About John CS Keston
John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research.
John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.
In my previous example of audio created with my gestural music sequencer, that I’m tentatively naming GMS, I presented a pattern of sampled Rhodes notes in a chromatic scale. One of the functions I’ve built into the application is the capability of switching scales. Currently the available scales are major, minor, pentatonic minor, and chromatic. Here’s an example of the application producing notes in a minor scale. One thing you may notice is the dynamic range. By gesturing lower within the Y axis the notes get quieter, while gesturing near the top of the screen makes notes that are louder.
So is there any video of this up on the net yet? I’d love to see it in action.
Man, I really want to get my hands on this sequencer
I created java reference library for MIDI-> MUSIC, MUSIC-> MIDI mapping that might be of use to you. It would at least give you quick access to more a lot more ready made scales (I think I have 17 in there?). Its here:
http://www.grantmuller.com/projects/midireference/
Very cool project, can’t wait to see the code :)
Hey Grant. Thanks! I’ll take a look at your library. I’ve got a lot more work to do, but once it’s in a stable condition I’ll release it here. DJ Three6T, I’ll get some video of it in action up soon.
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