Sound Designer Nick Peck has been making extensive use of his new Kyma system for the upcoming Activision/Marvel video game X-Men Destiny. “I hadn’t used Kyma in nearly 20 years, and was just blown away by how far it had come since the early days,” said Peck. Â He went on to describe how he incorporated Kyma into his workflow on the game:
I was a bit intimidated of working it into my system, since I was knee deep in production. So I started slowly, going through Kyma X Revealed for a few minutes each day. As it turns out, you don’t really have to make complex patches in order to harness Kyma’s amazing processing power. I’ve created foley libraries, morphed dialog, and done tons of real-time sample manipulation by making sounds that only use one or two modules. The key for me is the excellent Kyma Control iPad software. The expressive gestural power of the iPad combined with Kyma fits my approach to sound design like a glove – I can explore to my heart’s content, and when I get a sound dialed in, I just re-record it into Pro Tools against the picture.
Can sound define a space? In sound, is there a Point-of-View or culturally-influenced focus of attention? Sound designers, musicians, audio engineers, composers, acousticians and others interested in “sound space” are invited to discuss these and other questions during the third annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2011), scheduled for 15-18 September 2011 in Porto, Portugal. Inspired by Portugal’s proud history of navigators who set out to explore beyond the known and visible horizon, the theme of this year’s symposium is “Explorando o espaço do som†(“Exploring Sound Spaceâ€) and will celebrate the sound designers, composers, and researchers who are exploring beyond the familiar horizons in sound and music.
A mathematician and co-editor of a new book on the Sonic Spaces of Music (Spazi sonori della musica) will discuss the public space defining and defined by the sounds of the Trevi Fountain in Rome;
Kyma practitioners will have opportunities to attend master classes, participate in interactive workshops and consulting sessions, and most importantly, to make connections with and to learn from fellow Kyma practitioners;
The author of a new text for teaching and learning Kyma (published in both English and Chinese) will describe his search for the SumOfSines disco club;
Plus there will be an abundance of technical talks on a wide range of topics including how to use the spectrum of a sound as a sequencer; techniques for data sonification; using sound to help people confront pain; how to create a dynamic sonic ecology; using context-free-grammars to simultaneously generate dance movements and trajectories through abstract timbre space; techniques for spectral modification & morphing; and more.
Evening performances are to include a screening of the very first science fiction film accompanied by a live-improvised electronic sound track generated by Kyma reconstructions of Luigi Russolo’s intonorumori instruments; a portion of an audio documentary on Holocaust survivor Ksenija Drobac; and a live-generated audio/video film about Galileo that uses Kyma to control VJ software via Open Sound Control (OSC). Other live musical performances will create sound spaces controlled by (among other things) dancers, RFID cards held by the audience, iPads, Wacom tablets, video position trackers, Continuum fingerboards, SoftStep pedal-boards, OSC, acoustic instruments, the acoustics of the room itself, and even a sensor-enhanced Teddy Bear!
For more details on the program, please see the preliminary program and join the mailing list to be kept up to date on future enhancements and additions.
Registration
Registration is open to all. You can register at any time, but there is a discount for those who register prior to 1 August: you can participate in all 4 days (with lunch included) for €120 (€40 for students). Casa da Musica has strictly enforced occupancy limits, so please register as soon as possible in order to reserve your spot: http://kiss2011.symbolicsound.com/registration
Online discussion
You are cordially invited to join in the pre-symposium discussion on the theme of Exploring Sound Space:Â http://www.pphilosophyofsound.org
Porto
Known as A Cidade Invicta (the unvanquished city), in honor of its citizens’ successful resistance of Napoleon’s attempted invasion, Porto’s history can be traced back at least as far as Roman times, with evidence of even earlier habitation by the Celts, Proto-Celts and even Phoenicians.
The ukulele has its origins in Portugal; Portuguese immigrants brought the cavaquinho, braguinha and the rajão, small guitar-like instruments with them to Hawaii where they were re-invented as the ukulele. Portuguese luthiers Cordoba Guitars and Antonio Pinto Carvalho (in Braga about an hour north of Porto) continue the tradition today. In Porto, you can audition a Portuguese 12-string guitar or a cavaquinho at Toni Das Violas, a music shop in the historic center.
Porto is also the official source of Port wine, a special red wine in which the fermentation process is interrupted by the addition of distilled grape spirits known as aguardente (roughly translated as fire water with teeth), leaving a higher sugar and a higher alcohol content. The resulting fortified wine is then aged in wood barrels prior to bottling.
Visiting ConÃmbriga, a well-preserved ancient Roman city and attached museum about an hour south of Porto, is practically like traveling to ancient Rome in the Tardis.
