Meta Composition Lets Audience Compose Text Scores

Posted on June 5, 2015 by John CS Keston

Now that I have announced my upcoming project Instant Composer: Mad-libbed Music (ICMLM) it is only fair that I share a little bit about the thought process and inspiration behind the piece. The inspiration comes from Pauline Oliveros’ instructional scores, sonic awareness, and deep listening practice. Oliveros explains in a very matter-of-fact fashion in an interview with Darwin Grosse that her text scores are instructions for the musicians or a soloist to follow. Often allowing for broad interpretation and improvisation, the scores rarely include musical symbols or notation.

Much of my own recent work involves the exploitation of chance: duets with traffic, trains, and the Singing Ringing Tree for example. ICMLM surrenders chance to the audience by resigning the writing to minds free of the context concerning the concept, preparations, and development of the “outer composition.” In this way ICMLM is a meta composition that allows the audience to compose within parameters predefined by the artist. However, the limitations placed on the compositional tool provided are not meant to confine participants.

The most simple implementation of this concept would be a text area where the author writes whatever they want. I didn’t do this in part because I wanted to make the process engaging, inviting, and user friendly. It is not my intent to intimidate the audience. This is an experiment and we will not dismiss what anyone chooses compose for the ensemble. The process of composing happens within a webapp allowing the composer to specify instrumentation, tonality, dynamics, mood, tempo, length, title, and author. All the choices aside from instrumentation and length can freely be entered as any word or phrase the author chooses. In some cases optional choices are offered from a context sensitive menu, but in “mood,” for example, the author must use their own words.

What this means for the “outer composition” and the ensembles constructed for each piece is that the scores are almost entirely unpredictable. Scores might take the form of a Mad Lib when the author chooses to insert nonsense or humorous terms and phrases. On the other hand fascinating challenges might arise as thoughtful and provocative language is used to inspire the improvising musicians. Whatever happens a large part of the motivation and excitement about this project for me is not knowing what will happen until the piece is performed. I am looking forward to collaborating with the minds of our audience through the musical and sonic interpretations of their ideas.

Instant Composer: Mad-libbed Music

Posted on June 4, 2015 by John CS Keston

Northern Spark 2015 is June 13, 2015 and once again I am excited and honored to be taking part. This year I am directing and producing a project designed to directly involve audience participation in an all night long musical performance piece. Instant Composer: Mad-libbed Music (ICMLM) is in collaboration with a group of my interactive media students at Art Institutes Minnesota and an ensemble of improvising musicians from the Minneapolis and St. Paul, community.

ICMLM gives the audience a visceral connection to the ensemble because they will be choosing the members and composing the music! We have designed a mobile web application that allows the audience to write a piece of music that will be played by an ensemble within minutes of composing it. The compositions are textual or instructional scores popularized by Pauline Oliveros.

Pauline Oliveros is an American composer and accordionist who is a central figure in the development of experimental and post-war electronic art music … Oliveros has written books, formulated new music theories and investigated new ways to focus attention on music including her concepts of “Deep Listening” and “sonic awareness”. — Wikipedia

In five easy steps visitors will write their piece and submit it for its debut. The app allows participants to choose the instrumentation, tonality, dynamics, tempo, and length without needing to know any musical terms or techniques. The scores are like a Mad Lib, so we anticipate humor and transgressive play, but this will only make it more challenging and interesting for the ensembles.

The event is being held rain-or-shine on June 13, 2015 inside the historic Mill City Museum on the banks of the Mississippi river in downtown Minneapolis. It is free and open to the public and runs from dusk until dawn (9:00pm until 5:26am).

Participating students include: Ariel Marie Brooks, Michael Brooks, Renae Ferrario, Meg Gauthier, Abram Long, Valeria C. Sassi, Adam Schmid, and Steven Wietecha. The musicians include: Chris Cunningham (guitars), Jon Davis (bass, bass clarinet, saxophones), DeVon Russell Gray (bassoon, keyboards), Rajiah Johnson (flute), John Keston (keyboards), Donnie Martin (violin), Thomas Nordlund (guitars), Cody McKinney (bass), Graham O’Brien (drums), and Adam Schmid (drums).

Absinthe Referent Cassette Gallery

Posted on May 20, 2015 by John CS Keston

Yesterday the DKO debut Absinthe Referent was released. A digital download or limited edition cassette is available through bandcamp. Alternatively you may purchase the cassette at our release show tonight. Here are a few photos of the high bias cassette.

