University of Minnesota Row Team

One of the things I like to do with a few friends is ride bikes to a spot along the Mississippi river, light a fire, and have a few beers. It’s the best happy hour in town. At this particular spot it is not uncommon to catch the University of Minnesota row team practicing. Anticipating this possibility I decided to put a field recorder and microphone in my bag.

Unfortunately I did not have the foresight to bring extra batteries so all I was able to capture was this short section of a four man team going by followed by their coach in a motor boat with a megaphone. At this time of the evening the river is like glass, so shortly afterward you can hear their wake splashing on the beach.

Forgetting the batteries was not the only mistake I made. I also set the levels too low and although I was using a wind screen the recording was dominated by a low frequency wind rumble that would not have been there had I enabled the bass roll-off on the mic. I did my best to fix it by boosting the levels and running it through a high pass filter.

Row Team

 

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About John CS Keston

John CS Keston is an award winning transdisciplinary artist reimagining how music, video art, and computer science intersect. His work both questions and embraces his backgrounds in music technology, software development, and improvisation leading him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery and exploration through the use of graphic scores, chance and generative techniques, analog and digital synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Performers are empowered to use their phonomnesis, or sonic imaginations, while contributing to his collaborative work. Originally from the United Kingdom, John currently resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota where he is a professor of Digital Media Arts at the University of St Thomas. He founded the sound design resource, AudioCookbook.org, where you will find articles and documentation about his projects and research. John has spoken, performed, or exhibited original work at New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2022), the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2022), the International Digital Media Arts Conference (iDMAa 2022), International Sound in Science Technology and the Arts (ISSTA 2017-2019), Northern Spark (2011-2017), the Weisman Art Museum, the Montreal Jazz Festival, the Walker Art Center, the Minnesota Institute of Art, the Eyeo Festival, INST-INT, Echofluxx (Prague), and Moogfest. He produced and performed in the piece Instant Cinema: Teleportation Platform X, a featured project at Northern Spark 2013. He composed and performed the music for In Habit: Life in Patterns (2012) and Words to Dead Lips (2011) in collaboration with the dance company Aniccha Arts. In 2017 he was commissioned by the Walker Art Center to compose music for former Merce Cunningham dancers during the Common Time performance series. His music appears in The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (2012) and he composed the music for the short Familiar Pavement (2015). He has appeared on more than a dozen albums including two solo albums on UnearthedMusic.com.

One thought on “University of Minnesota Row Team

  1. That is a wicked cool recording man. I rowed for 3 years in college, and I cannot communicate just how memorizing the drum of the oars against the shell is during a race or practice. For hours on end we’d listen to this sound in a deep athletic meditation on the water.

    Thanks for sharing

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