During the final mix for Disney’s Treasure Buddies, director Robert Vince asked sound designers Pat Haskill and Jean-Edouard Miclot to morph the voice of a puppy named Mudbud (voiced by Ty Panitz) from a human voice to the howl of a real puppy.  After a frantic and ultimately unsuccessful search of their sound libraries for a domestic puppy howl, the sound designers finally located a recording of a wolf pup that sounded close to Mudbud’s speaking voice, and they cross-faded from the actor to the wolf howl.  Unfortunately, the result still sounded like two independent layers. That’s when Jean-Edouard had the idea to load the two samples into Kyma’s Time Alignment Utility (TAU) where he could experiment with morphing using a tablet until he got the smooth transition he wanted. Re-recording mixers Gord Hillier and Samuel Lehmer mixed the sound in and, according to Jean-Edouard, “everybody in the studio loved how natural the transition from human to animal was made.” You can hear the morph in the scene starting about 36″ into the following clip:
Category: Event
Kyma International Sound Symposium 2012
The Kyma International Sound Symposium is  four inspiring days and nights filled with sound design, ideas, discussions, and music, and it offers a wide range of opportunities to increase your Kyma mastery: from introductory master classes, to hands-on question-and-answer sessions; from thought-provoking presentations, to inspiring concerts and after-hours discussions with new-found friends and colleagues.
This year’s symposium KISS2012 will be on banks of the mighty Mississippi River, September 13-16, organized by St. Cloud State University School of the Arts and Symbolic Sound. The KISS2012 theme, reel time || real time, puts the spotlight on reel time (sound for picture), real time (live performance), and all timescales between, including sound design for games, live cinema, live improvisation ensembles, live performances from a score, sound design for live theatre, live signal generation for speech and hearing research, interactive data sonification, interactive sound art, and more!
Tonsalon
According to Wikipedia:
A salon is a gathering of people under the roof of an inspiring host, held partly to amuse one another and partly to refine taste and increase their knowledge of the participants through conversation.
Composer Bruno Liberda is your inspiring host for a modern day Tonsalon to be held in Vienna on Wednesday evening, 7 December 2011. Focusing primarily on one work, through repeated “Readings” (Listening, Looking, Learning, Asking questions = Pausing), time is accumulated in all dimensions; several episodes of individual perceptions merge into a star cluster of the now-plurality: a new piece of music systematically enters the consciousness of the guests.
Program
 Introduction:  Die Schläfer 2002, fixed Media, 5’14   Main work:   Self portrait without self, 2011, Zither, Voice, Kyma, ca. 13′   The composer speaks… and plays…the guests question (perhaps)  Coda: Echoes in people’s minds: everyone speaks with everyone else! Â
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 When: Wednesday, 7 December at 20h (Doors open at 19h40, ending at 22h)
Where:1060, Linke Wienzeile 36/5a
Beletage (1. Stock, Reichmayer) Vienna, AustriaÂFue Sho
Garth Paine‘s Fue Sho for flute and live Kyma will be performed by the Arizona Contemporary Music Ensemble (ACME) December 2 , 2011 at 7:30 pm at the Katzin Concert Hall.
Flowering of Resistance
Post-human investigator Steven T. Brown‘s new video, Flowering of Resistance, pays tribute to thinkers throughout history who have had the courage to shake things up.
In it, you can hear how he uses Kyma to generate a slowly ‘flowering’ timbre, beautifully shaken up and interrupted with stutter effects to match the shaken images. Selected for inclusion in the (sub)Urban Projections Festival held in Eugene, Oregon on November 9-23, 2011, Brown dedicates this video to his fellow participants in the Occupy movement all over the world. He concludes with the reminder that:
The power to resist the status quo in a non-violent fashion is as important to the healthy functioning of a democracy as is the ability to forge consensus.
eImprovisationen: Eckard Vossas
Eckard Vossas is performing live at the Köln LOFT on the 24th of November 2011 20:30 on Kyma and Continuum, augmented by a variety of other synthesizers and controllers in a concert entitled eImprovisationen.
