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.
Another Processing library that I have looked into is RWMidi Processing which is another relatively simple and easy to use set of MIDI tools. To illustrate how to use the library Wesen, from Ruin & Wesen, produced a screen cast on how to make a “Game of Life” sequencer. I decided to have a look at the sequencer to see if I could route the MIDI from Processing to other applications, like Ableton Live and Reason. I accomplished this using the IAC Driver found in the Audio MIDI Setup utility. I routed the MIDI data to Reason to have a listen to the results, then started manipulating some of the behavior of the sequencer. Later I decided to route the MIDI to Ableton Live. After that, one thing led to another and now I have the building blocks for a new track. Here’s a rendered snippet of the MIDI data that I captured and edited for the piece.
I’ve been researching audio libraries for Processing recently since I will soon be starting the development of a specialized music application for personal use. I considered using MaxMSP, but Processing seems to suit this project a bit better. If you’re not familiar with Processing, it is an IDE designed for designers, artist, musicians, or anyone interested in exploring new ideas. Although it is mostly used for visual projects there are several examples of music software, like Tiction, which I wrote about in an entry titled Sound For Dali’s Melting Clocks. One of the libraries I’m investigating is called jm-Etude. It’s very easy to implement and use, and makes a few of the features in jMusic, a Java music composition project, accessible in Processing. Here’s some audio from a quick sketch designed to create a random sequence of notes. I also randomized the durations from whole notes to sixteenths, excluding tuplets for the time being.
This sound was made by manipulating the frequency and panning of a sine wave using the Minim sound library in Processing. I found that adjusting the portamento parameter has some strange and interesting results. Certain values for portamento seem to cause the sine wave to degrade into noise when manipulating the frequency of the waveform. I captured several minutes of this noise and then selected a small segment that has some unusual modulation going on.
Some people collect vials of sand from beaches they have visited, but I collect the sounds of the waves breaking on the shore. Well, it’s not much of a collection all I have so far is the Caribbean Sea while in Mexico and this example of Kitsap Peninsula surf recorded recently near the dock at the Port of Indianola in Washington. It’s a start, right?
I made several recordings at this location, but I particularly like this one that captures a sharp clicking sound made by palm sized rocks tumbling in the waves as they break on the shoreline. It was a very windy day, but despite a few bits in this example I managed to shield the wind from the PCM-50 by using a wind screen and putting my back to the wind behind the unit.
I have been using my Sequential Circuits Pro-One in the studio pretty often recently, so I decided to use it instead of of a newer keyboard for a recent performance. Unfortunately it did not work the way I had planned. Although I crave unpredictable behavior to stimulate the creative process, it is not exactly as pleasing during a live performance. The aging instrument did not stay in tune for very long and I was having trouble with the keyboard action. I imagine that it’s time for a thorough cleaning of the potentiometers and keyboard contacts. Despite these troubles, while scanning through clips recorded during the set, I came across this nice low frequency filter sweep and ran it through a ping pong delay.
Another Processing library that I have looked into is RWMidi Processing which is another relatively simple and easy to use set of MIDI tools. To illustrate how to use the library Wesen, from Ruin & Wesen, produced a screen cast on how to make a “Game of Life” sequencer. I decided to have a look at the sequencer to see if I could route the MIDI from Processing to other applications, like Ableton Live and Reason. I accomplished this using the IAC Driver found in the Audio MIDI Setup utility. I routed the MIDI data to Reason to have a listen to the results, then started manipulating some of the behavior of the sequencer. Later I decided to route the MIDI to Ableton Live. After that, one thing led to another and now I have the building blocks for a new track. Here’s a rendered snippet of the MIDI data that I captured and edited for the piece.
I’ve been researching audio libraries for 
This sound was made by manipulating the frequency and panning of a sine wave using the 
Some people collect vials of sand from beaches they have visited, but I collect the sounds of the waves breaking on the shore. Well, it’s not much of a collection all I have so far is the 
I have been using my Sequential Circuits Pro-One in the studio pretty often recently, so I decided to use it instead of of a newer keyboard for a recent performance. Unfortunately it did not work the way I had planned. Although I crave unpredictable behavior to stimulate the creative process, it is not exactly as pleasing during a live performance. The aging instrument did not stay in tune for very long and I was having trouble with the keyboard action. I imagine that it’s time for a thorough cleaning of the potentiometers and keyboard contacts. Despite these troubles, while scanning through clips recorded during the set, I came across this nice low frequency filter sweep and ran it through a ping pong delay.