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.
GMS Performance Excerpt #3
I have agreed to release my solo album with Unearthed Music on July 28, 2009. This will correspond with exactly one years worth of entries in the One Sound Every Day category on ACB. Since all of the pieces included in this work were inspired by my almost-daily-sound-experiments, it’s a fitting date to release the fruits of my labor. The album is nearly finished and will be released under my Ostraka moniker. Before I master the album I would like to involve ACB readers in the production process by polling you for suggestions.
What are your favorite sounds or micro-tracks that I’ve shared with you during this period? I plan on including four to six pieces from the ACB archives on the release. If you have an opinion about what should go on the album, please respond with a link to the post that has the sound in a comment to this entry. Thanks!
Here’s my latest mix of Blitzen Machine to give you a taste of what to expect from the album.
Blitzen Machine
I’ve been scheduled to perform live using my GMS this Wednesday night, May 13, 2009. I’ll be projecting against the Western wall of Art Institutes International. The reactive music will be amplified along with the projection as it is produced in real-time. Here’s the publicity statement that went out about the event.
John Keston will be performing using his gestural music sequencer or GMS on Wednesday, May 13, 2009 in the parking lot next to Art Institutes International Minnesota, 15 South 9th Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The GMS was written in Processing.org by Ai instructor, Unearthed Music recording artist, and AudioCookbook.org founder John Keston. His tool analyzes video input and converts it into a sequence of musical information in real-time. The live video image will be projected on the building while the musical response to the images is amplified through a sound system. For more information about the GMS visit audiocookbook.org/tag/gms/. All Ai students, staff, alumni, and the public are welcome to attend this free performance. A drawing will be held (for WDIM students only) giving away two passes to this years Flashbelt conference.
Here’s a segment from a practice session today to give you an idea about what sort of output the GMS can produce. All of the percussion, melodic lines, and bass were generated by the sequencer, then live looped to produce the results.
GMS Practice Piece in C Sharp
Minneapolis based sound designer and Nobot band member Kyle Vande Slunt recently alerted me to an excellent animated short titled Subprime – “watch the american housing market spiral out of control”. The animation was produced by Beeple, otherwise known as graphic designer, short film and music video producer Mike Winkelmann.
The music was produced by Nobot and the sound design by Kyle Vande Slunt. Kyle is a talented musician and sound designer working actively in the industry. You can view his demo reel and hear examples of his work at standingwavesound.com. He has also offered to contribute to ACB, so keep a lookout for an article or two from him soon.
You might remember me posting an article called Three Phase Oscillator produced using a Ruin & Wesen tutorial on creating a “game of life” sequencer. Well, Grant Muller has run with the idea and created a robust, fully featured, multitimbral sequencing application. I have just started scratching the surface of possibilities that his tool offers. Features include a long list of possible scales, including all the modes, and Turkish to name a few. What I like most is that six versions of the sequencer run in tandem so that you can have separate voices on different MIDI channels and / or devices. For more information, or to download his sequencer visit Grant Muller’s site. Here’s a short example I made with the Game of Life Sequencer Bank Beta.
GOL Recording Part I