Superheated Water – Dance of the Blobs

Posted on January 25, 2010 by lost track

I love the texture of this sound – it’s infinitely sampleable, and equally uncontrollable. A thin coating of oil, rubbed into the pan – then heat it on high for 5 minutes. After a while, the water becomes so hot and isolated from the surface of the metal it superheats (boils without bubbles). This creates the beautiful dancing effect you get, similar to when mercury is loose on a solid surface.

The recording was made on a fostex FR2LE with a canon digital camera for visuals. The single hits would be cool for super fizzy percussion, don’t you think? Sampled at 24/96 on a fostex fr2le in stereo, 12 inches above the pan.

Tom

High quality download here:
Superheated oil and water – dance of the blobs

YOUTUBE link – Superheated Water & Oil – Dance of the Blobs

Upcoming Ostraka Performance and New Album

Posted on January 23, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

My experimental music project, Ostraka with Graham O’Brien on Drums, is performing on January 27, 2010 at Big V’s in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’ll be on laptop using my custom developed application, the Gestural Music Sequencer (GMS). I’m also using my iPod Touch controlled grain-table glitch generating Max patch for another layer of texture. Chain Fight and Juhyo round out the bill.

It’s also about time I mentioned that I’m in the process of producing a new Ostraka album that features Graham O’Brien on drums. We recorded it recently at Masters Recording, formerly Flyte Tyme of Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis fame. The studio was just sold again and from what I understand will be called Madison Media Institute. In any case it was an amazing facility to lay down tracks. Here’s a shot of our setup in Studio A.

Generative Accident – Dripping Water

Posted on January 10, 2010 by lost track

drip I have been re-reading articles on Generative music in Audio Culture : Readings in Modern Music again, and some unplanned generative music took me be suprise – dripping from my jumper.

I set up a few cardboard loo rolls to resonate with the sound and stood around for 5 minutes recording it all. There are some really interesting syncopated moments, all underpinned with a regular metronomic beat. I liked the intrusion of external sounds to the mix, as you listen on. A Happy accident

Tom

generative dripping clothes

rec@24/96 with rode nt5 and fostex fr2le, minimal eq

GMS Video Experiment with Reason

Posted on December 22, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

GMS Video Experiment w/ Reason from Dane Messall on Vimeo.

My student, Dane Messall, has been experimenting with the GMS over the break and just posted this video experiment. He imported the video into the GMS and then interfaced it with Reason’s Thor synthesizer to generate the sound. Nice one, Dane!

GMS Now Available for Windows

Posted on December 5, 2009 by John C.S. Keston

GMS v0.10 beta binary distribution for Windows is now available, thanks to Grant Muller, who compiled the latest source code for the GMS under Windows. Please visit the GMS page to download the Windows version. If you’re interested in the source code for the GMS you can find it at http://code.google.com/p/gestural-music-sequencer/.