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.
Today I decided to record my electric drill. It was on a list of “things i need to record”. Power tools make some great sounds with all sorts of textures and frequencies. I captured the sound of the drill in stereo at a variety of speeds. I also got the sound of switching the drill from forward to reverse. Afterward I chopped it up into a percussive loop and ran it through beat repeat to get a nice mechanical loop going.
Bad dentist flashbacks.
I just can’t get into Beat Repeat because whatever you put through it it always sounds unmistakeably like Beat Repeat. Would have liked to have heard your sounds sans Beat Repeat.
Like its electro flair, offers a bunch of possibilies in combination with other synthetic sounds or even synthesized vocals.
Hey Simon,
I agree with you about beat repeat. However, there are some clever ways that you can coax it into doing something more interesting. One technique I use (for any processing with randomness) is hybridization of the randomized results. Check out the posts Hybridized Beat Repeat and Herding Random Behaviors for an explanation, or look at the Random Processing tag for more examples. Admittedly I did not spend all that much time on this sound, not bothering to follow my own advice. I guess that they can’t all be gems when I’m creating a sound every day.
Pingback: Audio Cookbook » Blog Archive » Electric Drill Sounds
hi John
Certainly meant no disrespect. I think you are doing a brilliant thing here sharing your techniques with the world.
I will check out the other sounds you mention and I’m also going to take a listen to your ‘dry’ drill sounds.
Simon
Thanks, Simon. I appreciate your feedback. Your comment brings up an issue that I often contemplate. When is it valid to use factory presets and samples? I tend not to use them most of the time avoiding the “sound of the month” stigma. I do make exceptions for classic keyboard sounds like pianos and organs, or individual drum samples when programming beats. Perhaps I’ll write an entry about this at some point.