Finally the GMS meets the Roland MKS-80. During our Ostracon release performance coming up on Friday, June 24, 2011 I plan on using the MKS-80 for the first time in a live setting… vis-à-vis without a keyboard. Here’s a bassline I generated and looped in Ableton with the GMS routed to the MKS-80 controlled by the Bitstream 3X.
GMS Generated MKS-80 Bassline
Unearthed Music is giving away a free track from the album Unauthorized Modifications by Ostracon (John Keston on electronics and Graham O’Brien on drums). This album was recorded and mixed at by Adam Krinsky at the former Flyte Tyme studios and mastered by Tom Garneau of Audioactive.
To get the free track Probability Defect visit the release page and enter your email address in the box in the lower right of the screen. You will then receive an email message with a unique link to download the track at 320kbps. Please let us know here what you think of it and join us for the release show on Friday, June 24, 2011.
I created the following generative sequence using GMS (click for details), during a solo performance at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, October 2010. One of the virtual instruments I used in the set is an Open Source, Roland Super JX10 emulator made by MDA. The Roland Super JX10 was one of the last great analog poly-synths produced by Roland, and the first Roland synth to receive velocity and aftertouch treatment on the 76 key keyboard. Although I never owned one of these, I have played one before, and I imagine that programming them was brain surgery without the optional PG-800 programmer. In the documentation for the MDA JX10 they state, “[this] plug-in is designed for high quality (lower aliasing than most soft synths) and low processor usage – this means that some features that would increase CPU load have been left out”. To me this plugin sounds very good. I’d like to hear from anyone who owns or has played a Roland Super JX10 for their perspective on this instrument.
MDA JX10 Emulator
I just came across this five minute video shot by Ghostband artist Jon Davis on his mobile phone of my duet project Ostracon performing at the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis on July 17, 2010. I’ve been enjoying a lot of these lofi videos that Jon puts up on YouTube, and it reminds me of a quote I read recently from David Byrne in the liner notes for My Life in the Bush of Ghosts: “…we came to realize that high fidelity was a vastly over-rated convention that noboby had bothered to question…”. I can’t agree more, except that today, thankfully, it is being questioned more than ever.
The Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Arts is starting this Wednesday, September 29, and continues through Saturday, October 2, 2010. The festival this year includes yet another impressive array of artists.
I will be performing a solo Ostraka set on Saturday, October 2, prior to Caly McMorrow, and the amazing Fred Frith. Unbelievably, all of the performances and exhibits are free and open to the public. Checkout the Spark Festival website for details.
I’ll be performing at the Love Power Church, 1407 South Washington Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, upstairs at 6:30pm on Saturday, October 2 just before Caly McMorrow.