Something about Porto seems to inspire artists who work with space. Not only is it the home of Casa da Musica, it’s also the birthplace of two Pritzker-prize-winning architects: Ãlvaro Siza who designed the central square in Porto, the Faculty of Architecture campus, and the contemporary art museum; and Eduardo Souto Moura whose award-winning work includes Estádio Municipal de Braga, the Burgo Tower in Porto and the Paula Rego Museum in Cascais among others.
Summary
What: The Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS 2011), an annual conclave of current and potential Kyma practitioners who come together to learn, to share, to meet, to discuss, and to enjoy a lively exchange of ideas, sounds, and music! This year’s theme is “Exploring Sound Space”
Presenters: Experts from the fields of music, sound art, sound design, mathematics, philosophy & audio engineering who use Kyma in their work.
Participants: Sound designers, musicians, audio engineers, composers, acousticians and others interested in “sound space” and the Kyma sound design language
When: 15-18 September 2011
Where: Porto, Portugal
Venue: Casa da Musica / Avenida da Boavista, 604-610 / 4149-071 Porto / Portugal
Cost: € 120, students € 40
Organizers: Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto & Symbolic Sound Corporation with support from Casa da Musica & UT Austin|Portugal International Collaboratory for Emerging Technologies
Deadline: 1 August 2011 for early registration discount; registration open through 15 September 2011
Edmund Eagan has posted his new video work,  Time Dilation as an example on the Haken Audio site. Time Dilation is a glimpse of what life will look like in the future, when Internet-connected heads-up displays explain and analyze everything we see.  The video work includes a single take capture of a live performance of Eagan using the Continuum to control Sounds organized on a Kyma Timeline.  Other Kyma elements include:
• The time structuring of Kyma Sound elements
• The overall time of the piece, which is variable due to the extensive use of the Kyma WaitUntil sound. (Eagan writes that he found this “a very useful tool for interactive improvisation, and a nice way to create localized time dilations.”
• The selection and editing of Continuum Internal Sounds via Midi commands sent back to the Continuum from the Kyma timeline.
• The processing and mixing of a blend of Kyma Sounds and Continuum Internal Sounds.
In addition to the Continuum as a control device, Eagan also used the Pen page of the Kyma Control app running on an iPad.
Time Dilation is a free download, available in a large and a small version (Eagan strongly recommends the larger version):
Yogesh Khubchandani‘s beautiful and mysterious directorial debut, The Acceptance, is scheduled to be screened as part of the Maine International Film Festival, July 15-24 2011, a festival billed as ten days of the best of American independent and international cinema!
The Acceptance will be shown on Saturday, July 16 2011 at 8:30 pm. Â And again on Wednesday, July 20 at 3 pm.
During the festival, audiences will have opportunities to meet and talk with the people behind the movies — directors, producers, writers, musicians — as well as have a chance to experience several panel discussions and informal Q&A sessions.
Director Khubchandani also did the sound design for the film, using the sounds of birds, wind and water in stark constrast to the rattling drones of machines in order underscore his themes. Like the images, the sound slips easily back and forth between the logic of “realism” and the logic of dreams. Â Khubchandani credits Kyma for playing a role in the transformation of one of the pivotal sound events of the film: a massive tree falling in the forest.
Andrew Bird has released a couple of fun little EP’s this month, both with plenty of Kyma touches throughout. “Keep Climbing The Mountain” features plenty of Euverb, Granulated Guitar and Subtractive Synthesis sweeps and hits to create the atmosphere behind the energetic “In My Skies”.  And on the Robotronic EP, Kyma is doing all of the vocal harmonising and vocoding.
Both EPs will have you smiling and on your feet dancing within nanoseconds, and both are available on iTunes.
Sound designer, Ben Burtt. Photo by Gregory Schwartz (www.editorsguild.com)
There’s a fascinating piece by Mel Lambert on the Editor’s Guild web site, giving details of every aspect of the sound—from dialog to Foley, to mixing, to creative sound design— for JJ Abrams new science fiction film, Super 8.
In it, master sound designer, Ben Burtt details how he used his own voice to control a bank of sounds in Kyma, performing it like a musical instrument to create the voice of the alien.  Burtt says that he wanted to create a character who, although alien, had an expressive soul, purpose, and rationality.  Once Industrial Light & Magic, which handled visual special effects, heard Burtt’s vocalizations, they were so inspired that they added a tongue to the creature’s mouth! One of the few times that they created picture to sound, instead of the other way around.
Full of insider tips and tricks ranging from how Burtt sustained the tension in a long train crash scene to how Matthew Wood compensated for young actors’ voices changing over the course of the shoot, the piece is essential reading for anyone who’s serious about sound design!
