Author Archives: John CS Keston

About John CS Keston

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.

Time Stretched Dog Bark on the PCM-D50

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I time stretched this recording of my dog Tia barking on the PCM-D50 using the built in DPC or Digital Pitch Control. I don’t know why they call it pitch control when it doesn’t change the pitch, but rather time compresses or expands the audio by percentages, from -75% to +100%. The intent is for musicians to practice difficult passages, but I think it has a nice eerie, metallic effect on voice and other sounds. For comparison I’ve posted her barking with out the time expansion as well.

Original Dog Bark

Time Expanded Dog Bark

Normalized Binaural Back Alley Ambiance

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One of the very first tests I made using my DIY binaural mics was this example of back alley ambiance. I stood as still as possible because this first version of the headset had a stiff cable that was very sensitive to vibrations. Birds and traffic are the most obvious sounds, but there is a high pitched screeching going on throughout the recording that became even more noticeable after applying normalization. While making the recording I actually took the mics out of my ears to make sure they weren’t generating the tone and I knew I wasn’t going crazy when it turned up in the recording. The sound is either a near by train, or a neighbor using a power tool. It sounds more like a tool, but the freight trains that go through my neighborhood make some very similar sounds to this.

Binaural Back Alley Ambiance

Roll Your Own Binaural Microphone

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First of all, thanks to Leafcutter John for encouraging me to look into binaural recording. As a result I spent most of last Sunday designing and building a set of binaural microphones. What’s surprising is that I had everything I needed in my home. I started with a couple of old Mac computer mics that my friend Kevin gave me a few weeks ago. I tore them apart and removed the electret capsules from the circuit boards. I found a set of silicone ear-buds from an old mobile phone headset that fit the capsules perfectly. After that it was pretty easy.

On my first attempt I used the cabling from an old set of airline headphones, but the stiff wire going from the right to the left microphone was too sensitive to vibrations. After all that work I decided to disassemble it and start again. This time I sacrificed an old pair of JVC headphones. The cabling was much better and had separate cables to each driver. This time I used a paper hole punch to modify the ear-buds so the back of the capsules weren’t stuck in a vacuum. I used colored heat shrink to specify left and right, added a tiny bit of foam between the capsule and the ear-bud, then mounted a couple of layers of foam over the outside.

I was pleasantly surprised by the few test recordings I made. For the majority of the tests I placed the ear-buds into my ears and kept as still as possible since the mics are quite sensitive while plugged into the Sony PCM-D50. I ended up using the 20dB pad, although I got a better sound without the low cutoff filter enabled. For some other examples visit this post on Leafcutter John’s blog.

Binaural Finger Snaps

Busy Thai Food Restaurant

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I captured this very typical example of restaurant ambiance recently at my favorite neighborhood Thai place in Minneapolis. I’m still running the PCM-D50 through its paces, but I sense that I’ll be looking forward to a long and happy relationship. This one minute and seven second clip includes many of the usual sounds sounds of diners in a food establishment: talking, laughing, coughing, children, plates clinking, ice in drinks, footsteps of the servers, and take away being placed in paper bags.

Restaurant Ambiance

Evening Traffic on Lowry Avenue

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One of the first few recordings I made with my Sony PCM-D50 was to capture traffic ambiance. This was really a pretty good test for the stereo imaging of the built in mics. I held the device, so there is some handling noise, although I did put a wind screen on the D50. This recording would have been impossible without it. The mics on the D50 are very sensitive to wind. Even indoors if an object, like a door, moves the air near the unprotected mics you will hear the capsules flapping in the breeze. Despite the wind screen you can hear a bit of wind noise around 00:34. The stereo image is acceptable, but it’s not as broad as other stereo mics I’ve used such as the Shure VP88. I have yet to try the 120 degree, Y pattern setting, which I imagine will spread the image considerably.

Lowry Traffic