Eyeo Festival June 27-29, 2011

Posted on January 26, 2011 by John CS Keston

In late June 2011 I will be presenting the GMS and Grain Machine, as well as performing with Ostracon, at the Eyeo Festival. Eyeo is a new festival organized by Dave Schroeder, that includes an ever expanding and incredible list of speakers. I am honored, humbled and invigorated to be participating in this event. Here’s a blurb from the festival website:

“eyeo brings together the most creative coders, designers and artists working today, and shaping tomorrow – expect an amazing three days of talks, labs, demos & events fueled by the people and tools that are transforming digital culture.”

Just to give you an idea of the scope of the presenters, both Ben Fry and Casey Reas, founders of the Processing.org language (that I used to build the GMS) are on the roster among many other brilliant talents. Checkout the website for a list of the presenters so far. Here’s a track from the upcoming Ostracon album to illustrate what we’re producing.

Entropy Procedure by Ostracon

Upcoming DGK and Ostraka Performances

Posted on January 22, 2011 by John CS Keston

Here’s a list of upcoming performances from my trio, DGK (Davis, Glenn, Keston) and my solo project, Ostraka. First up is DGK at the Turf Club in St. Paul, Minnesota on Friday, January 28, 2011. Also on the bill is Dosh and H.U.N.X. Doors at 9:00pm. $5.00. Main stage. Next up is Ostraka at Nick & Eddie Thursday Funhouse on February 3, 2011. Doors at 10:00pm. Located in the back bar. Free entry. Thirdly we have DGK at the Red Stag Supper Club on Monday, February 21, 2011. Doors are at 9:00pm. No cover.

Sequence Made with Curve Shared Preset Synthesizer

Posted on January 17, 2011 by John CS Keston

Cableguys.de have recently released an excellent community-driven software synthesizer called Curve (downloadable demo available). The synth has three, aliasing-free oscillators, three five stage envelopes, two filters each with ten modes, and four LFOs that are either, beat, note, or frequency synced. One of the coolest things you can do is draw your waveforms in the editor. You can even randomize them for some interesting results. Here’s a sequence that I created and recorded without any processing using Curve. This is one of my first attempts at creating a patch in Curve and I shared it to the preset community (available within Curve’s interface) as Bouncy Arpeggiator by AudioCookbook. Stay tuned for a lot more from this powerful and great sounding software synth.

Cables Guys Curve Sequence

Sounds from a Contact Mic Frozen in Water Ice

Posted on January 17, 2011 by John CS Keston

I just got a note from Dan Pugsley of Radium Audio. regarding their new resource Radium Audio Labs. The site will feature a broad variety of sound experiments and explorations. Dan writes,

“Radium Audio has recently started a blog demonstrating some of our explorative processes, and though it’s very much in the early stages of development we have some pretty interesting pieces uploaded already and I was wondering if any of it might be suitable for Audio Cookbook? We have two new explorative projects in the works at the moment, one of which is based on binaural recordings and the other will be revolving around the use of dry ice to create a variety of sounds.”

The projects posted so far include using a coil mic to record the electromagnetic fields from various electronic devices, like an iPhone and a printer/scanner, and my favorite at the moment, sounds captured from a contact microphone frozen in water ice as it melts.

Frozen Contact Mic in Ice by Radium-Audio

One Synthesizer Sound Every Day Debut

Posted on January 5, 2011 by John CS Keston

It’s been more than fifteen months since I finished posting a self produced sound everyday for three hundred and sixty five consecutive days. This all happened in the One Sound Every Day category. As a result I produced my solo debut under my Ostraka moniker titled, Precambrian Resonance.

In the spirit of One Sound Every Day, I am starting a new project called One Synthesizer Sound Every Day. My plan is to use hardware synthesizers from my collection (and eventually soft-synths) to produce a sound, musical phrase, or microtrack to share here on ACB every day for a year. As well as my own sounds, I’ll be accepting select sounds from other artists and ACB readers to share on the site in the daily article.

My long term goal is produce a synthesizer album where I focus on inventing new sounds and allowing these textures to inspire the compositions. I’ve already got a good start on this by writing nine or so tracks in the few days since I conceived of the project (some of these tracks can be heard in the mix I shared here). I’m looking forward to sharing more of these sonic textures here as I discover them.

Let me start with a sub bass patch I made for my newly acquired Casio CZ-1000. I used to own a Casio CZ-101, which is virtually the same synth except that the CZ-1000 has a full sized keyboard compared to the mini-keys on the CZ-101. Years ago I misplaced my affectionately renamed Sleazy-101, probably in a move. Pining for the sound of this under-rated little instrument, I picked up a mint condition CZ-1000 on eBay recently for a steal. Here’s a bass line using my new patch.

Casio CZ-1000 Sub Bass