Solo Album will Coincide with 365th Daily Sound

Posted on June 30, 2009 by John CS Keston

I have discussed releasing a solo album centered around the musical output that has emerged as a result of creating One Sound Every Day on ACB. That day has finally come. I have agreed to release my solo album under my moniker, Ostraka, on July 28, 2009, coinciding with my 365th sound. The album is called Precambrian Resonance (Unearthed Music, 2009), a title I used for the ninth sound posted in the OSED category.

It includes fifteen tracks that all began as experiments posted on ACB. Ten of the tracks are full-length compositions, while the remaining five are shorter “micro-tracks” that were originally featured on ACB. The album is available immediately as a download-only pre-release through my label partner Unearthed Music. Here’s the opening track, Illuminator Console.

Illuminator Console

GMS Ensemble Live Performance

Posted on June 24, 2009 by John CS Keston

Nils Westdal shot this video of myself and Graham O’Brien on drums performing with the GMS during one of the Flashbelt after parties on June 8, 2009. The party was held in the back alley of One on One bike studio, considered the bike Mecca of the Midwest.

Recorded using the internal mic on the video camera, the mix is chatty and pretty drum heavy for the first half, but you can hear the GMS sequencing a little better toward the end.

The setup consists of a MacBook Pro running the GMS synced to Ableton Live 7, an M-Audio Firewire 410 interface, a Mackie 1202 mixer, my Korg MS2000 for external control of the GMS, a Casio projector, and a variety of bike lights and spinning LED tops as “light controllers”.

Click to view a 640 x 480 version in a new tab.

Weird Message

Posted on June 12, 2009 by John CS Keston

adapter Every so often I save certain voice messages. Usually because they are entertaining, strange, or sometimes infuriating. I eventually end up deleting them after a while. I decided to preserve this weird message from a friend who might identify himself after hearing this, because he is a regular reader and is also not the shy type.

I had not tried to preserve any sort of voice messages for a long time, remembering that it had been arduous process. However, I had purchased an adapter to listen to FM radio with normal headphones for my Sony Ericsson mobile phone. All I had to do was connect the adapter to the mic-in on my MacBook Pro and record away. I was even able to attenuate the levels via the volume adjust on the phone itself. Here’s the recording. I’ve left some of the sounds around the message in place to put it in context.

Weird Message

External MIDI Control via XML

Posted on May 27, 2009 by John CS Keston

After a few performances live looping with Ableton and the GMS, I have found it cumbersome and frustrating to have to repeatedly swap between the two applications. To solve this, I have added he ability to control the GMS with an external MIDI device. I achieved this by creating an XML document with the parameters included as tags with a CC attribute to designate what control change value to use for each setting here’s a few lines out of the XML document.

<GMSMidiController>
    <MIDIControllerName>Korg MS2000</MIDIControllerName>
    <MidiChannel CC="31" type="knob" />
    <TopOctaveIncrement CC="82" type="button" />
    <BottomOctaveIncrement CC="78" type="button" />
    <Preset useProgramChange="true" />
    <ToggleFreeMode CC="77" type="button" />
    <StartStop CC="89" type="button" />
    <Sustain CC="64" invert="false" type="pedal" />
    <SetDuration CC="30" type="knob" />
    <ToggleDotted CC="92" type="button" />
    <SetScale CC="29" type="knob" />
    <ToggleMirroring CC="86" type="button" />
</GMSMidiController>

As you can see I’m using knobs to adjust some settings and buttons to adjust others. It’s really fun to turn a knob on my Korg MS2000 and see the sliders in my software start to move in response. Program change for presets and note on for transposition will work from any old controller, but the rest of the parameters need to be mapped to knobs, sliders or buttons. In total I have around thirty-six specific parameters that are now adjustable with a controller.

GMS Performance Excerpt #4

Tonight: MAW at the Mobile Music Symposium + GMS

Posted on May 22, 2009 by John CS Keston

inna Tonight (Friday, May 22, 2009) MAW will be projecting at a party for the Mobile Music Symposium outside of the Nomad World Pub in Minneapolis from 9:00 PM to midnight. The artists include Jenny Schmid, Ali Momeni, David Steinman, Andrea Steudel, Rachel James, and Robin Schwartzman. I’ll be providing musical accompaniment using my gestural music sequencer, perhaps creating something similar to the following segment.