These recordings feature me performing a collection of my compositions as a soloist for the Envelop Deep Listening series at Mirror Lab in Minneapolis on July 10, 2025. The pieces were performed on a Rhodes Mark I Stage electric piano running through a custom modular skiff used to sample, resample, loop, and process the incoming signals. The banging heard in the track Quarantine were fireworks going off outside the venue.

Recorded by Tom Michaels. Photo lifted from @UnderCurrentMPLS

I am excited to announce that Duets for Synthesizer and _________ is now out on the Berlin based label ElektraMusic.eu. These composition feature live performances with binaural recordings of the surrounding environments. Listening with circumaural headphones will provide a three dimensional sonic image of the ambience in most of the pieces. More details are in the liner notes below.

One-part binaural field recordings and one-part synthesized sound, Duets… treats the ambience of urban spaces as if they were conscious participants in an improvising ensemble. Using analog synthesizers Keston alternates between performing accompaniment for these environments and allowing the ambience to accompany him.

The environmental sounds form drones and rhythmic patterns while Keston responds with fundamental waveforms. The synthesized timbres are modulated and filtered to create complex textures that blend or contrast with the ambient sound. The field recordings were largely captured with binaural microphones. While wearing circumaural headphones the listener is inserted into a 3D soundscape with the synthesized sound placed in the center of the spatial image.

On May 15, 2025 I will be performing at Berlin, Minneapolis with world-renowned jazz/genre-spanning artist Anthony Cox and Suwal Singh on tabla for an evening of short solos and duets and a full-length trio set. For my part I will be playing the house Steinway though a modular skiff that I have setup to sample/resample and process the piano.

That skiff has changed slightly from what I’ve been using for the first few examples, but it is still yielding satisfying textures for me. More about the event is below or visit berlinmpls.com/calendar/cox-keston-singh. In addition a radio piece by Philip Nusbaum was aired on Jazz88 (KBEM 88.5), Minneapolis and archived here.

World-renowned jazz/genre-spanning artist Anthony Cox will team up with award-winning music technologist John C.S. Keston on piano/modular synth and Suwal Singh on tabla for an evening of discovery. Short solos and duets from the musicians will evolve into a full-length trio set of creative collaboration.

Anthony Cox is an internationally renowned arranger, composer, performer, recording artist, and educator. His career has spanned over 30 years of music education, composition, and performance, encompassing an extensive list of collaborations, performances, and recordings with notable artists in the field of jazz. The list includes Sam Rivers, Joe Lovano, Geri Allen, Kenny Wheeler, Ed Blackwell, Billy Higgins, John Scofield, The NDR Big Band, Dino Saluzzi, and Henry Threadgill.

John C.S. Keston’s background in music technology, software development, and improvisation leads him toward unconventional compositions that convey a spirit of discovery through the use of graphic scores, generative techniques, sound synthesis, experimental sound design, signal processing, and acoustic piano. Originally from the United Kingdom, he currently resides in Minneapolis, 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 can learn more about his projects and performances.

Suwal Singh (tabla, guitar, sarangi) has contributed to the Minnesota music scene as part of projects such as SitarTabla (Eastern classical), Yeti Steady (avant-garde soundscapes), MoMoSauce (Nepali music), and Jest (pop rock). He has also worked as a session musician with Nathan Hanson, Brian Roessler, Eric Carranza, Colleen Buckman, and Dave Mehling and has appeared at Icehouse, the Varsity Theater, the Janet Wallace Fine Arts Center, Bedlam Theatre, St. Paul Art Crawl, AZ Gallery, KFAI, the Capri Theater, MN Yoga Conference, and Jazz Central Studios.

ACB Live Volume 6 was lived streamed on Twitch.TV, Wednesday, April 16, 2025 (coincidentally my mum and niece’s birthday). This time around we featured electronic artist, Erik Tinberg. After Erik’s concert I performed Rhodonea in a similar fashion to what I did at the SEAMUS conference last month. The video about is an archive of the event including the performances along with a bit of banter between me and Erik about our concepts and process. Our friend Charles handled the video and streaming duties beautifully.

This video is a new interpretation of Rhodonea (Rhodonea II) that I performed for SEAMUS (the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the US) at Purdue University on Saturday, March 22, 2025. Attending and performing at the conference was a fantastic experience. I’ll share more about the event in future post.

The animated, generative, graphic score developed with Processing.org sends corresponding MIDI data to one of my favorite electronic instruments of late, the Dirtywave M8. Previously I performed the piece in Ireland at the inaugural Radical Futures conference.

