Official organ of the Symbolic Sound Corporation
Franz Danksagmüller was in Waltershausen 25-28 August 2024 presenting workshops on how to integrate live electronics with the pipe organ. Here’s a photo of “the hand” controller designed by Franz, alongside an Emotiv EEG headband and Kyma Control.
Although from this vantage point, one might think that the organ loft is nearly paradisiacal…
…the organ builder took pains to remind the organist of the alternative (or at the very least, to have a laugh).
Anssi Laiho is the sound designer and performer for Laboratorio — a concept developed by choreographer Milla Virtanen and video artist Leevi Lehtinen as a collection of “experiments” that can be viewed either as modules of the same piece or as independent pieces of art, each with its own theme. The first performance of Laboratorio took place in November 2021 in Kuopio, Finland.
Laboratorio Module 24, featuring Anssi performing a musical saw with live Kyma processing was performed in the Armastuse hall at Aparaaditehas in Tartu, Estonia and is dedicated to theme of identity and inspiration.
Anssi’s hardware setup, both in the studio and live on stage, consists of a Paca connected to a Metric Halo MIO2882 interface via bidirectional ADAT in a 4U mobile rack. Laiho has used this system for 10 years and finds it intuitive, because Metric Halo’s MIOconsole mixer interface gives him the opportunity to route audio between Kyma, the analog domain, and the computer in every imaginable way. When creating content as a sound designer, he often tries things out in Kyma in real-time by opening a Kyma Sound with audio input and listening to it on the spot. If it sounds good, he can route it back to his computer via MIOconsole and record it for later use.
His live setup for Laboratorio Module 24 is based on the same system setup. The aim of the hardware setup was to have as small a physical footprint as possible, because he was sharing the stage with two dancers. On stage, he had a fader-controller for the MIOconsole (to control feedback from microphones), an iPad running Kyma Control displaying performance instructions, a custom-made Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi footswitch sending OSC messages to Kyma, and a musical saw.
The instrument used in the performance is a Finnish Pikaterä Speliplari musical saw (speliplari means ‘play blade’). The instrument is designed by the Finnish musician Aarto Viljamaa. The plaintive sound of the saw is routed to Kyma through 2 microphones, which are processed by a Kyma Timeline. A custom-made piezo-contact microphone and preamp is used to create percussive and noise elements for the piece, and a small diaphragm shotgun microphone is employed for the softer harmonic material.
The way Anssi works with live electronics is by recording single notes or note patterns with multiple Kyma MemoryWriter Sounds. These sound recordings are then sampled in real-time or kept for later use in a Kyma timeline. He likes to think of this as a way of reintroducing a motive of the piece as is done in classical music composition. This also breaks the inherent tendency of adding layers when using looping samplers, which, in Anssi’s opinion, often becomes a burden for the listener at some point.
The Kyma sounds used in the performance Timeline are focused on capturing and resampling the sound played on the saw and controlling the parameters of these Sounds live, in timeline automation, presets, or through algorithmic changes programmed in Capytalk.
Laiho’s starting point for the design was to create random harmonies and arpeggiations that could then be used as accompaniment for an improvised melody. For this, he used the Live Looper from the Kyma Sound Library and added a Capytalk expression to its Rate parameter that selects a new frequency from a predefined selection of frequencies (intervals relative to a predefined starting note) to create modal harmony. He also created a quadrophonic version of the Looper and controlled the Angle parameter of each loop with a controlled random Capytalk expression that makes each individual note travel around the space.
Another Sound used in the performance is one he created a long time ago named Retrosampler. This sound captures only a very short sample of live sound and creates 4 replicated loops, each less than 1 second long. Each replicated sample has its own parameters that he controls with presets. This, together with the sine wave quality of the saw, creates a result that resembles a beeping sine wave analog synthesizer. The sound is replicated four times so he has the possibility to play 16 samples if he to presses “capture” 4 times.
The Retrosampler sound is also quadraphonic and its parameters are controlled by presets. His favorite preset is called “Line Busy” which is exactly what it sounds like. [Editor’s note: the question is which busy signal?]
For the noise and percussion parts of the performance, he used a sound called LiveCyclicGrainSampler, which is a recreation of an example from Jeffrey Stolet’s Kyma and the SumOfSines Disco Club book. This sound consists of a live looping MemoryWriter as a source for granular reverb and 5 samples with individual angle and rate parameter settings. These parameters were then controlled with timeline automation to create variation in the patterns they create.
