Music for People on Shelves

Posted on December 10, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

people_on_shelves I’ve just rendered my full eighty-six minute Ostraka set from last night’s event at the West Bank Social Center. So, while waiting for the delightful documentation that Andrea Streudel is sure to produce, here’s a short segment of audio from the set.

I used Ableton Live to produce in real-time and my wavetable glitch machine Max patch to make most of the noises, which I routed into Live using Soundflower.

The projection work of the evening was top notch. An entire wall of the building across from the WBSC was covered with animated silhouettes of attendees on simulated three dimensional “shelves”.

Here’s the excerpt. I’m also including a link to the entire eighty-six minute set that I uploaded to soundcloud.com for all the brave people who’d like to hear the full set.

Excerpt from Music for People on Shelves

Introducing the Fluid Piano

Posted on December 10, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

My mate Joshua Herbst recently shared this video with me of the first ever “fluid” piano invented by Geoff Smith.

The completely acoustic piano allows the musician to tune every string by a whole tone either during the performance or before hand in order to set up particular microtonal scales.

The fluid piano sounds beautiful, reminiscent of sitar, but with a deeper tone quality. I can’t wait to hear more from this ingenious instrument.

Here’s the original article from the Guardian:
Introducing the ‘fluid piano’

GMS Now Available for Windows

Posted on December 5, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

GMS v0.10 beta binary distribution for Windows is now available, thanks to Grant Muller, who compiled the latest source code for the GMS under Windows. Please visit the GMS page to download the Windows version. If you’re interested in the source code for the GMS you can find it at http://code.google.com/p/gestural-music-sequencer/.

Live Music by John Keston at the WBSC

Posted on December 4, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

wbsc_js This Wednesday, December 9, 2009, 7pm – 10pm I’ll be performing music at the West Bank Social Center. The space can be found above the Nomad Bar, 501 Cedar Avenue South, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and is accessible by an exterior door on the north side of the building. These events are entertaining mash-ups of creative ideas from a variety of artists producing interactive projection pieces. Checkout the video documentation from the last event where I played. I’ll probably be using a combination of vintage Hammond organ through laptop, gestural generative sequencing, and custom grain table madness, all arranged in real-time in Ableton Live.

GMS as Open Source on Google Code

Posted on December 4, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

The GMS source code is now available on code.google.com. I’ve still got loads of idea for improvements and feature additions, but I’m also interested to see what input other developers might have for the project. Therefore, the code is now officially released and available as Open Source under the GPLv3.

Please let us know how you are using the GMS. I’ve been informed that Grant Muller will be using it experimentally on a jazz improvisation project he’s involved in. Rocky Rosga is producing some work with the GMS. Finally, my duet project with Graham O’Brien on drums has recorded an album (it will be a few months work to edit and mix, so don’t look for it anytime soon) of GMS improvisations with live drums.