, then record them on separate tracks. Here’s the first out of a series of these stacked polysynth experiments.
I built this Ableton resonator study around the same time I posted Synth Bass Through Resonators, but didn’t post it because I’m not satisfied with the drums that I put in as a temporary placeholder. If this gets used l’ll be replacing the drums with something more fitting and less conventional.
