Category: Blog

Mei-ling Lee’s Sonic Horizons

Mei-ling Lee: composer, performer, storyteller & assistant professor at Haverford College

 
Music professor Mei-ling Lee was recently featured in the Haverford College blog highlighting her new course offering: “Electronic Music Evolution: From Foundational Basics to Sonic Horizons”, a course that provides students with an in-depth introduction to the history, theory, and practical application of electronic music from the telharmonium to present-day interactive live performances driven by cutting-edge technologies. Along the way, her students also cultivate essential critical listening skills, vital for both music creation and analysis.

 

 

In addition to introducing new courses this year, Dr. Lee also presented her paper “Exploring Data-Driven Instruments in Contemporary Music Composition” at the 2024 Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS) National Conference, held at the Louisiana State University Digital Media Center on 5 April 2024, and published as a digital proceeding through the LSU Scholarly Repository. This paper explores connections between data-driven instruments and traditional musical instruments and was also presented at the Workshop on Computer Music and Audio Technology (WOCMAT) National Conference in Taiwan in December 2023.

Lee’s electronic music composition “Summoner” was selected for performance at the MOXSonic conference in Missouri on 16 March 2024 and the New York City Electronic Music Conference (NYCEMF) in June 2024. Created using the Kyma sound synthesis language, Max software, and the Leap Motion Controller, it explores the concept of storytelling through the sounds of animals in nature.

The rocket scientist of human hearing

In 1999, astrophysicist/musician David McClain spent an intense three-month period working on The Northern Sky Survey, mapping the sky in the near infrared while getting by on an hour of sleep per night. When he finished the survey, he was suddenly struck by a viral infection that nearly killed him; his doctors were never able to determine the cause and, after three months, the infection dissipated almost as quickly as it had appeared. But afterward David noticed that he could no longer understand his wife when she was speaking to him. He went to an audiologist and discovered he had a sensorineural hearing loss of 60-70 dB in the high frequency range. Hearing aids helped him understand speech, but he was devastated to discover that music never sounded right through the hearing aids. But as a physicist, he was determined to solve the problem.

Motivated by his love of music and informed by his scientific training, McClain has spent the last 16 years developing equations to describe the entire hearing experience – from the cochlea, to the afferent 8th nerve, to processing in the central nervous system, efferent 8th nerve interactions — and developing signal processing algorithms to adapt to and compensate for his hearing loss in a way that preserves the audio experience of music. The result is a collection of signal processing algorithms he calls Crescendo. Kyma is one of the tools David uses for testing out new ideas and prototyping them for Crescendo.

Now he’s blogging about his findings on his web site http://refined-audiometrics.com. In keeping with his motto “Keeping music enjoyable for all!” David hopes that his experiences, research findings, and extensive set of algorithms can benefit others.

 

How technology & music mutually influence each other

What would happen if you sat the designers of Reaktor, the LinnStrument, Ableton Live, and Kyma down together on a couch and asked them to talk about how music influences technology, how technology influences music, and what exactly is a musical instrument anyway? That’s what happened at the 2015 Loop Summit. Dennis DeSantis (author of Making Music and moderator of the discussion) wrote this summary with video clips.

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Spectral eye of the Kyma guy

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Gustav Scholda, a.k.a. kymaguy, has just released an extensive set of spectral processing modules, sharing them with the Kyma community! The modules are free with an option to donate through PayPal if you’d like to support further development.

With names like FormantShifter, FractalNoise, PartialDerange, SpectralCentroid and many others, the Scholda modules are encapsulations of signal flows designed to analyze and process the output of live or recorded Kyma spectral sources.

Gustav is also available for private consulting, coaching, and custom module design to help you customize your own spectral processing ideas in Kyma.  In fact, he’s already posted the first of a series of tutorials on how to use his spectral modules: PitchShifting/Bending using the Product1 Module

NeverEngine Labsâ„¢ For Kyma Seven

Build your Kyma 7 mastery and increase your sources of creative inspiration by subscribing to NeverEngine Labs, Cristian Vogel‘s newly launched subscription service offering tools, resources, private instruction, and consulting opportunities designed to help enhance your Kyma 7 productivity and creativity.

NeverEngine Labs offers several “Labs”, each one focused on a different area of the Kyma 7 universe. The Labs are designed to inspire you with creative ideas for music composition and sound design as well expand your knowledge of the power and capabilities of the new Kyma 7.

These Labs are not fixed in function or design (like plug-ins or presets); instead, as a participant, you are encouraged to deconstruct and recombine the Sounds and their inner elements. Help is provided through live communication channels where you, Cristian and fellow subscribers can discuss the content of each Lab and receive regular updates with notes. Subscribing to a NeverEngine Lab is an invitation to engage in listening, curiosity and experimentation, all at your own pace!

Find out how Cristian can help you, your band, or your in-house team get the most from your Kyma system with custom-made workflows and designs.

To find out more about the labs and upcoming announcements, visit NeverEngine Labs.

JEDSound’s 100 Whooshes in 2 minutes

Sound designer Jean-Edouard Miclot has created an amazing Whoosh-Machine, capable of generating hundreds of sonic “whoosh” effects in minutes.  Have a listen!

In his sound design blog, Miclot not only explains how it works, he even provides a copy of the Kyma patch that you can download and try out on your own velocity-thirsty source material: http://jedsound.com/blog/?page_id=1020

FM Slide-whistle

Jean-Edouard Miclot’s “Field and Toys 2010” is an entertaining and enlightening video starring the sound designer in a variety of intriguing, and often amusing, sound-recording scenes. At around 4.40 you can see Jean-Edouard controlling Kyma with the audio output of a slide whistle and a Wacom Tablet.

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.  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.  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.

Alchemist’s Crucible of Sound Design

Composer Scott Miller’s studio is featured in Minnesota Public Radio’s State of the Arts blog in which Miller describes the Paca as the “alchemist’s crucible of sound design”.

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.