Excerpt of Intro to Heavy Synth Track in Six

Posted on March 29, 2011 by John CS Keston

Inevitably one of the results of the One Synthesizer Sound Every Day project that I started in January is to produce an Ostraka album. So far I have nearly thirty tracks in the works. Many of them will end up on the cutting room floor, but here’s an excerpt from an introduction for one of the pieces that I’m confident will make the roster. The segment starts with a washy arpeggio on the D-50 morphed into a pad with copious amounts of reverb and delay. Next up are some MKS-80 effects that introduce an unprocessed bouncy arpeggio in six eight time.

DGK and Friends Bootleg Part 1

Posted on March 25, 2011 by John CS Keston

On March 13, 2011, my trio DGK (Jon Davis on bass, Tim Glenn on drums, and John Keston on Rhodes and Pro-One) performed at the Honey Lounge in Minneapolis, Minnesota in collaboration with an esteemed line-up of colleagues. Through the night people came and went, so in the upcoming parts of this series I’ll name the individuals involved. For the beginning of the evening it was DGK with Martin Dosh on additional drums, and Juno Alpha 1, Scott Fultz on electric guitar and soprano saxophone, Andrew Broder on electric guitar, Rajiah Johnson on flute, and Brandon Wozniak on tenor saxophone. The record is a bit chatty at times, but that’s to be expected with bootleg recordings. You never know, you just might stumble across a bizarre conversation buried in the mix.

DGK and Friends Part 1 (36:16)

Synth Bass Through Resonators

Posted on March 24, 2011 by John CS Keston

I made this synth bass patch today on the MKS-80 and performed real time edits with the Bitstream 3X sending sysex directly to the instrument. This technique feels a lot smoother and lower in latency that any other routing method I have tried so far. After recording it I ran it through Ableton’s resonators and automated some chord changes. Here’s an excerpt from the results.

Synth Bass Through Resonators

Triggered Minor Nine with Octave Saws

Posted on March 20, 2011 by John CS Keston

I created this patch today on the unnamed synthesizer that I remain obsessed with and decided to record some triggered minor nine chords whilst adjusting various filter and envelope parameters. Perhaps this will end up as a layer in an ambient piece of some sort.

Triggered Minor Nine with Octave Saws