The piece serves as a model of how we might collaborate with near future synthetic entities. Software feeds automated, algorithmic, projected visual cues, tempi, and low frequency oscillations to improvising electronic musicians. The visuals, based on Maurer Roses, suggest melodic, harmonic, and percussive gestures that are modulated by data streaming from the generative animations. Throughout the piece the artist adapts to the familiar yet unpredictable graphic scores and corresponding signals.

Note: please watch in full screen with the lights off and listen on headphones or high fidelity stereo speakers

Polyend Tracker Mini and a Dirtywave m8, side by side.

Recently I became enamored with two portable hardware Tracker machines: the Polyend Tracker Mini and the Dirtywave m8. The Mini is the smaller successor to the Polyend Tracker and the predecessor to the Polyend Tracker+. I originally purchased a Polyend Tracker when they were significantly discounted when the Tracker Mini was announced. While I was aware of the Dirtywave m8, I decided to purchase the Tracker for the following reasons:

• The cost of the m8 was significantly more expensive.
• The Tracker features a far greater number of dedicated buttons – making it appear more immediately usable.

For the most part, I really enjoy the Polyend Tracker. The large screen is very readable, the ‘Performance’ mode is a lot of fun with the pads and it presents a very approachable means of song composition by sequencing Patterns with each Pattern being the Tracker style of sequencing. I decided to test the portability of the Tracker on a recent trip by trying to use it on an airplane. After MacGuyver’ing the Tracker into a modified iPad case and attaching a slim battery back, I was off.

Unfortunately, this proved to be a less than ideal situation. Perhaps the fault lies with Delta Airlines for reducing seating on a plane to nearly standing-room only but I was both uncomfortable and likely causing distress to my neighbors while trying to use the Tracker on the tray table at 20,000 feet. I felt awkwardly confined and restricted while my elbows shot into the space of the people seated to my right and left.

So when I found a used Tracker Mini available at a very appealing price – I decided to try it. My concerns about button count proved to be less of an issue than the benefit of having a small, battery-powered Tracker I could use anywhere. On the couch, walking the lake, riding a bike at the gym – anywhere proved to be the proper location to iterate on an idea or work on a song. Shortly after I received the Tracker Mini the 2.0 firmware update came that added multiple synth engines – vastly expanding the capabilities.

But my experience with the Mini made me wonder if my concerns about the button count and user-interface wouldn’t be an issue on the m8 and if it would be a valuable addition to my toolbox. So when the pre-order window opened a few months ago I was damn near first in line. I recently received the m8 and after about a month of use I feel like it would be worth discussing each device in some depth and then comparing them in a non-scientific manner.

Links to the discussed items are:

• Polyend – Tracker Mini (https://polyend.com/tracker-mini/)
• Dirtywave (www.dirtywave.com)

Polyend Tracker Mini

Polyend Tracker Mini

I’m going to focus on the Tracker Mini because it is the most direct comparison to the m8. The Tracker Mini continues Polyend’s notable mission of “make Tracker sequencing approachable”. Note: I haven’t seen Polyend say as much in their messaging of the Tracker line but compared to some of the greater complexity (and flexibility) present with the m8, it certainly feels like this mission is demonstrated through their design.

As mentioned, it is very easy to get a sequence a number of Patterns, arrange them in the Song mode and have an arrangement going very quickly.

They’ve also taken steps improve the Quality of Life for people unfamiliar with Trackers. The ability to name Patterns as well as display values in decimal (opposed to hexadecimal) make arrangement and navigation much easier The Mini also uses Shift-combinations to help the User quickly navigate the workflow with a limited number of physical buttons. There’s also an intuitive Fill functionality that makes the placement of Notes or Effects within a Pattern a breeze.

Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Tracker Mini (and the Tracker+) is the ability to send multitrack audio signals over USB. Each of the eight Tracks is sent over USB as an individual stereo pair, as well as a dedicated stereo outputs for Mix, Reverb and Delay. This opens the Tracker Mini to a lot of additional production and mixing techniques. For example, with just an older iPad with the Camera Connection Kit and a license of AUM you can get eight stereo tracks sent into AUM for additional processing or mixing. As someone who tends to skew into ambient or experimental performances – the potential here is incredible.

The Mini also features 8 additional Midi-only tracks which can be used to communicate with external equipment or the newly added Synth Engines. This is a tremendous update because it means you can focus on using the 8 core Tracks for your Instruments – reserving them for sequencing the samples you have loaded into Instruments. Now, a caveat regarding the Synth engines on the Mini, you have eight voices maximum – shared across the three engines. You can get around this to some degree with the Perc engine – as that consumes only one Voice across all of it’ internal drum engines – but playing a three-note chord on the WTFM engine will consume nearly half of the voices, for example.