The focus of Vossas’ LOFT debut is spontaneous and free improvisation with live electronics, primarily the Kyma system with its enormous possibilities. Everything in the improvisation’s sound structures are controlled primarily by a Haken Continuum Fingerboard, complemented by an arsenal of additional controllers and pedals. The starting point of the individual pieces are randomly selected, found or ready-made preset sounds, generated or combined sound structures, or sound transformations whose sound characteristics can be changed drastically by a variety of live controllers.
A Ready-Made Sound becomes a primordial soup in a real-time evolving spectrum of sound events and timbres. Each performance explores the resulting musical space, playfully and experimentally dealing with the emerging structures of sound, as if a newly invented instrument were being discovered. The Continuum, which allows for musical ideas to be directly translated through the fingers into sound parameters, is particularly well suited to this expressive, evolutionary game.
Vossas has been making improvised music for 35 years, first with piano and keyboards, then with synthesizers. He has been exploring the universe of electronic sounds with the Kyma system since 2002.
Anterior/Interior in London
Composer Scott Miller will be in London working with the ensemble rarescale for their concert at Shoreditch Church on Wednesday, November 23, which is to feature the premiere of his new work, Anterior/Interior, written for rarescale flutist Carla Rees.
Anterior/Interior is for 1/4-tone alto flute and Kyma and is an exploration of microtonal multiphonics that are isolated, dissected, and exploded into relief against the beautiful, complex timbre of the flute. The concert will also include other interactive and improvisational Kyma works by Miller, performed by Carla Rees, including Lovely Little Monster and haiku, interrupted. Â Composer and rarescale member Michael Oliva has also invited Miller to do a presentation on his use of Kyma in interactive, improvisational music at the Royal College of Music.
Minibus Pimps ride to Mannheim
The Minibus Pimps (aka John Paul Jones, Helge Sten, and a minibus’ worth of electronics, instruments, iPads, and two Kyma/Pacaranas), will be performing at the Alte Feuerwache in Mannheim on Monday November 14, 2011 at 8 pm as part of the Enjoy Jazz 13th International Festival for Jazz and More.
To paraphrase from Michael Engelbrecht Abgelegt‘s review of the duo’s debut performance at Punkt (the original is written in German and is roughly translated here):
Unique lighting choreography outlined the duo like spirit figures in an Asian shadow-puppet play.  To old-timers, the music of the duo evokes Led Zeppelin, “Metal Machine Music” and “Walk on the Wild Side”. The two made use of “Kyma”, a computer music language, to quickly create sound algorithms no one has never heard before.
I have rarely in my life, under live conditions, experienced such a clearly contoured, perfectly staged dramatic Noise as one piece of music. Noise, yeah, noise! Much as one might expect from an old pioneer of the avant-garde, but this is by Helge Sten and the ex-Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones, a man with new ideas exploring new technologies.
This was not a soulless demonstration of a computer program: sounds were unleashed, the old tendencies of experimental rock music and “drone music” were picked up and catapulted into the year 2011. What a poignant ‘wall of sound ‘!
Twice the duo kindled a violent storm (gale force 13).  Those who did not take flight witnessed the way the noise textures become strangely melodic. A worthy finale (no guitars are burned these days but a few wild spirits are lured from machines) – the last concert on the big stage of Agden theater!
Helge Sten seemed to be remembering his “dark ambient” work as “Deathprod”. John Paul Jones seemed to tap into the wild energy of an older time without falling into the nostalgia trap.  Was it Neil Young who said, “It is better to burn out than to fade away”?
Kyma Meeting in New York
Electronic Music Foundation is organizing a series of open meetings at Greenwich House Music School, starting with a free Kyma demo/concert/discussion in New York this Sunday, November 13, from 2-5 pm.
If you’d like to come by for a demonstration of Kyma, listen to some compositions, join the discussion, and try things out, please send email to EMF (it is free, but a reservation is required). Followup studio sessions are planned for November 17 and December 1 and 8 for becoming a Kyma professional.
Human Chimes
Composer Jon Bellona used Kyma to generate sounds for his interactive installation, Human Chimes, on the first night of the (sub)Urban Projections Festival in Eugene, Oregon on November 9, 2011. Â Despite inclement weather (40 degrees and rainy), you can see people enjoying the interaction of the sounds, their positions, and the visual projections. Â Jon was also the technical director for the entire (sub)Urban Projections Festival.