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.
On a few occasions during the One Sound Every Day project I presented a sound without any explanation and left it to the readers to guess at what it was and where it came from. Bragging rights went to the first reader to get it right and post their answer in a comment.
Sounds like a Korg MiniPops to me, though I don’t think I’ve seen it mentioned on the site. Rhythm Ace would be a close second…
I could of course, be completely wrong…
I’d have to go with a cheap ‘toy’ keyboard but beyond that I have no idea.
Congratulations, Grant! To tell you the truth I don’t remember exactly what the model of the beat maker was (probably a Rhythm Ace), but it was attached to an old Hammond that I used at this show: https://audiocookbook.org/sound_design/people-on-shelves/
I sampled every beat that it could make. Love those old analog drum sounds. I have Casiotone that’s got some nice, old, analog patterns on it as well.
I’ve got a ton of old Rhythm Ace sample for some reason. I had a buddy that was really into that drum machine for years, so I collected a ton of samples and we used them on a bunch of tracks. Still have those samples; The clave/woodblock gave it away (though I swear the MiniPops woodblock is identical).
Oh, and when that Hammond breaks, I can fix it :)
Will be around that area Feb 7th – 10th or so if you’re going to be around. I have to go to Pequot Lakes for work, but could probably arrange a beer visit on me! Cheers!
Hey Grant. Would love to meet up for a beer. Let’s arrange via email.