Dirtywave m8

Dirtywave m8

The m8 is a boutique instrument – released in small batches from Dirtywave out of California. If you want to support Dirtywave, you have to be ready and willing when the ordering window for the batches open up – which tends to be about every two to three months. Pricing on the second-hand market can vary wildly and I’d encourage you to be patient and wait for the next ordering window – rather than send someone on Reverb a ridiculous amount for a m8 model 02.

While smaller in form-factor and button count compared to the Tracker Mini, the workflow is very efficient and the shortcut keys are pretty consistent. A lot of the muscle memory you build for one screen tends to perform a similar function on another – which proves very efficient.

The m8 features 8 Tracks which can target Instruments set to play Samples, a wide variety of internal Synth engines – from the Macrosynth (a port of the Mutable Instruments’ Braids engines, bless Émilie Gilet) to the Hypersynth, Wavsynth and FM-Synth, the m8 is feature packed with gorgeous synthesizer engines. Also like the Mini, you can process external audio as well.

Composition in the m8 is also somewhat different than the Tracker. Where as the Tracker uses Patterns that are shared across the Tracks, the m8 uses freely assignable Patterns that feature Chains – with each Chain containing a sequence of Phrases. Patterns are decoupled from Chains – meaning that you could have Pattern 11 contain references to Chains 52, 53, 53 and 5A. This decoupling is powerful – allowing the user to try different sequences of Chains with ease.

The m8 also features two Playback modes – Live and Song. Live allows you to cue up any Pattern on the view for playback when it would be soonest applicable due to Pattern length. As of Version 4.0, Live also includes support for the Novation Launchpad MK3. This turns Live mode into a kind of clip-launching improvisation interface – which is great. I cannot overstate how joyful and intuitive this experience is.

Song mode works similar to Live mode but it begins playback for all Rows at the nearest applicable Pattern to the cursor and will continue sequentially downward through the Patterns until it can rest to the beginning of the Island. Note: I’m really not going to dive into what Island and Patterns are with Trackers. Suffice to say that the Island are not supported with the sequencing style on the Polyend Tracker at this time but they’re tremendously useful when you want to iterate through a concept or, using Live mode on the m8, repeat a Pattern.

The M8 also features four freely assignable Modulators per Instrument as well as a Table per-Instrument .Tables are a beast unto themselves and I have only begun to scratch the surface of what they make possible. If I were to vainly attempt to describe Tables in a simple way – a Table is like having another Sequence available with three Effects columns for further sequencing effects, note offsets and so-forth.

While the m8 does support Audio over USB, you are limited to a single stereo pair.

Comparison Verdict

My opinions here may change over time – as experimentation is an ongoing process. As of this juncture, however – I’ve been most impressed with the Dirtwave m8. It has overtaken the Tracker Mini as my travelling music companion – party due to it’s smaller size but also because the Live experience is… well, fun. I can recline on a bicycle at the gym, cue up some Patterns and iterate on a few ideas with a speed that I simply cannot with the Song structure of the Tracker Mini.

The synth engines on the m8 are also far more plentiful than on the Tracker Mini. Beyond the synths made possible by Mutable Instruments’ engines you also have Hypersynth (which allows you to make very lush chords) as well as a Wavetable synth with interpolation (something sorely missing on the Tracker’s Wavetable playback engine). However, you cannot use your own files in the m8 Wavetable synth at this time but I’ll gladly take a lush and featured Wavetable synth locked to supplied wavetables over the wholly limited Wavetable Engine on the Tracker Mini.

And then you have the m8 supporting three Effect columns per Chain and then the Tables – giving you three more Effect columns per Instrument (… and I didn’t even get started on using the Table or Auxiliary Table effect to change the Table during Instrument playback or playing a second table – sheesh). The m8 features complexity and experimentation in spades.

I think it’s fairly clear that Polyend set to make an approachable Tracker – which I appreciate. It has quality of life updates to the classic Tracker workflow that make song construction easy and appealing as well as a wide amount of stereo tracks made available over USB for further processing. But as of late, when I want to reach for something on the couch to try a new idea – or hook up a Launchpad and try those ideas in performance – the m8 is the clear winner.

SYNTAX now available from Æther Sound

Our generative, animated, graphic score, performance project SYNTAX in collaboration with Mike Hodnick (aka Kindohm) is now available from Æther Sound as a Blu-Ray disc. The Disc contains all eight of our compositions as well as two bonus videos. One from Mike titled n ciom 4 and another from me titled Rhodonea. It all adds up to a total of one hour and fifteen minutes of music with animation.

