DGK Improv with Drums, Soprano Sax, Pro-One, Monotron, Posc, and Grain Machine

Posted on April 8, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

This 1:52 minute segment of improvisation from the DGK performance at Try This 2 on March 25, 2011 contains drums by Tim Glenn, Soprano Sax by Jon Davis, and jumble sale of gear played by yours truly. These instrument include, in order of appearance, the Sequential Circuits Pro-One, followed by the Korg Monotron, my handmade Sonodrome Posc, and my Max for Live, granular synth, Grain Machine. Prior to this performance I had been limiting my palette of textures to the Rhodes and the Pro-One, but for this performance I thought I would try including the Monotron, Posc, and Grain Machine in order to draw from a few more atonal colors.

DGK Try This 2 Segment

Stacked Polysynths Part 3

Posted on April 7, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Yet another example of stacked polyphonic synthesizers. The hollow square wave arpeggio, courtesy of the Super Jupiter, is augmented by a glassy pad provided by the Roland D-50 Linear Arithmetic synthesizer.

Stacked Polys Part 3

Meditative Drone

Posted on April 6, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

I created this meditative drone on the MKS-80 by holding a chord down with the sustain pedal and adjusting the filter, pitch bend and modulation wheel during the 2:21 minute length of the piece. I also drenched it in an unhealthy dose of stereo ping pong delay giving it a dreamy atmosphere especially during the slow bends. Fun!

Meditative Drone

Stacked Polysynths Part 2

Posted on April 5, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Here’s the second in a series of stacked polyphonic synthesizer experiments. Once again I used the Roland D-50 and the Roland MKS-80. The percussive sound that fades in and out was made by by the D-50, and the evolving synth texture came from the Super Jupiter while manipulating parameters with the Bitstream 3X. My goal is to eventually have control over D-50 with the BS3X as well.

Stacked Polys Part 2

Stacked Polysynths Part 1

Posted on April 4, 2011 by John C.S. Keston

Today I updated my studio with the inexpensive yet feature rich MOTU Audio Express interface. I haven’t had time to put it through its paces yet, but I did manage to get it configured in time to use it for the synthesizer sound of the day. Creating this sound would have been more difficult prior to owning this interface because I did not have as many available inputs with my M-Audio Firewire 410. To create this sound I stacked two polysynths – the Roland D-50 and the Roland MKS-80. With the Audio Express I was able to plug in both instruments in stereo and play them simultaneously using the D-50 as the controller, then record them on separate tracks. Here’s the first out of a series of these stacked polysynth experiments.

Stacked Polys Part 1