The Phattest Sound to Size Ratio Ever?

Posted on August 20, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

Within my realm of experience, the phattest sound to size ratio ever has been achieved by the much-hyped Korg Monotron. I received the Monotron in the mail yesterday and was shocked by it’s puny dimensions. Barely larger than a typical smart phone, the Monotron looks like a prop for a Barbie I Can Be a Rock Star set. Putting my judgmental feelings aside, I plugged it into my mixer and was even more shocked by the huge, rich, thick, and chunky tones produced. On the box it says “True analog synthesis satisfaction” and I cannot argue with that statement. Here’s a quick demonstration of the sound quality and depth of the oscillators (one VCO and one LFO). Please listen with proper monitors or headphones. Laptop speakers will not do this justice. Does anything else come close to this as far as the size to sound ratio is concerned? Please add your thoughts below.

Monotron Demo

Grain Machine Update and Layered Experiment

Posted on August 2, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

Here’s a new look at the Grain Machine M4L device. Since last time I have updated the device to allow drag and drop samples that are stored with the Live set, and added a visual for the filter that’s controlled by the accelerometer on the controller (iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch).

The best thing about using this in Live is being able to live-loop and layer the output from Grain Machine into clips on different tracks, not to mention processing. Another advantage is saving the state of the device in the Live set so that one document has sample set X, while the next has sample set Y. Here’s a piece I created with the Grain Machine in Ableton Live using some samples I randomly selected from my sound library.

Grain Machine Layers

Grain Machine Max for Live Instrument

Posted on July 30, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

The Grain Machine v0.1

Something I have been meaning to do for a while was convert the MaxMSP instrument that I titled the Wavetable Glitch Machine (WTGM) into a Max for Live patch. The WTGM uses a TouchOSC interface running on an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad to explore samples using granular techniques as well as a virtual scrub dial with friction modeling. Visit the WTGM tag to read more and view a video of it in operation. I have renamed the instrument Grain Machine for the M4L version.

First I prepared the patch for transfer to M4L. This involved making sure that all of the interface objects were in the main patching window, reorganizing the sub-patchers, and cleaning up a variety of other things that I imagined might interfere with the process. Following that, all that was left was copying and pasting the patch into a Max Instrument, replacing some of the standard Max objects with M4L objects, and building a tidy little presentation mode.

Although I had to rework some of the logic and patch cords, the conversion went surprisingly fast. I expected to be working on this for weeks, but it only took me a matter of hours to get it into working order. There is still some fine tuning to be done, but all the necessary functionality is in place. Here’s an audio example I made with a simple breakbeat loaded into the Grain Machine.

Grain Machine Experiment

Ostracon at In Out Festival, September 2010

Posted on July 26, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

Ostracon Video from Unearthed Music on Vimeo.

My project Ostracon (John Keston and Graham O’Brien) has been selected to perform at the In/Out Digital Performance Festival in New York this September, 2010. The schedule hasn’t been finalized yet, but we’ll be playing either on the 17th or 18th of the month at the Tank Theater, 354 West 45th Street, New York, NY 10036. Last year’s lineup included Monome creator, tehn (Brian Crabtree), and Peter Kirn of Creative Digital Music. From the In/Out Festival website.

In/Out is an annual festival that features leading performers, developers, artists, and tinkerers of the digital design community in hopes bridging the gap between the forum based world and the stage. The festival seeks to bring digitally driven performances into the limelight with two full days of workshops and performances.

This video is a live studio piece shot by Ai student Josh Clos, and recorded at Ai Minnesota by John Keston and Graham O’Brien. It’s representative of the music that we are generating during our live performances. For more checkout the Ostracon tag here on ACB, or visit our bio on Unearthed Music.

Experimental Music Mondays Part 5

Posted on June 26, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

The June 28 installment of Experimental Music Mondays starts out with music from EMM regular Terr the Om (Nathan Brende). Terr the Om combines circuit bending and laptop mangling to create glistening, quirky, and bit-crushed on-the-spot compositions with a break beat sensibility.

Next is Siamese Bug made up of drummer TIm Glenn and guitarist Jeremy Ylversaker. Tim Glenn (HeatdeatH, Squidfist) and Jeremy Ylvisaker (Alpha Consumer, Dosh, Andrew Bird) have played together in Fog and Ourmine, Individually they’ve performed everywhere from Sydney Opera Hall to your nightmares. Expect to hear the sounds from contact mics on torn cymbals and vintage transistor interference through guitar pickups and pedal arrays.

The final act of the evening is by noise masters Juhyo. “JUHYO is a collaboration between Minneapolis artists Brian Kopish (Surrounded) and Bill Henson (Oblong Box). Together they create horrifyingly beautiful soundscapes of pure noise. Armed with an array of homemade oscillators, delay units, resonators, samplers and sheer volume; aimed with composition, discipline and conscious, focused intent; JUHYO exists as an entity of creative expression, freedom, subtle beauty and eardrum bleeding power.”