Electric Independence: Ulrich Schnauss

Posted on March 19, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

The latest from the excellent series, Electric Independence, is an interview with German electronic music producer Ulrich Schnauss.

Execute Rogue Citizen with Music by Ostraka

Posted on March 18, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Tonight I am honored to be performing during the opening night of Execute Rogue Citizen. I have a lot of time to fill during the opening, so as well as performing the latest Ostraka material, I’ll be playing the newly mastered yet unreleased Ostracon (John Keston and Graham O’Brien) album, Unauthorized Modifications, and a recent bootleg of DGK from Try This at the Slam Factory. The City Pages writes,

“Execute Rogue Citizen” will be on display at Gallery 13 until April 1. The opening reception, Incarceration, will be this Friday night and features music by Ostraka starting at 7:30 p.m.

The closing in two weeks, Reprieve, will feature the music of Seawhores. All the art that has gone unsold during the show’s run will literally be executed. By doing this, Rogue Citizen hopes to acknowledge the way the system benefits only those who can afford it.

Let’s hope there will be no art leftover on execution night. Created by science-fiction nerds who love to paint the abnormal, Rogue Citizen’s work is much too nifty to get tossed, even if it is to make a valid point on our current social system.

Here’s an excerpt from a track a produced today that I’ll be performing in my Ostraka set tonight. All the sounds in this piece were made with the Roland Super Jupiter MKS-80 apart from the drums.

Execute Rogue Citizen by Ostraka

Try This: DGK Slam Factory Bootleg and Show Tonight

Posted on March 13, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Here’s a segment from a recording made at “Try This” a new series at the Slam Factory in Minneapolis curated by James Hungelmann of my trio DGK (Jon Davis on bass and bass clarinet, Tim Glenn on drums, and John Keston on Rhodes and Pro-One). This set was a pleasure to play. It was a great space with a great audience and amazing hosts. The recording was made by the house and it’s the best quality representation of our sound to date.

If you’d like to hear it live stop by Honey, 205 E Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, Minnesota tonight at 10pm to hear two sets with special guest musicians and DJ’s including Martin Dosh, Andrew Broder, Scott Fultz, George Cartwright, Rajiah Johnson, Christopher Robin Cox, Kristoff Krane and more.

Try This: DGK Slam Factory Bootleg

What is Your Top Programmable MIDI Controller?

Posted on March 10, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

I’m looking for a programmable MIDI controller for the Roland MKS-80. I have almost resigned myself to building my own MIDIbox 64, but if something pre-built and inexpensive that will serve the purpose is out there I’m willing to consider it. The most attractive thing I’ve found so far is the CME Bitstream 3X (formerly Wave Idea), but I’m not exactly thrilled about CME products. I have a CME UF7 keyboard controller and I’m not that happy with it. I’d love to hear from someone with a Bitstream 3X about what they think of it feature and construction wise.

Other interesting devices are the Novation SL MkII series (a little short on knobs and sliders) or the Doepfer Drehbank (discontinued). Another possibility is 3 Korg nanoKONTROLs and a USB hub. I’m using one right now with three scenes programmed to control everything on the MKSK-80, but the scene switching is cumbersome, and I loose my positioning on parameters after switching scenes causing jumps in the programming. However, having three of them would solve that problem. Unfortunately, they are not programmable for sysex (required to interface with the MKS-80), so I’d need to map them through editor software, eliminating the potential of a computer free setup.

VidiSynth Generates Audio from Light Sources

Posted on February 28, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Expanding the VidiSynth Part III from paul sobczak on Vimeo.

Paul Sobczak has recently posted some videos documenting the VidiSynth. It’s has four independent oscillators that are controlled by either potentiometers or inputs from other sources. In this case he is using light dependent resistors or LDRs that suction onto a display. As video plays on the display the pitches change on all four oscillators based on the position of the LDR on the screen producing corresponding sounds. I’m not sure how Paul plans to use this, but I’m anticipating some interesting generative work with a synesthetic theme.