“Sound is Kind of Touch at a Distance”

Posted on August 26, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

I recently came across an episode of WNYC‘s Radio Lab with Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich delving into the making of their acclaimed program that melds science, philosophy, and psychology into a sonic mash-up of mind expanding fun. Somehow, even as an avid listener, this podcast “short” from November, 2007 slipped through the cracks for me until now.

One of the things that attracted me to Radio Lab in the first place was the emphasis on sound design. In every episode creative, and experimental audio production techniques are used to build soundscapes that color and pace the interviews and conversations in a musical fashion, transfixing the ear as the stories unfold.

In Making Radio Lab Jad and Robert discuss their approach to sound design on the program with some excellent examples of spoken phrases from interviews with and without the audio manipulation applied. The phrase “Sound is Kind of Touch at a Distance”, coined by Dr. Anne Fernald on the Musical Language episode, occurs as a theme throughout the program illustrating the importance of sound design to the production of the show.

Making Radio Lab

Beta Release of the GMS this September

Posted on August 25, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

I have decided to release beta version binaries of the GMS for both Mac and Windows sometime next month. There a few bugs I have yet to solve, like the application freezing if you choose the video device more than once. I’ll be including a readme that lists the known issues along with the application files.

One of the reasons for doing this is to get some feedback on the tool, and find out if anyone is interested in continuing development on the project as Open Source. There are some pretty tricky issues with Processing and video that perhaps a more advanced developer than me might be able to optimize easily enough. I am interested in moving on to some other projects, and am fairly satisfied with how the GMS works for my own purposes at the moment.

If anyone is interested in experimenting with this tool (I know of a few interested parties so far), let me know in a comment and I’ll gauge my efforts on getting a beta out soon or over a more extended time period based on your feedback.

GMS Leftovers

Posted on August 20, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

San Francisco Mask Shop If you have been wondering why ACB is a little bit on the slow side lately, it’s because I have been quite busy doing other things, like my night class at CNMAT and releasing my solo album, Precambrian Resonance. So, after presenting 365 sounds in 365 days, I’ve been having a bit of a rest.

But now I am ready to dive into some new projects, including my duet with Graham O’Brien (drums) that we’re calling Ostraka with Dial System. We recently performed at a club in Minneapolis, but I neglected to record the show. However, I saved my document with the GMS clips I had captured. Here’s a short mix of a few of the remnants from the performance, unfortunately lacking the drums.

GMS Leftovers

500 Million Years From Now

Posted on August 11, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

dots It was recently estimated by Edward Guinan at the XXVIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union that our lonely planet is nearing the end of its habitability for life as we know. Albeit, on a cosmological timescale. Between .5 and 1 billion years from now, increases in the Sun’s temperature will cause the Earth’s oceans and atmosphere to evaporate.

Shortly after reading this article I opened up my Ableton Live set from Sunday night to listen to some of the loops I had captured with the GMS during the show. After opening the document I pressed play and heard a stark landscape of reverberation. I saw visions of a lifeless, peace 500 million years from now.

What had happened was that when saving the document I had left all my master effects in their last position. I decided to capture these sounds and vary them over time. The effect chain on the master track included a low pass filter, bit reduction, delay, and reverb with nine parameters mapped to knobs on a controller. Here’s what I ended up with on the second take.

500 Million Years From Now

Precambrian Resonance on iTunes

Posted on August 10, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

Recently my solo project, Ostraka, became available on the iTunes Store. Now it’s possible to buy individual tracks. My label partner, Unearthed Music, only sells full albums rather than individual tracks. At such a low volume the transaction fees make individual track sales impractical. That’s why we let Apple handle it for us. Right now the album is floating around in the lonely outskirts of cyberspace, with no ratings or reviews. If anyone is so inclined, please consider visiting the link below to deposit feedback.