Four Oscillator Drone Produced with the WSG

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

What good is a Weird Sound Generator if you’re not using it to make weird sounds? Sometimes it is nice to just hold it on your lap and stroke it gently. That aside, it’s quiet useful once you plug it in and start twiddling the knobs. Here’s a piece I created by tuning the each of the four oscillators on the WSG and then fiddled with the filters. At the same time I made some adjustments to a phaser that I was running it through in Ableton Live and topped it off with ping pong delay.

Four Oscillator Drone

Exploring The Sounds of Ice

Posted on March 14, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

This is one of the coolest (no pun intended) sound design projects ever. Marlin Ledin rode his bike and camped around the Apostle Islands of Lake Superior covering about 150 miles on the ice recording the creaks and groans of the shifting ice plates. Listen to his recordings and checkout photos and videos of his expedition at www.bikingtheapostles.com. Marlin describes the ice sounds:

The Lake Drums, as some people call them, are an amazing phenomenon that rank right up there with Aurora Borealis. Lake drums, or drumming perhaps, occurs when a shift in the ice creates friction between sheets of ice, like tectonic plates of the earths crust. The unique sounds created come after these shifts in the ice. I ventured out and captured some of these sounds with modern recording techniques.

Social Sound Design

Posted on March 8, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

Social Sound Design is a Q&A site for sound designers recently created by Andrew Spitz of { sound + design }. It looks like it has the potential to be an excellent resource. If you’re not familiar with Andrews site { sound + design } I recommend that you check it out as well. From SSD:

SSD is a Q&A site encompassing all the wonderful disciplines of sound design: film, game, art and installations, sound effects, new media, software, programming (Max/MSP; Pd, etc.), Arduino and micro-controllers, gear, feedback, recording, techniques and tips… as long as it involves sound design it is welcome here!

Experimental Music Mondays Call for Entries

Posted on February 28, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

I am curating a series of Experimental Music events hosted by the Kitty Cat Klub in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The first installment is Monday, March 1st, 2010. Subsequent installments are scheduled for the last Monday of every month. For the first show we have three performances.

Ostraka (myself) with Graham O’Brien on drums will be performing using the GMS. Terr the Om (Nathan Brende) will also be performing his distinct breed of electronic music, melding the output from his circuit bent toys with looping and real-time arranging in Ableton Live. Thirdly, Dialsystem consisting of brothers, Graham and Casey O’Brien will likely mesmerize listeners with their ethereal mix of bass, drums, and electronics. Music starts at 9:00pm.

I’m in the process of booking the upcoming events, so if you are a performer of experimental music and would like to get involved, please send your name, artist name, contact information, links to a biography, and links to audio examples to emm [ at ] audiocookbook [ dot ] org.

Native Multitouch Support on the Nexus One and Beyond

Posted on February 3, 2010 by John C.S. Keston

I successfully installed an official Google Nexus One update to my phone last night and have been giddily pinch zooming to my hearts content ever since.

The previous lack of multitouch support on the N1 led to speculation about Apple patents and possible litigation against American companies including it on their handheld devices, but Google no longer seems worried about it.

It will be interesting to see the reactions to this, but in the meantime I’m feeling pretty glib about my decision to buy the Nexus One.

Of course this doesn’t change the potential of the device for multitouch control or music apps, however, it might attract more customers, and as a result, more developers to the platform.

Furthermore, I have been researching a variety developing stories about multitouch tablet devices to compete with the iPad. MSI is releasing a tablet running Android OS later this year. And Google has released concept photos of a tablet running Chrome OS, that is reported will support multitouch capabilities.

So, for many of us who were disappointed by Apple’s iPad announcement last week, there are a variety of competing and more open devices on the horizon that could very well satisfy some of what we’re dreaming of for open, multitouch, interactive, music devices.