Anssi also used his two favorite reverbs in the live processing: the NeverEngine Labs Stereo Verb, and Johannes Regnier’s Dattorro Plate.
Kyma is also an essential part of Laiho’s sound design work in the studio. One of the tracks in the performance is called “Experiment 0420” and it is his “Laboratory experiment” of Kyma processing the sound of an aluminum heat sink from Intel i5 3570K CPU played with a guitar pick. Another scene of the performance contains a song called “Tesseract Song” that is composed of an erratic piano chord progression and synthetic noise looped in Kyma and accompanied by Anssi singing through a Kyma harmonizer.
The sound design for the 50-minute performance consists of 11-12 minutes of live electronics, music composed in the studio, and “Spring” by Antonio Vivaldi. The overall design goal was to create a kaleidoscopic experience where the audience is taken to new places by surprising turns of events.
In June 2024, Jon Bellona presented a paper at the 2024 International Conference on Auditory Display in Troy, NY on behalf of the NSF-funded Accessible Oceans project team. The paper, Iterative Design of Auditory Displays Involving Data Sonifications and Authentic Ocean Data, outlines their auditory display framework and their use of Kyma for all of their data sonification. Program with links to all papers are accessible online at https://icad2024.icad.org/program/
During the presentation, Jon played the full 2015 Axial Seamount Eruption. When an audience member asked about his use of earcon wrappers around each sonification, Jon shared a story about how his interviews with teachers at Perkins School for the Blind led him to include this feature.
In the coming year, Bellona plans to continue his work doing sonification with Kyma as part of a new project funded through NOAA: A Sanctuary in Sound: Increasing Accessibility to Gray’s Reef Data through Auditory Displays with Jessica Roberts, director of the Technology-Integrated Learning Environments (TILEs) Lab at Georgia Tech.
Ecosystemics — the guiding principle for much of composer Scott L. Miller’s work over past two decades, constitutes an ecological approach to composition in which form is a dynamic process that is intimately tied to the ambience of the space in which the music occurs. In a live ecosystemic environment, Kyma Sounds are parametrically coupled with the environment via sound. As Miller explains in his two-part article for INSIGHTs magazine — Ecosystemic Programming and Composition:
In ecosystemic music, change in the sonic environment is continuously measured by Kyma with input from microphones. This change produces data that is mapped to control the production of sound. Environmental change may be instigated by performers, audience members, sound produced by the computer itself, and the ambience of the space(s) in general.
Sam Wells and Adam Vidiksis, collaborators on Miller’s new album of telematic ecosystemic music, Human Capital, describe performing with Miller’s Kyma environments as “like interacting with a living entity”.
On 2 August 2024, Scott will be joined by clarinetist Pat O’Keefe to perform as Willful Devices (a clarinet plus Kyma duo) at ClarinetFest in Dublin.
Collaborators since 2003, the duo’s name derives from the fact that both of them manipulate devices — one a clarinet, one a computer — to generate music. And that, despite their best efforts, these devices are never fully under their control, at times almost seeming to have a mind of their own. Rather than bemoaning this fact, Scott and Pat welcome the potential for unimagined sonic discoveries inherent in this unpredictability.
Friday’s setlist includes:
Imagine yourself in Brighton, relaxing in the audience as you enjoy the trio improvising on stage when suddenly, someone points to you at random and orders you up on stage to replace one of the members of the ensemble.
No, this is not a recurring nightmare like the ones where you have to take the final exam for a class you forgot to attend, it’s what’s known as a “rotating improvisation session”, and Kyma consultant Alan Jackson is here voluntarily! In fact, it’s the reason his whole Kyma setup is battery powered (from a single PD battery) — primarily to make it easier to carry it up on stage and plug into an amp.
As Alan explains, “I don’t take the computer on stage. This adds a frisson of danger to the performance!” [Editor’s note, we’re sensing a theme emerging here]
“There are two power connections: battery to ‘Mara and battery to eurorack case containing the ‘Mara’s sound card (ES-8). And there are two USB connections: ‘Mara to ES-8 and the midi-controller-tilt-sensor to the ‘Mara. If any of these drop connection while I’m carrying the setup to the stage I would need to restart the Sound which needs the computer attached. So I carry it very very carefully.”
