In his role at BEAST (Birmingham Electroacoustic Sound Theatre), Simon Smith works with massive multi-speaker array concert systems on a daily basis. These experiences inspired him to design a system of his own that could generate moving sound sources and immersion without the need to carry around large amps and speakers.
When Smith came across the Minirig loudspeaker — a small Bluetooth speaker typically used for small parties and “annoying people on the beach” — he bought 4 of them and, using standard microphone mounts and gooseneck microphone stands, he started experimenting with various configurations. Initially using tea coasters and cable ties, he eventually found drainpipe mounts that fit the Minirigs perfectly. Now he’s able to flexibly angle the loudspeakers toward nearby reflective surfaces (walls, windows, ceilings, panels), creating an impression of the sound coming from the room and not just the loudspeaker.
The speakers are just loud enough that he can play along with acoustic instruments without overwhelming them. Smith’s initial setup has now grown to 8 speakers with 2 subs, and by design, the entire rig (Pacamara, Laptop, and Minirigs) can be battery powered, opening the possibility for impromptu off-grid performances in interesting acoustic spaces. He christened his modular sound spatialisation system the Portable Immersive Sound System intentionally, because he knew he was destined to take it places.
During a recent performance at PAN-PAN, Simon used his MYO armbands to control a concatenatenative synthesis patch routed through Kyma (running a custom delay line designed by Alan Jackson and workshopped by the Kyma Kata), then through an Eventide H90 which sent quad out to his portable spatializing speakers.
There will be multiple opportunities to connect with fellow Kyma artists during the ICMC 2024 in Seoul, South Korea, where you’ll hear them performing on several concerts and presenting their ideas on paper sessions. Here are just a few of the composers using Kyma who will be participating in the ICMC during the week of 7-13 July 2024:
Shuyu LinWhen Dandelion Whistles Fang WanSong Yun Chi WangTransparent Affordance Jeffrey StoletTestimonio objetivo Oliver KwapisLucky Jinshuo FengListening to the Deep: An Interactive Music Exploration of Oceanic Soundscapes and Climate Change Tao Li枯山水 Beyond Landscape Hector Bravo BenardNowhere
On the paper sessions:
Jeffrey StoletMusic-Centric Description of Performance with Data-Driven Musical Instruments
Anne La Berge posted a photo of her live performance setup for the Tell me more concert at Splendor in Amsterdam, 29 June 2024, featuring her flute processed through Kyma controlled by Continuum mini, iPad and enhanced by a hand-cranked siren:
La Berge had performances throughout the month of June:
Saturday 15 June: The Day of the Composer in The Netherlands
Ensemble Oihua performed La Berge’s composition RAW as part of a varied program at the Batavierhuis in Rotterdam (La Berge performed with them).
Pieter de Hoochweg 108, Rotterdam
Wednesday 26 June
Anne Wellmer, Matt Rogalsky and Anne La Berge (not pictured, but her flute, Pacamara, laptop, Continuum mini controller, and iPad are on the left edge of the table)
Performance with electronics, objects, instruments and inventive musical friendliness. Zaal 100, De Wittenstraat 100
Saturday 29 June: Tell Me More
Anne La Berge performed a new version of Up Until Now, using old and new material all in one breath as the story of her life. Splendor Amsterdam, Nieuwe Uilenburgerstraat 116
Anne La Berge’s equipment on the Diatribe Stage, Dublin
Anne La Berge and Diamanda La Berge Dramm performed “AWAY” as part of New Music Dublin in a late-evening concert on the Diatribe Stage in what was described as an “impossible, rousing mix of electro and songs”.
AWAY draws together Diamanda’s practice as one of the foremost contemporary violinists, singers and composers of her generation with Anne’s passion for the extremes in composed and improvised music, and her work as a multimedia performer.
Friday 26 April 2024, 10.00pm
Venue: Kevin Barry Recital Room, NCH
Anne La Berge, flute / electronics / voice
Diamanda La Berge Dramm, violin / voice
Why is it that a Picasso painting can be widely known and understood by everyone, while sound abstractions are still considered academic and incomprehensible?
Tamborrino’s answer to that question, Acrylic Sounds, was born in January 2024 in the Laterza province of Taranto – Puglia – Italy in the garage of the professor and composer of electro-acoustic music.
Between 2019-2021 (in the period of COVID-19), Tamborrino created a series of abstract paintings using some of the same algorithms he has been using to generate CSound scores for the past 10 years. His idea was to bring his students closer to the concept of sound abstraction by applying the same principles of abstraction to paintings as to musical scores.
Tamborrino does not call himself a painter and has always argued that painting is painting, sound is sound, and sculpture is sculpture; each has a different role, but sometimes they use the same concepts.
While waiting for his score generation algorithms to compile, Tamborrino engaged in creative outbursts with a sponge and a brush as he drew lines or experimented with random color transformations obtained by sponging, likening it to techniques of sound morphing.
Taking these 60 semi/casual paintings as inspiration, he then realized them as Sounds in Kyma. For each painting, he created a formal pre-design and customized Smalltalk scripts to get closer to the meaning of the picture under analysis.
La Sinusoide by Giuseppe Tamborrino
For the sonorisation of the painting “La Sinusoide” he used a Capytalk expression that allows you to control the formants of a filter and the index of the formants with the Dice tool of the Kyma Virtual Control Surface (VCS), generating several layers gradually and quickly with the “smooth” Capytalk function.
He also used the Kyma RE Analysis Tool for the generation of a Resonator-Exciter filter, creating transformations of the classic sine wave with the human voice.
