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.
Inevitably one of the results of the One Synthesizer Sound Every Day project that I started in January is to produce an Ostraka album. So far I have nearly thirty tracks in the works. Many of them will end up on the cutting room floor, but here’s an excerpt from an introduction for one of the pieces that I’m confident will make the roster. The segment starts with a washy arpeggio on the D-50 morphed into a pad with copious amounts of reverb and delay. Next up are some MKS-80 effects that introduce an unprocessed bouncy arpeggio in six eight time.
Once again, on March 13, 2011, my trio DGK performed at the Honey Lounge in Minneapolis, Minnesota in collaboration with a distinguished array of comrades. During part two, in addition to the guests listed for part one, we have spoken word artist Kristoff Krane and bassist Josh Granowski. This section of the recording is even more chatty than the last one, but in a way it’s just a little more character sprinkled into the document.
Since configuring the Bitstream 3X to control the Super Jupiter instead of using the reKon Audio VST-AU MKS-80 editor I have been creating loads of sounds without bothering to save to save them as presets. Thinking back, this seems to be my modus operandi. I’m feeling pretty comfortable with this instrument now and using the BS3X I can usually dial up the sound I’m looking for in less than a minute. Not saving presets is nice because when dialing them in manually they never come up exactly he same way twice and you learn a lot about the instrument in the process. Here’s an example of one of the sounds I programmed today.
Now that I am able to program the MKS-80 with the Bitstream 3X I am attempting to do the same for other electronic instruments that lack tactile controls. This involves digging into the MIDI implementation of these instruments and then programming the BS3X to send the appropriate values. The first instrument I’m trying this with is the Roland D-50. So far I have had no success in getting the Roland D-50 to respond to the values I’m sending it, but hopefully I get it figured out soon. Here’s an example of what I’d like to accomplish. To create the sound below I used the D-50’s joystick to change the cutoff frequency on the first upper partial while sending it notes via MIDI.
On March 13, 2011, my trio DGK (Jon Davis on bass, Tim Glenn on drums, and John Keston on Rhodes and Pro-One) performed at the Honey Lounge in Minneapolis, Minnesota in collaboration with an esteemed line-up of colleagues. Through the night people came and went, so in the upcoming parts of this series I’ll name the individuals involved. For the beginning of the evening it was DGK with Martin Dosh on additional drums, and Juno Alpha 1, Scott Fultz on electric guitar and soprano saxophone, Andrew Broder on electric guitar, Rajiah Johnson on flute, and Brandon Wozniak on tenor saxophone. The record is a bit chatty at times, but that’s to be expected with bootleg recordings. You never know, you just might stumble across a bizarre conversation buried in the mix.