Jackson is always on the lookout for longer-lived batteries because, due to the nature of the performance, he never knows when he’ll get called up.
When he’s not subjecting himself to stressful performance situations, Alan Jackson consults with film, game, and television sound designers. He’s also organizing an informal Kyma “show and tell” weekend, 1-3 November 2024 in Amsterdam. See the Discord Kyma Community for details.
César and Golden Reel Award-nominated film sound designer Samy Bardet, was invited to present a keynote lecture/demonstration in Paris on 15 June 2024 for the members of L’AFSI (Association Française du Son à l’Image)*. Sound editor, sound designer and composer, Bardet is renowned in the world of cinema for his aesthetic and innovative sound creations. He has also developed a reputation as a specialist in Kyma which he uses to create, transform, combine and interact with sound (and which he describes as “one of the best sound creation tools in the world”).
In his keynote, Bardet guided an audience of sound professionals through the various ways he uses Kyma to create sounds for films such as Babies, Persepolis, Mami Wata and Sébastien Vanicek’s Vermines, including the signal flow editor, the Timeline, the Multigrid, and spectral analysis/resynthesis tools. One of the most important parts of the keynote, according to Bardet, were the live demonstrations of how one can use the Haken Continuum, iPad and Wacom Tablet as interactive sound design controllers.
Bardet describes Kyma as a language, an instrument that one can learn to play and to master. Each user will develop a different interpretation and this is what makes Kyma unique!
Le Kyma est un langage, un instrument qu’il faut apprendre à jouer, maîtriser. Chaque utilisateur aura une interprétation différente et c’est ce qui fait que le Kyma est unique!
Bardet concluded with a list of some practical benefits of working with Kyma, including:
Through his atelier, SYMA: sound design, Bardet has worked with contemporary artist Laurent Grasso on several exhibitions (for example Uraniborg at the Musée du Jeu de Paume and Soleil Double atthe Perrotin gallery, in Paris. He collaborated on installations at the Musée des Confluences in Lyon for the Antartica and Terra Incognita exhibitions by Luc Jacquet, and has done sound design for augmented reality in collaboration with The Overlap Factory.
Here, he is pictured during the final mix for the 2017 film To the Top:
* L’AFSI (Association Française du Son à l’Image) is a professional organization whose aim is to develop relationships, exchange information, discuss methods, contribute to solving common problems, monitor technological progress, and organize meetings to highlight and communicate the importance of the creative and technical contribution of sound professionals in film audiovisual production, and related media.
Performing with Kyma and a huge (but very soft) pipe organ, Franz Danksagmüller generated a live soundtrack for the silent film The Lost World (think silent-film Jurassic Park from the 1920s) on 25 May 2024 at the National Radio Symphony Concert Hall in Katowice Poland for an audience of 1600 people.
In a gravity-defying stunt, Danksagmüller placed two mics within the swell boxes of both Manual V and Manual III, at the apex of the organ pipes, so he could process the pipe organ through Kyma without danger of feedback. He and his sound engineer worked until 2:30 am fine-tuning the setup.
* Note that, according to Wikipedia, “This historical image is not a factually accurate dinosaur restoration. Reason: Pronated hands, real T. rex did not have more than two fingers (unlike in this image), outdated posture, tail dragging, lack of possible feathers”
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.
International Computer Music Conference
“Sound in Motion”
7-13 July 2024
https://www.icmc2024.org/
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 Lin When Dandelion Whistles
Fang Wan Song Yun
Chi Wang Transparent Affordance
Jeffrey Stolet Testimonio objetivo
Oliver Kwapis Lucky
Jinshuo Feng Listening to the Deep: An Interactive Music Exploration of Oceanic Soundscapes and Climate Change
Tao Li 枯山水 Beyond Landscape
Hector Bravo Benard Nowhere
On the paper sessions:
Jeffrey Stolet Music-Centric Description of Performance with Data-Driven Musical Instruments
As part of the 2024 International Orgelpark Symposium on 7 June 2024, Franz Danksagmüller invited Carla Scaletti to talk about her piece misfold for hyper-organ and Kyma, which was composed specifically for Danksagmüller.
During the round table wrap up on the final day of the conference, Randall Harlow described misfold as an example of “music for and of our time”
Here’s a performance of misfold recorded by Franz Danksagmüller at St. Nikolai Kirche in Hamburg earlier this year.