Synthesist and AudioCookbook author John Keston shared the music video for Rain, part of his Strands series of audiovisual  compositions.

The music is performed on Novation Bass Station II, making use of the recently added AFX Mode.

Here’s what Keston has to say about Rain:

“Strands is the working title for a series of audiovisual compositions based on the idea of animated, generative, graphic scores.

Rain is a new movement in the series and the first that I have recorded in sync with the video. Currently there are five movements in the piece.

The visual part of the piece is meant to be read like music, but without the use of key or time signatures. Each time the piece is played the visuals are regenerated, so it is never performed the same way twice.

The musician may interpret the visuals in many ways. For example, in Rain lines are animated from the top of the screen to the bottom. Where the line appears horizontally is roughly regarded as pitch and as the line animates the sound is modulated. The lines also vary in weight. Heavier lines are louder and lower in pitch while thinner lines are quieter, generally higher, and sometimes altered with a high-pass filter.

I performed Rain using the Novation Bass Station II, which has a feature (AFX mode overlays) that allows for each note to have entirely different parameters. With this technique I was able to map different timbres to the keybed and use this variety in texture as another way to interpret the score.”