Moog Sub 37 1.10 Firmware Demo Part 2

Posted on May 8, 2015 by John CS Keston

Now that I have had some more time to experiment with the new Moog Sub 37 1.10 firmware I made a new video that is more in-depth than the last one. In this video demo I show seven new features within the sequencer and arpeggiator sections of the instrument. Although I did edit the video for length, each feature was demonstrated without having to stop the sequence at any point.

First I review how to turn steps on and off while in step edit mode. This is simply done by pressing the step buttons (patch button 1 through 16) while in step edit mode (bank + latch).

Secondly I show how to set the start and end positions of the sequence while it continues to run. This is really great for repeating any number of consecutive steps in the sequence.

Thirdly I show how to create or disable ties between two or more notes on the fly. This is much faster and accurate than the original way of apply ties while the sequencer continues to run.

Fourth I demonstrate how to turn on/off step ratcheting and how to modify the number of ratchets. Ratcheting is an interesting new feature that repeats a step from 1 to 8 times.

For the fifth feature I adjust the swing amount. Having swing as a feature for the sequencer is fantastic, but it can also be applied to the arpeggiator and the LFOs when they are synched to the clock! I haven’t tried this yet, but I love the idea of manipulating the LFO waveshapes this way.

The sixth feature is modulation sequencing that I applied to the filter envelope amount. The mod sequencing can be applied to a huge list of parameters. Unfortunately is it one destination per patch/sequence, but never-the-less a welcome and useful addition.

Finally for the seventh feature I demonstrate how to shift the sequence back or ahead of the first step using bank + arp range (+ or -).

There’s a lot more still in this release that I have yet to explore. A huge THANK YOU goes out to Moog Music and especially Amos Gaynes for making an already great synth greater!

Moog Sub 37 1.10 Firmware Demo

Posted on May 1, 2015 by John CS Keston

Yesterday I got a note from Moog that the long anticipated 1.10 firmware for the Moog Sub 37, announced in January at NAMM, was now available. Today I scheduled time in my studio to install it and test out some of the new features. This release is significant because the bulk of the updates are new features! In this video I demonstrate step edit mode and quick mapping of modulation destinations.

Each of the sixteen preset buttons can now be used to turn on and off steps while playing a sequence. One problem I found is that you can only turn on or off one step at a time. I imagine this is something that they’ll fix because we do have ten fingers after all. [UPDATE: Pressing two steps at a time is for turning on/off ties.] Other than that it works beautifully! If your sequence is longer than 16 steps the buttons jump to the second, third, and fourth pages automatically as the sequence is playing.

The quick mapping of modulation destinations is a treat. Simply hold down the MOD 1 or MOD 2 DEST button while turning a parameter. I do this in the video at 0:47 applying MOD 1 to OSC 2 frequency. You can also press a button. For example to modulate the filter slope setting press SLOPE while holding one of the MOD buttons. This works for the octave switch knob, pattern switch, pattern range buttons, and so on. Here’s a list of all the new features:

Step Edit Mode – Allows visual display and editing of individual sequence steps on preset buttons 1-16, with easy real-time control over rests, ties, and more.
Quick Mapping of Programmable Mod Destinations – Simply hold the Mod (1/2) Dest button and turn a parameter knob to assign modulation to that parameter.
Skip and Ratchet Steps – Sequences can now include Skipped steps (which can be toggled On and Off on-the-fly) and Ratchet steps (1 to 8 repeats per step).
Arpeggiator and Sequencer Swing Control – Adjust the ratio of on-beat vs. off-beat duration from 0% to 100%. Swing can also apply to Synced LFOs.
Sequencer Mod Destination – Sequence any one parameter directly, using the per-step Sequence Mod Value (mod wheel position is recorded per-step).
Sequencer Mod Only – Use the sequencer purely as a sequenced modulation-generator, without playing a sequence of notes (the keyboard plays normally).
CV Mapping – Use the external Pitch CV, Volume CV, and KB Gate inputs to control almost any parameter on the Sub 37. Step Advance and Step1 Reset functions allow you to clock the Sub 37 sequencer using analog gate/trigger signals, and the Gate input can now function as a Sustain pedal input.
Variance – Use this parameter to specify a subtle amount of random detuning to the oscillators. (For when perfect tuning is too perfect)