New Spectral Tablature Collaboration

Posted on February 25, 2015 by John CS Keston

Part music, part visual art, and part sound design, the collaborative series Spectral Tablature is something I’ve been doing in various forms since 2013. Recently I have been working on a new piece in collaboration with Jasio Stefanski for an upcoming exhibition of his work. I’ll share more information about the exhibit in a future post. For now I’d like to present some of the content that I generated in the process of working on the project.

The image above is spectral analysis of a piece of music that I composed deliberately to produce interesting sonic and visual forms. The piece includes three layers of sequences that slowly speed up and vary in pitch and then slow down again. The speed of the sequence was based on an LFO with a variable rate rather than BPM. This process, along with other techniques, resulted in a form that starts simple, approaches entropy, and then returns to its original simplicity.

The final piece will be reprocessed visually through a set of design criteria determined by Jasio. Once the new design has been printed I will digitize the image and reprocess it as sound. The new audio will retain the original frequencies and temporal information but the textural and timbral qualities will be completely transformed.

Rule Based Electronic Music: Whistle While You Work

Posted on December 15, 2014 by John CS Keston

10735150_1485796591686463_1463344557_n

My rules for this piece were to compose, arrange, and produce music in real-time (edited for length, but no overdubbing) using only the three instruments discussed. The track starts with a sequence I programmed into the Moog Sub 37. Next an arpeggio is introduced from the Elektron Analog Four (A4). Soon afterward we hear the high hats from the DSI Tempest and a long sustained melodic chord progression also from the A4. Finally the rest of the percussion is supplied by the Tempest along with a bass line. From there on out it’s a matter arranging the existing parts (muting and un-muting) with a little real-time knob tweaking.

What makes this piece different for me was sending the output of the Tempest into the A4’s external inputs. This allows for processing external signals through the reverb and delay built into the A4. So when performing a roll on the Tempest, for example, I can turn up the reverb or delay on the A4 external input to add some additional character to the sound. This is going to be really nice for upcoming performances. Since the A4 has two inputs I may just run sends into each then apply reverb to one and the delay (perhaps with a touch of chorus) to the other. This would give me a reverb and delay send for everything plugged into the mixer. Expect to hear more experiments exploiting these and other techniques in upcoming posts.

New Video from Moog: Sub 37 | Modulation & Sequencing

Posted on December 12, 2014 by John CS Keston

Moog Music has just posted a beautifully produced new video exploring the modulation and sequencing functionality of the Moog Sub 37. Last weekend I did some exploration of my own into modulating the self oscillating filter while driving it through the feedback circuit. Here’s a snippet from the sounds that happened during that experiment. All the sound is from the self oscillating filter. I used exactly none of the three oscillators (OSC1, OSC2, Sub OSC) on the instrument. It’s also running through the Memory Man Delay.

WARNING: The following track contains extremely high and low frequencies. Please start with low volume levels.

Duet No.7 for Synthesizer and The Singing Ringing Tree

Posted on November 26, 2014 by John CS Keston

This is the last of seven videos produced documenting my five day recording session and performance series at the Singing Ringing Tree (SRT) in Burnley, UK. There’s a lot more content in the can, but for now this is enough to represent the project. My part of the collaboration with the SRT was simultaneously recorded on site using a Novation Bass Station II connected to a USB battery. I also ran the Bass Station II through a Moog Minifooger Delay.

My last day on site was also the windiest and it turned out that the best wind reduction happened to be a very thin cotton t-shirt wrapped around the binaural head as you can see in the photo below. The strong winds, although useful, made the process quite difficult, and the binaural effect seemed a little less prominent with any sort of wind reduction applied. However, I was able to get couple of good takes by carefully placing the dummy head next to the SRT and opposite the wind. Please checkout the playlist of all six duets (#2 was omitted) on my YouTube channel.

Continue reading →

Hi-8, Bleep Labs, Moog Sub 37, Minifooger, Elektron Analog 4

Posted on November 17, 2014 by John CS Keston

This analog-sourced audiovisual piece is a collaboration with video artist Chris LeBlanc. The visuals were performed with a Hi-8 camera running through Tachyons+ and LoFiFuture processors, and keyed with a Bleep Labs synth. On the music end I’m playing my Moog Sub 37 through my Minifooger Delay and synched up to an Elektron Analog Four. I sent Chris separate signals from the Sub 37 and the A4 that he used to make the visuals respond.