He used a real melismatic choir, because the painting represents a talking machine…
“Le Radio” by Giuseppe Tamborrino
For “Le Radio”, Tamborrino tried to simulate the search for the right radio station, transforming songs between them. To do this he reiterated several times sounds and music produced by a group of songs in the same family using a simple “ring modulator” to suggest AM radio and used a Capytalk expression to emulate the gradual spectral transformation effect of switching radio stations combined with random gestures to simulate the classic noise between the station and the music. Finally, he used granular synthesis to create glitch rhythmic transitions and figurations and combined selected abstract material as multiple tracks of a Timeline.
“The Mask of the Seagulls” by Tamborrini
“The Mask of the Seagulls” was inspired by the observation of an elderly man annoyed by the anti-COVID mask and some seagulls that repeatedly circled around him, chanting and emitting verses as if nature were making fun of him.
To express the annoyance of the man, Tamborrino simply recorded his own breath recorded through a mask.
For the creation of this syneathesia, Tamborrino emulated the behavior of cheerful and playful seagulls, with a script for the management of the density, frequency, and duration of the grains of granular synthesis; in exponential mode with decelerations and accelerations and friction functions for physics-based controls and swarming.
All of these layers were then assembled in a multi-track Timeline.
Tamborrino plans to publish the work as a book of paintings with QR codes for listening and will exhibit the work as paintings paired with performances on an acousmonium.
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.
Virtuoso organist / composer / live electronics performer, Franz Danksagmüller is presenting an afternoon workshop followed by an evening concert of new works for “hyper-organ” and Kyma electronics at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, Friday 7 June 2024, as part of the 2024 International Orgelpark Symposium on the theme of ‘interfaces’ (in the broadest sense of the word).
In his symposium, “New Music, Traditional Rituals“, Danksagmüller wrestles with the question of how new music might play a role in liturgy and religious rituals. While the development of the so-called hyper-organ reveals the strong secular roots of the pipe organ, which, after all, spent the first 15 centuries of its life outside the church, the pipe organ has also been significantly formed by its six centuries within the church, a church which inspired organ builders and organists to create the magnificent instruments that remain an important part of Europe’s patrimony today.
Is there a role for new music in the church? In their pursuit of “truth” do scientists and theologians share any common ground? Danksagmüller does not shy away from the “big questions”!
Cristián Vogel’s “The Siege of Mariupol” is a finalist for the 2024 International Composition Competition for Orchestra. All finalists — Thomas Gerwin, Ludger Kisters, Philipp Waltinger and Cristian Vogel, will be at the MON AMI YOUTH AND CULTURAL CENTER in WEIMAR 23-26 May 2024 to present their works to the audience as part of the 25th Weimar Spring Days for Contemporary Music. In addition to the jury prizes, the audience will have an opportunity to vote for the Audience Choice Award.
“The Siege of Mariupol” confronts the brutal realities of conflict through the sounds of modern warfare, electronic manipulations, and a melodic motif symbolizing lost souls. It is written as a testament to the memory, bravery and profound suffering of individuals caught in the relentless terror and conflict and implores the audience to bear witness to the brutality faced by those on the frontline.
“The Siege of Mariupol” is the final piece in a trilogy highlighting the interconnectedness of human experience, the impact of geopolitical events, and the life-saving and life-destroying potential of technology — all against a backdrop of survival in the face of mortality.
Click here for details on how you can attend the concert and cast your vote for the Audience Choice Award.
Circle 6 of Dante’s Inferno contains the fiery tombs of heretical souls, and in the venue for NeverEngineLabs (Cristian Vogel) 6 April octaphonic concert — a car park six floors beneath the Earth’s surface in the Providencia area of Santiago Chile — the lighting appears eerily appropriate.
NeverEngineLabs’ live setup in Santiago Chile 2024
Vogel, whose work focuses on experimental electronic music, electroacoustic music, and pushing compositional boundaries beyond style and convention writes “The sound check was a veritable wall of noise, never heard Ambisonics sound so intense… the subs were so full, car alarms were setting off on the floors above!
Cristian’s goals for 2024 and beyond are to explore socially relevant musical narratives that challenge the listener and expand the boundaries of what is possible in experimental electronic music.
Coypu, photo by Basile Morin CC BY-SAPaca, photo by Hans Hillewaert CC SA
A coypu (aka nutria) is a semi-aquatic rodent and is the name given to a Pharo package for live coding developed by Domenico Cipriani (aka Lucretio). At the end of May, Lucretio will be performing with two rodents — his Paca and the Coypu package — at the 2024 International Conference of Live Coding (ICLC) in Shanghai, generating sounds and parsing OSC to control graphics in Kyma and using Coypu to program music on-the-fly.
Lucretio describes his 30 minute live coding performance for Pharo, Kyma and Processing as “a social experiment with euclidean geometries, hexadecimal beats and post-jungle patterns drifting from sparse broken drums and essential scaled-down soulful chords to bass-driven percussive timelines and recursive frequency modulated quirks… heavily influenced by the sound from South London and Detroit.”
When Smith came across the Minirig loudspeaker — a small Bluetooth speaker typically used for small parties and “annoying people on the beach” — he bought 4 of them and, using standard microphone mounts and gooseneck microphone stands, he started experimenting with various configurations. Initially using tea coasters and cable ties, he eventually found drainpipe mounts that fit the Minirigs perfectly. Now he’s able to flexibly angle the loudspeakers toward nearby reflective surfaces (walls, windows, ceilings, panels), creating an impression of the sound coming from the room and not just the loudspeaker.