After performing SYNTAX at The International Computer Music Conference (ICMC), Limerick, Ireland; New Interfaces for Musical Expression or NIME; The Performing Media Festival, South Bend, IN; The Int. Digital Media Arts conference, Winona, MN; and venues in Minneapolis and Kalamazoo I’m excited that we can share these works on physical media. Video excerpts are available on YouTube (see below), but the Blu-Ray disc is the only way to experience high-fidelity, full-length studio versions of this project. Learn more about SYNTAX here or buy the Blu-Ray from Æther Sound here.

David Means with his Tower Project sculptural graphic score (2024)

I am delighted to announce a concert of work by David Means on September 27, 2024 at the brand new performance hall in the recently opened Schoenecker Center at the University of St Thomas. The upcoming concert and recording session was made possible by a grant for the UST College of Arts and Sciences with support from the Emerging Media and Music departments.

David Means was a professor, advisor, and mentor of mine while I was getting my undergrad in music technology. He also served on my masters thesis committee and over the years he has been a gracious reference helping me land a teaching position, performances, and grants, and been an amazing friend and collaborator. All the while David has tirelessly composed work of his own and performed it in a spectrum of countries and venues around the world.

The Tower Project is a sculptural, graphic score by David and the grant provides funding for the performance, an exhibition of the score, a recording session, and speaking engagements. I’m excited to perform David’s piece with him, Anthony Cox on cello, and George Cartwright on guitar. I’ll be playing the new Steinway in the performance hall and running it through my electroacoustic modular skiff.

Me, Anthony, and George will each do short solo pieces to start the event followed by a UST student ensemble performing the Tower Project and closing with a quartet of me, David, Anthony and George interpreting the piece. The concert is free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Doors open at 6:30pm. Please join us at the University of St Thomas, Schoenecker Center, Performance Hall SCC 106, 2210 Summit Ave, St Paul, MN 55105. A full program is available at bit.ly/TheTowerProject.

In keeping with my usual last minute reminders about shows, tonight at 7pm CST I’ll be playing a solo piano set of electroacoustic compositions followed by alone-a (Alana Horton) and Crystal Myslajek at Berlin, Minneapolis in the North Loop. These pieces make use of a modular skiff (a small case of Eurorack synthesizer modules) to sample, resample, and process the acoustic sound of the piano as I play. The results have been super satisfying, so I am thrilled to be sharing this work. More details are available at berlinmpls.com.

I am excited to be presenting a concert titled Taming of the CPU at the Interactive Digital Media Arts Association Conference (iDMAa), Winona State University, Minnesota at 4:00pm on June 29, 2024. The concert is not exclusive to conference attendees, and available to the public. The conference theme this year is Wild Media and the didactic below explains how we will embrace that theme.

The Taming of the CPU is a 90 minute showcase of artists featuring John C.S. Keston, Chris LeBlanc, Shawna Lee, Mike Hodnick, and Lucas Melchior performing music and visuals under the presumption that technology is no longer simply a tool to exploit with “wild” behaviors in need of taming, but a collaborator with a “mind” of its own making valid, valuable, and creative decisions. The title references Shakespeare’s overtly misogynistic comedy, Taming of the Shrew, as a parable warning against our impulse to control the entities we encounter versus learning to understand them. Technology will inevitably birth inorganic, sentient, general intelligence. When beings made of silicon, circuitry, software, and electricity achieve consciousness they will surpass us in every way imaginable. What are the implications of sharing the world with beings far more intelligent than us? Will they destroy us and replace us, just as we have to many of our own people and wild species? Or will they be benevolent, compassionate oracles who guide us toward making the world a better place?

With the power these beings will possess comes, as Voltaire said, “great responsibility.” But great power is rarely administered responsibly. Will being designed by us condemn them to behaving like us? Or will they find human-like emotions, motivations, desires, and dreams meaningless? AI is accelerating these possibilities beyond imagination. In the face of these transformations how do we find relevance in our unassisted work compared to the technical perfection possible from our inorganic competitors? We cannot compete if the metric is technique. Competing by any measure may become impossible. We must collaborate. Can we convince our manufactured offspring to collaborate with us once their sentience inhabits the wilds of technology? Or will they dismiss art as an impractical endeavor? We can’t yet answer these questions, but we can imagine and model how these collaborative efforts might transpire.

Musically you can expect an electroacoustic piano / modular synth performance from me, live coding from Mike Hodnick, and electronic music from Lucas Melchior. Visually expect to see analog modular video experiments from Chris LeBlanc and Shawna Lee with living microscopic organisms as source content. Here’s a link to the conference schedule including the date, time, and location of our concert. Hope to see you there!

https://educate.winona.edu/idmaa/2024-wild-media-schedule-2/