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.
This chord is much more similar to an example of close harmony than the open voicings that I posted earlier. Close harmony is essentially the opposite of open harmony. The notes are often clustered together and might include minor seconds. This example could be written, once again, as a poly chord or by referencing the notes used. I tend to think of it as a poly chord because In the left hand I’m playing an incomplete B flat major seventh made up of B flat, F and A, followed by a C major triad in the right, starting with the G below the A in the left hand. This means my thumbs are crossed leaving me in a good position to play arpeggios around the C triad.
Rhodes Chord B Flat Major 7 (b5) Poly C over B Flat 7
This chord is a good example of open harmony. Open harmony is simply the use of intervals that are widely dispersed to produce chord structures.
This chord is an E thirteen with a flatted ninth. In sequence from the bottom up I’m playing E, F and G sharp as the tenth with my left hand, followed by D, G, and C (all naturals) with the right.
The second voicing in my series of Rhodes chords is a suspended F chord with a flatted ninth. The flatted ninth might also be referred to as a minor second because I’m playing it right next to the root. You could also call this an A flat thirteen over F. I’m not sure what the most correct way to write this chord is, but the minor second and suspended note (B flat) seem to dominate the harmonic structure.
It’s no secret that I’m a lifelong Rhodes electric piano fanatic. I could come up with a laundry list of reasons why this is the case, but one of the main reasons is how well the instrument responds harmonically. Therefore, I have decided to briefly forgo articles about sound design, processing, and field recording in order to present a few of my favored chord voicings on my suitcase model studio Rhodes.
The first example is a poly chord. It’s basically an E major triad over a D major triad, except I’m playing the D as a tenth with the fifth in the middle in the left hand and the third inversion of an E major triad in the right. You’ll need a wide reach in your left hand to play this voicing. The nice thing about it is the deep, open, and complex sound created by the thirteen and the flat five.
What you hear in this clip is all of the processed noise extracted from 1972 Social Commentary Degraded with a Halftone Pattern pasted together. I ran the lot through a short ping pong delay to give give it some stereo processing. Secondly, I decided to leave this file in its 48kHz 24bit state before rendering the MP3. This way you can tell whether or not you have the latest Flash plugin. I just played it on a computer with an older version of Flash Player 10 and got some horrible crackling in the playback, however, if I play it in QuickTime by clicking the link it sounds fine. If you get the same problem, try upgrading your Flash plugin in the browser to fix it.
This chord is much more similar to an example of close harmony than the open voicings that I posted earlier. Close harmony is essentially the opposite of open harmony. The notes are often clustered together and might include minor seconds. This example could be written, once again, as a poly chord or by referencing the notes used. I tend to think of it as a poly chord because In the left hand I’m playing an incomplete B flat major seventh made up of B flat, F and A, followed by a C major triad in the right, starting with the G below the A in the left hand. This means my thumbs are crossed leaving me in a good position to play arpeggios around the C triad.
This chord is a good example of open harmony. Open harmony is simply the use of intervals that are widely dispersed to produce chord structures. 
The second voicing in my series of Rhodes chords is a suspended F chord with a flatted ninth. The flatted ninth might also be referred to as a minor second because I’m playing it right next to the root. You could also call this an A flat thirteen over F. I’m not sure what the most correct way to write this chord is, but the minor second and suspended note (B flat) seem to dominate the harmonic structure. 
It’s no secret that I’m a lifelong Rhodes electric piano fanatic. I could come up with a laundry list of reasons why this is the case, but one of the main reasons is how well the instrument responds harmonically. Therefore, I have decided to briefly forgo articles about sound design, processing, and field recording in order to present a few of my favored chord voicings on my suitcase model studio Rhodes.
What you hear in this clip is all of the processed noise extracted from