I will be performing an all hardware set using the DSI Tempest drum machine, the Elektron Analog 4, and the Moog Sub 37 this Thursday, October 22, 2015. Fellow music technology wizard, Robert Luna, will start off the evening drumming with his band Houseluna at 7:00pm followed by my set at 8:30pm. The event is being held at The Pourhouse at 10 S 5th St, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
I’ll be playing a similar set to my last solo event, The Taming of the CPU, but with enough variations to keep it interesting if you happened to catch that show. Listen to the track below to get a brief sample of what I’ll be performing. We hope to see you there!
The INST-INT 2015 conference, exploring the “…art of Interactivity for objects, environment, and experiences,” just happened and I had the honor and privilege of giving a workshop at the event titled Interactivity Sonified. The intent of the workshop was to teach attendees to sonify their work by triggering, generating, and processing sonic textures or musical forms through interactivity. I covered several basic programming techniques for including sound in projects with input devices and numerical values. Touchscreens, microphones, cameras, gyros, MIDI controllers, or any other stream or set of incoming data might be used to add sound. The sonification of this information adds a whole new sensory dimension to interactive installations and performances.
During the workshop I covered sonification examples in Processing.org and Max while looking at input signals from the Leap Motion, MIDI controllers, video camera, microphone, keyboard, and trackpad. We experimented with recording, looping, reversing, pitch shifting, and granulating sampled audio. We also looked at modeling waveforms and processing them through lowpass, highpass, bandpass filters, delays, and reverbs. Finally we looked at the convolution reverb in Max for Live trying out several of the IRs as well as discussing the technique of sampling impulse responses.
In this video I asked the attendees to pull out their headphones cords after completing the task of triggering sounds with a moving object. The resulting cacophony in the room was quite beautiful! I thoroughly enjoyed giving this workshop and would love to do it again. Please be in touch if you’re part of an organization interested in a workshop like this. For more information you can view the slideshow for the workshop at instint.johnkeston.com. Keep in mind that the slide show just a fraction of the activities. Most of the time was spent applying code and examples to either trigger, generate, or process sound.
Recently I had the honor and pleasure of having a discussion with Darwin Grosse for his podcast Art + Music + Technology. If you’re not familiar with his interviews I suggest that you check out his program. Darwin’s straight forward conversations with a broad range of media artists seem to fill a void that no other programs do. It’s hard to single out any of the programs specifically because they are all entertaining (and educational), but some of my favorites (sorted alphabetically) include:
Carnage aka Terrell Woods can only be defined as a multi-instrumentalist even though he performs exclusively with his own voice. Carnage uses his vast vocal range to emulate bass, drums, synth lines, samples, percussion, turntablism, and more, layering and synchronizing the arrangements with nothing but an off-the-shelf loop pedal. On top off all that he stacks his extraordinary rhyming facilities.
Orlando based artist E-Turn is a mega-talent who often combines forces with DJ SPS and many other notable artists. E-Turn effortlessly generates an orchestra of music and vocals during her performances while drawing from her hiphop influences, Persian vocals, and Iranian poetry.
Ostracon is myself on synthesizers and Graham O’Brien on drums. The two of us perform evolving compositions that fuse rich analog electronics with dynamic live drumming. You’ve heard plenty about us here on audiocookbook.org, but at this show we will be presenting new tracks that we recently recorded for our next album.
What all of us on this very special bill have in common is a drive to make music that is bigger that we are. Hence, “Be Your Own Band”. Music starts at 11pm. Cover is $7 and ages 18 and up are admissible. Don’t miss it!
On August 13 I had the pleasure of performing an original film score to picture at the Landmark Center in St. Paul for MNKINO Film Fest 2015. The event featured more than twenty short films with original scores. Most of the scores were performed to the films by a talented orchestra assembled for the event. I wrote and performed the music for the film Familiar Pavement by Aaron Marx.
Performing my four minutes of electronic to the film in real time was quite challenging. I did not use any time lock, relying on the original BPM and finding a good starting point to get the timing right. What made the timing critical (and a little tricky) was that I had processed the original film audio with filters and reverb so that it sat well within the arrangement. However, once I found a good marker in the film and practiced it several times I was well prepared.
The original score used the DSI Tempest for all the drums and the Elektron Analog Four for bass, pads, and an arpeggio. The melody line was sequenced on the Analog Four control voltage track and played on a Korg Monotribe (if you didn’t know that was possible read this). At the event I added the Moog Sub 37 to the setup so I could harmonize and embellish the melody lines.
