On Wednesday, November 16, 2011, Olivia Solon of Wired.co.uk wrote an article describing my piece, Voice Lessons. I have creativeapplications.net to thank for this one. Olivia found the article about my piece there and then emailed me to ask for a brief interview. We conducted the interview over email and the article was published the next day. Read the article by Filip Visnjic on Creative Applications Network. Read the article from Olivia Solon on Wired. Thanks, Filip and Olivia!
Voice Lessons is an electronic, audio device that interrogates the popular myth that every musical instrument imitates the human voice. Touching the screen allows the participant to manipulate the visuals and vocalizations of the “voice teacher” as he recites vocal warm up exercises.
The piece resides in the space between a musical instrument and voice lesson. Move the touch point left, right, up, and down to explore the visual and auditory possibilities. Rapid high pitched loops occur while touching near the top of the screen while lower pitched longer loops are heard near the bottom.
The actor, also named John Keston, is my retired father who became a voice teacher after a long career on stage in plays, operas, and musicals with the Royal Shakespeare Company in our native country England and abroad.
Voice Lessons
32” interactive touch screen installation
By John Keston 2011
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Voice Lessons is an interactive touch-screen installation that I recently presented during a graduate critique seminar at MCAD. The piece, developed in Max/MSP, granulates both sound and video as the viewer touches the screen while maintaining synchronization. I will be installing the piece again next month for an open studio night on December 9, 2011 at the MCAD Whittier Studios, 2835 Harriet Avenue South, Minneapolis. I will also be sharing more complete documentation about the piece soon. For now, please enjoy this short segment of audio sampled from the piece as it was in use.
Voice Lessons Excerpt
This evening I have been working on the user interface for GrainMachine, a Max for Live instrument I developed for personal use in October of 2009. In the process of tonight’s testing I came up with this sound. I started with a sample of water dripping, loaded it into GrainMachine and then chose a very narrow grain at a fairly low frequency. Finally I swept slowly through the position of the sample creating the result heard below.
Water Dripping Sample in GrainMachine
Tonight I am demoing my Grain Machine Max for Live instrument at Handmade Music Minneapolis #6 (click for details). Lots of other people are showing off their goodies including Kris Peck of Xenharmonic Instruments, Adam Loper showing his DIY MIDI controller, MCTC students sound synthesis projects, and more. Here’s a few seconds of typical Grain Machine output to wet your appetite.
Grain Machine Demo