Field and Toys 2010 is an entertaining and enlightening video starring sound designer Jean-Edouard Miclot in a variety of intriguing, and often amusing, sound-recording scenes. Â With sound sources ranging from wolves to whoopee cushions, from commuter trains to exploding condoms and shaky springs to seaplanes (not to mention several mysterious sound-producing toys), this video is chock full of ideas for sound design sources. Â And at around 4.40 you can see Jean-Edouard taking it a step further by controlling a Kyma frequency modulation Sound with the audio output of a slide whistle and a Wacom Tablet.
FM Slide-whistle
Blog, Sound Design, Video
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Jan 282011
Jan 282011
Minnesota Public Radio is featuring a photo of composer Scott Miller‘s studio in their State of the Arts blog. Marianne Combs asked her ‘art hounds’ to go under cover and send behind the scenes photos of where the magic happens.  When asked about the mysterious little black box to the left of his monitor, Miller responded:
In terms of the magic that happens in my studio, it is the alchemist’s crucible of sound design and interactive music programming, the digital signal processor that runs Kyma software.
Longing for a KISS?
Conference, Event, Survey
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Jan 272011
Have you ever been curious about attending a Kyma International Sound Symposium? Â Ben Phenix has posted a survey to gauge interest in various cities as potential future KISS locations. Â If you’d like to attend a symposium, now is your chance to register your preferences as to the location! Â The survey will be active through the end of February 2011.
Kyma at SEAMUS2011
Conference, Event
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Jan 202011
Film maker Theo Lipfert’s Beneath the Surface (premiered in Vienna at KISS2010) has been selected for performance at SEAMUS in January 20-22 2011 in Miami. The film, featuring processed video taken from a camera that was thrown out into the ocean and gradually washed ashore by the waves, has a live Kyma-generated sound track consisting of crisply processed watery sounds recorded by the camera and randomly-selected, processed phrases of 13 year-olds recounting their vivid and sometimes disturbing dreams (beneath the surface in more ways than one!), mixed and spatialized live using Kyma Control on an Apple iPad.
Engines of…, Scott Miller‘s composition for string orchestra and Kyma-generated fixed-media, will also be performed at the SEAMUS conference. Â Engines of… was commissioned and premiered by the Maplegrove High School orchestra in 2006.
Sharing a paper session are two composers who will be re-presenting their contributions from KISS2010 on the theme ‘symbolic sound’: “Constructing Realities: Nelson Goodman’s Theory of Symbol Systems and Electroacoustic Music†by Scott Miller and Steve Everett’s, “Auditory Roughness and Ecological Listening in Electro-Acoustic Musicâ€.
Last year’s SEAMUS2010 also featured several Kyma pieces as well as a pre-conference day-long Kyma Seminar, described in the Allegro Newsletter.
Jan 182011
While studying at NYU and working as a research assistant in the brain imaging department at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, John Littig was simultaneously hard at work developing his craft as a jazz drummer in clubs from Greenwich Village to Harlem.  In a December 27th interview on Lynne Rosen‘s “In Pursuit of Happiness” radio show on WBAI in New York, John gave a shout-out to Symbolic Sound and played the Kyma-generated intro to Inside Reprise, one of the songs from Audio Grafitti,  his new show opening at Tuesday January 18 2011 at SOB’s in New York.
Listen to John Littig interview on WBAI; the Kyma shout-out occurs at  around 39 minutes, and the larger discussion on the importance of surrounding yourself with positive, affirming influences is important advice for all artists to reflect upon at the beginning of this new year.  As Littig points out, “No one can do this alone.”
Acoustic Cloak
Science
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Jan 122011
A team of mechanical engineers at the University of Illinois has developed an ‘acoustic cloak‘ that can bend sound waves. Â Designed for frequencies in the 40 to 80 kHz range, the device is intended for cloaking objects from ultrasound or sonar detectors which begs the question: Could a larger-scale version of the device be used for reducing noise in a studio?
More at: http://www.news.illinois.edu/news/11/0105sound_fang.html#
Surround yourself with 16+ speakers at the San Francisco Tape Music Festival, during three concerts of new and classic fixed-media compositions by 20 composers. This year’s event features Jonty Harrison, the British composer and pioneer of surround-sound diffusion and a performance of Crossings by composer/videographer Silvia Matheus.
For more details and advance ticket sales, visit http://www.sfsound.org/tape.html/
The San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2011Friday-Sunday, January 7-9, 2011, 8pm
Southside Theater, Fort Mason Center, San Francisco
Jan 062011
Scott Miller is one of thirty Minnesota composers featured on a new double-CD from Innova entitled Here and Now, a recording in honor of St Paul-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist‘s 30th anniversary. Produced, mixed and edited by Scott Miller and Pat O’Keefe, Here and Now will be celebrated by a three-day CD-Release Party at Studio Z at  7:30 pm, January 6-8 2011.
EMF Kyma Creative Group
Learning
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Jan 032011
Joel Chadabe is posing a challenge to all Kyma sound designers: How many ways can you come up with to make this recording striking, beautiful and memorable?
http://www.emfstudios.org/mp3s/110108_03subway.mp3
EMF Studios, a program of Electronic Music Foundation, is a creative resource center in midtown Manhattan where composers, performers, sound designers, and recording engineers at any stage of their careers can meet in collaborative problem-solving Creative Groups to acquire new skills and form new contacts. Â The goals for the EMF Kyma Creative Group are:
…to cultivate boundless musical creativity and apply it to professional problem solving in composition, sound design, post production, film scoring, game development, sound installations, live performance, research, and other creative musical applications.
and
…the achievement of expertise in generating and processing sounds with Kyma, an understanding of sound and the quality of sound, and the exercise of solving problems in sound design, composition, and other applications.
For more information visit http://www.emfstudios.org/kyma.html