Music for robots and other people

Scott Miller has a jam-packed schedule of upcoming collaborations with robots, humans and Kyma electronics. Here are a few highlights:

23 February, ALL DAY: SCSU Performing Arts Center 158, FREE!

On February 23, as a part of the MNMade Festival at SCSU, composer Scott L. Miller and musical roboticist Troy Rogers are holding a free open workshop and rehearsal on composing for robots. Everyone is invited to observe, assist, and ask questions as Scott incorporates theatrical lighting control into his Kyma ecosystemic environment for his new piece Détente.

27 February, 7:30 pm: SCSU Ruth Gant Recital Hall, FREE!

On February 27, you’re invited to the MNMade Festival concert, featuring works by Per Bloland, Troy Rogers, student participants, and Scott Miller’s updated ecosystemic robot piece, Détente.

15 March, 9:00 pm: The Nicollet, $5

In Minneapolis on March 15, Ars Electroacoustica celebrates the Ides of March with visiting saxophonist/electronics artist Jorrit Dijkstra, saxophonist Nathan Hanson, Scott Miller on Kyma and Ted Moore on laptop.

16 March, 7:30 pm: SCSU Ruth Gant Recital Hall, FREE!

On March 16th, Jorrit Dijkstra will be at St Cloud State University where he and Scott Miller will present a concert of improvised music for saxophone, electronics, and Kyma.

20 March, 5:30 pm: honeympls, $5

On March 20th, Ars Electroacoustica welcomes Adam Zahller to Min­neapo­lis for a session with recorder & electronics (Scott Miller on Kyma).

Interested in collaborating with Scott Miller on future Ars Electroacoustica concerts? Let him know!

Kyma gives voice to Tarantino’s “Hateful Eight” Blizzard


Audio engineer Jennifer Walden provides a fascinating analysis of the sound design in Quentin Tarantino’s Hateful Eight in a recent issue of Randi Altman’s postPerspective.

Tarantino is “truly an aural enthusiast and very much a sculptor of his cinema through the use of sound and music,” according to his longtime supervising sound editor, Wylie Stateman, who continues,

Sound is a major contributor to Quentin’s films and often the secret sauce that makes the meal just gel and come together as a coherent recognizable work…

Wylie Stateman, Supervising Sound Editor on Hateful Eight

 

Audio is very different from the other filmmaking aspects… Audio is very mysterious — a force that is just truly present in the moment. It’s just a vibration in the room. It’s something that the audience experiences but can’t see and can’t touch. It’s a different kind of art form, and as an audio artist I love working for Quentin because he is so particular and he values the contribution that sound makes to the experience of watching his film.

Sylvain Lasseur created & performed the voice of the blizzard

Tarantino is fascinated with the sounds of the actors’ voices and he wanted the ninth adversary in the film, the blizzard, to have its own character and its own unique ‘voice’. For that challenge, Stateman and co-supervising sound editor Harry Cohen called in sound designer Sylvain Lasseur. Sylvain brought in his Continuum fingerboard and Kyma / Pacarana system and set to work creating the voice of the blizzard.

Using Kyma and the Continuum, Lasseur was able to perform multiple layers of wind sounds to picture. They built the blizzard literally one gust, one whistle and one whisp at a time, designing the wind to complement the dialog and the picture editing in a unique way. According to Stateman, using Kyma, Lasseur was able to create an “instrument” on which he could perform the voice of the blizzard.

The first step was to create a guide track based around the dialog; then they modeled other sounds around that guide track. Stateman describes how they composed the sound design in an almost musical way:

So let’s say we have a base sound of a blizzard, we could then, very selectively, model wind wisps or rumbles or anything else against it. The Kyma would shape the other samples in time relative to the control track. Once we have them all modeled against each other we can start to pull them apart a little bit so that each element can have its own dynamic moment. It becomes more like a parade and you hear the low, the mid and the high — not on top of each other but offset from each other. The artistry comes in turning samples into instruments.

The importance of sound to Tarantino is evident in the fact that Lasseur ended up spending four months creating the instruments in Kyma and another four months performing and shaping the voice of the blizzard around the dialog and visuals.

