Ostracon Debut Excerpt: Particle Agent

Here’s a nearly two minute long excerpt from the third track, titled Particle Agent from our upcoming Ostracon debut, Unauthorized Modifications. The following description of the album from the press release offers insight into how this album was produced. (Photo of Graham O’Brien with Ostracon at the In/Out Festival in NYC, courtesy of inoutfest.org)

Ostracon is producer John Keston (AudioCookbook.org) on electronics and drummer Graham O’Brien (No Bird Sing). No keyboards are used in their music. Instead, Keston uses his custom sequencing software and hand manipulated light controllers to convert projected video signals into a stream of generative melodic structures. During their performances and recording sessions the visuals, electronics, and synchronized drumming are interwoven creating ephemeral structures that are familiar yet never repeated outside of each composition. O’Brien’s percussive statements firmly place the work into a non-linear landscape, grounded in an impossible to categorize igneous crust. UNAUTHORIZED MODIFICATIONS includes six pieces recorded and mixed at the former Flyte Tyme studios by Adam Krinsky. The the tracks, interspersed with angular melodic passages, sound mysterious, organic, and periodically invoke dystopian imagery.

Particle Agent (excerpt)
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VidiSynth Generates Audio from Light Sources

Expanding the VidiSynth Part III from paul sobczak on Vimeo.

Paul Sobczak has recently posted some videos documenting the VidiSynth. It’s has four independent oscillators that are controlled by either potentiometers or inputs from other sources. In this case he is using light dependent resistors or LDRs that suction onto a display. As video plays on the display the pitches change on all four oscillators based on the position of the LDR on the screen producing corresponding sounds. I’m not sure how Paul plans to use this, but I’m anticipating some interesting generative work with a synesthetic theme.

Generative Sequence Driving MDA JX10 Emulator

I created the following generative sequence using GMS (click for details), during a solo performance at the Spark Festival of Electronic Music and Art, October 2010. One of the virtual instruments I used in the set is an Open Source, Roland Super JX10 emulator made by MDA. The Roland Super JX10 was one of the last great analog poly-synths produced by Roland, and the first Roland synth to receive velocity and aftertouch treatment on the 76 key keyboard. Although I never owned one of these, I have played one before, and I imagine that programming them was brain surgery without the optional PG-800 programmer. In the documentation for the MDA JX10 they state, “[this] plug-in is designed for high quality (lower aliasing than most soft synths) and low processor usage – this means that some features that would increase CPU load have been left out”. To me this plugin sounds very good. I’d like to hear from anyone who owns or has played a Roland Super JX10 for their perspective on this instrument.

MDA JX10 Emulator
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Sounds from a Contact Mic Frozen in Water Ice

Freezing the mic outside overnight

I just got a note from Dan Pugsley of Radium Audio. regarding their new resource Radium Audio Labs. The site will feature a broad variety of sound experiments and explorations. Dan writes,

“Radium Audio has recently started a blog demonstrating some of our explorative processes, and though it’s very much in the early stages of development we have some pretty interesting pieces uploaded already and I was wondering if any of it might be suitable for Audio Cookbook? We have two new explorative projects in the works at the moment, one of which is based on binaural recordings and the other will be revolving around the use of dry ice to create a variety of sounds.”

The projects posted so far include using a coil mic to record the electromagnetic fields from various electronic devices, like an iPhone and a printer/scanner, and my favorite at the moment, sounds captured from a contact microphone frozen in water ice as it melts.


Frozen Contact Mic in Ice by Radium-Audio

Juno-106 Glitchy Drone

Here’s another excerpt from the glitches that I recorded while the voice chip was failing on my Roland Juno-106. In this section I was just holding a note without touching any other controls, so all the variations in the sound were caused by the autonomous shorting that was going on inside the faulty 80017a voice chip.

Juno-106 Glitchy Drone
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