(Thanks to Matteo Milani for spotting this article and sharing it with us!)
Supervising Sound Editor, Matthew Wood (www.editorsguild.com)
Yasuski (aka Yasushi Yoshida) has just posted a series of videos of his handmade Mbiraski instrument processed live through Kyma and his Audio Hologram (a 3D performance space of his own design). Â Etheral, calming, and deceptively organic, it’s the perfect music for a summer day.
Here’s one where Yasuski goes Medieval on us with a closer view of the Mbiraski and Delora Software’s vKiP controlling Kyma from an iPad:
And another where the Kyma processing almost sounds like frogs on hot, humid summer night:
Amon Tobin has just launched ISAM — an album, audio-visual live performance tour and art exhibition — pairing Tobin’s original and evocative music with Tessa Farmer’s intriguingly organic sculptures. Both artists, Tobin in sound and Farmer in sculpture, explore the rearrangement of the “familiar” in disturbing, playful and highly original ways. Imagine opening the specimen drawer in a darkly lit Victorian-style natural history museum in a parallel universe while a steampunk science-fiction-meets-Sgt.-Pepper score plays in the background and you’ll start to get the picture.
In ISAM, Tobin uses Kyma to successfully blur the distinction between sound design and music: transforming sound effects into drippy, gurgly beats that sound like they were emitted from steam-powered machines; continuously gliding pitches seamlessly morph into harmonic anthems; and repeating rhythmic and harmonic patterns with endlessly changing orchestrations and backgrounds; glockenspiel fairy tales juxtaposed with aliens bursting unexpectedly out of bubbling tar pits. The music is evocative, cinematic, and highly original: chopped spectra with hints of vocal resynthesis; Klangfarben rhythms; electronic insects encountering R2D2, repeating distortion patterns; the soundtrack from a childhood nightmare set to a swinging 6/8 nursery rhyme beat; sitars followed by glass beads flung across a frozen pond at midnight; aliens dancing heavily & deliberately at BPM = 76; and those ubiquitous miniature skeletons dancing so wildly that tiny bones fly off at right angles, making tinkly sounds as they hit the floor.
The audio quality is superb, always crisp, clean and masterfully mastered.
Despite all the little skeletons, the overall atmosphere of ISAM is playful, rousing, and at times downright cheerful—and the BPMs hovering between 76-88 make it the perfect iPod soundtrack for strutting in the city or skipping your way through a crowded airport.
ISAM: Control over Nature will be shown at the Crypt Gallery in London (26 May – 3 June 2011) followed by a showing at L’espace Art Roch in Paris (13 – 23 June 2011). Live tour dates so far are:
01.06.2011 Astra, Berlin, Germany
09.06.2011 AB Club, Brussels, Belgium
10.06.2011 Bataclan, Paris, France
11.06-17.2011 The Roundhouse, London, UK
Scott Miller is one of thirty Minnesota composers featured on a new double-CD from Innova entitled Here and Now, a recording in honor of St Paul-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist’s 30th anniversary. Produced, mixed and edited by Scott Miller and Pat O’Keefe, Here and Now will be celebrated by a three-day CD-Release Party at Studio Z at 7:30 pm, January 6-8 2011.
Scott Miller is one of thirty Minnesota composers featured on a new double-CD from Innova entitled Here and Now, a recording in honor of St Paul-based new music ensemble Zeitgeist‘s 30th anniversary. Produced, mixed and edited by Scott Miller and Pat O’Keefe, Here and Now will be celebrated by a three-day CD-Release Party at Studio Z at  7:30 pm, January 6-8 2011.
The music from Cristian Vogel and Gilles Jobin’s collaborative work, Black Swan was released in December 2010 by Sub Rosa (SR303): http://subrosa.itcmedia.net/en/catalogue/electronics/cristian-vogel-black-swan.html
Long before Natalie Portman donned the sequined black bird’s eye makeup, composer Cristian Vogel and choreographer Gilles Jobin were collaborating on their own Black Swan, the music for which was released in December under the Sub Rosa label (SR303).
Boomcat reviewed the recording on the Global Noises forum:
Those who follow Vogel’s movements will already know he is deeply involved with the legendary Kyma digital synthesis/sequencing system, and ‘Black Swan’ feels like the perfect extension of those interests.
Sound Designer Nick Peck has been making extensive use of his new Kyma system for the upcoming Activision/Marvel video game X-Men Destiny. “I hadn’t used Kyma in nearly 20 years, and was just blown away by how far it had come since the early days,” said Peck. Â He went on to describe how he incorporated Kyma into his workflow on the game:
Edmund Eagan