For more insights on the sound for Hateful Eight, check out Jennifer Walden’s full article: Wyle Stateman Talks Sound Editing on ‘The Hateful Eight’

Kyma Klub of Santa Cruz

When PhD candidate Madison Heying discovered there was a Kyma system at the University of California at Santa Cruz and that Kristin Erickson, Technical Coordinator of the Digital Arts & New Media center also had a personal Kyma system, they decided to organize the Kyma Klub — an informal group of students and staff members who meet weekly to read through Kyma X Revealed and teach themselves Kyma. The first public performance by club members was AQULAQUTAQU — a sci-fi operetta by Madison Heying & Kristin Erickson (voice & Kyma) with Matthew Galvin (voice & video), David Kant (voice), and Maya Galvin (narrator) — that they premiered at KISS2015 in Bozeman Montana (home of first contact).

In early February 2016, UCSC faculty composer Larry Polansky invited Kyma creators Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel to UC Santa Cruz where Carla presented a graduate colloquium on data sonification and a seminar on sound design in Kyma 7.

Here, Madison and Kristin are presenting some of the generative algorithms they implemented in Kyma for AQULAQUTAQU:

Madison Heying, Kristin Erickson Carla & Kurt UCSC 2016

After the seminar, the Kyma Klub invited Kurt and Carla to Kristin’s studio where David Kant interviewed Kurt,

Kurt Kristin Carla David UCSC 2016

and Kristin Erickson interviewed Carla, while Matthew Galvin filmed their responses in front of a green screen for an as-yet-undisclosed proposal the Kyma Klub members have in mind to make for KISS2016.

Kristin Erickson interviewing Carla Scaletti UCSC 2016

Note the special blacklight Kyma Klub T-shirts (with matching event posters) designed and printed by Kristin and Madison for the visit.

carla on madison & kristin greenscreen UCSC 2016

Roland Kuit invites you to join a Kyma bicycle tour

Roland Kuit Bi-Cycle 3

Roland Emile Kuit’s 2CD Bi – sonic is now available at Donemus, the Dutch Contemporary Music publishing house and features Kyma-processed bicycle sounds.

On CD1:

  1. The Impossible Bicycle compilation
  2. Atomic Wheeled Vehicle Compilation

Tour de Force, or how to de-construct a bicycle into sine- and cosine waves? Real-time spectral analysis, FFT, IFFT, spectral blurring, phase and frequency shifts of bicycle sounds are constructing a three dimensional sonic world whereby different algorithms produce a trajectory as a journey in stages.

On CD2:

  • 99 Re-Cycle Sound Objects

Now it’s your turn! With the sounds on CD2, you can compose your own bicycle pieces using Kyma 7! Re-create Bicycle Music or create new Sound Art and upload your creations to: http://soundcloud.com/bicycle-soundart
2CD_Bi-Sonic_Roland_Emile_Kuit

Tonsalon: Lecture/performances by Bruno Liberda & friends

tropfen, die auf wasser fallen+R

Wiener Klangwerkstatt’s Tonsalon, the Viennese sound workshop founded in 2007, is now open to the public! You are invited to attend three Tonsalon events at Elektro Gönner in Vienna on the 2nd Tuesday of each month:

8 March 2016
12 April 2016
10 May 2016

In June, they yield to the soccer season and will resume again in the fall.

The program for the first Tonsalon on 8 March 2016 will be:

20:00: “No random random notes”, a lecture by Bruno Liberda

21:00: “Taming of the fact”, a live perfomance by Marina Poleukhina & Alexander Chernyshkov & Bruno Liberda

For updates and information on future performances, follow Tonsalon on Facebook.

Here’s a previous performance by Marina and Alexander:

NeverEngine on the Holodeck

Cristian Vogel is currently engaged in a four week artist residency dedicated to exploring the possibilities of Kyma and the 4DSOUND system at the ZKM Institute in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The residency will culminate in a concert on 5 March 2016 featuring new work from Cristian along with Alyssa Moxley, an Athens-based artist specializing in experimental microphone techniques for field recordings. There will also be a presentation of Iannis Xenakis’ Orient-Occident, presented in 4DSOUND by system founder Paul Oomen.

Algebra as metaphor for Poetry

The Central Library of The Hague will be filled with mathematical functions for the ear and textures for the eye when Roland Kuit creates poetic quadraphonic formulas for Kyma and Karin Schomaker synthesizes images of abstract beauty. Visuals and sounds together create a flow of spatial and textural experience.

Sunday 07 February 2016, 14:00 – 14:50
Spui 68, The Hague, The Netherlands