At the invitation of UWL Lecturer Charlie Norton, Carla Scaletti presented a lecture/demonstration on Generative Sound Design in Kyma for students, faculty and guests at University of West London on 14 November 2024. As an unanticipated prelude, Pete Townshend (who, along with Joseph Townshend, works extensively with Kyma) welcomed the Symbolic Sound co-founders to his alma mater and invited attendees to tour the Townshend Studio following the lecture.
After the seminar, graduating MA students Vinayak Arora and Sabin Pavel (hat) posed with Kurt Hebel & Carla Scaletti (center) and Charlie Norton (distant upper right background)UWL Professor of Music Production Justin Paterson and Trombonist/Composer/Kyma Sound Installation artist Robert Jarvis discuss the extensive collection of instruments in the Townshend Studio
It seems that anywhere you look in the Townshend Studio, you see another rock legend. John Paul Jones (whose most recent live Kyma collaborations include Sons of Chipotle, Minibus Pimps, and Supersilent among others) recognized an old friend from across the room: a Yamaha GX-1 (1975), otherwise known as ‘The Dream Machine’ — the same model JPJ played when touring with Led Zeppelin and when recording the 1979 album “In Through The Out Door”. Yamaha’s first foray into synthesizers, only 10 were ever manufactured; it featured a ribbon controller and a keyboard that could also move laterally for vibrato. Other early adopters included ELP, Stevie Wonder and Abba.
JPJ recollects his days of touring with the GX1 and the roadie who took up temporary accommodation in its huge flight case, as Alan, two students, Bruno and Robert look on.Charlie Norton with Alan Jackson (back), JP Jones (at Yamaha GX-1), Carla Scaletti & Kurt Hebel in the Townshend StudioAlan Jackson and Pete Johnston pondering the EMS VocoderComposer Bruno Liberda (the tall one) with Symbolic Sound co-founder Carla Scaletti
Carla Scaletti, creator of the Kyma language and co-founder of Symbolic Sound, was invited to present the closing keynote for the 2024 Audio Developer Conference in Bristol, UK on 13 November 2024.
Scaletti spoke about strategies for exploring the boundary between the known and the unknown through “recursive construction” and reminded software developers that the risky kinds of thinking required for creating something truly new are best supported by facing the unknown together.
She also touched on some of the design decisions behind the Kyma Sound (why it is a function, rather than a wiring diagram), the ways in which a user-interface defines an explorable universe of computable sound, the influence of programming languages on what you can imagine and create, and the co-evolution of the Kyma hardware and software.
An annual event celebrating all audio development technologies, from music applications and game audio to audio processing and embedded systems, ADC’s mission is to help attendees acquire and develop new skills, and build a network that will support their career development. It also showcases academic research and facilitates collaborations between research and industry. ADC will begin releasing videos of the ADC 2024 presentations on YouTube, beginning in 2025.
On Friday afternoon, 15 November 2024, Pete Johnston (software department) and Michael Aitchison (head of R&D) invited Carla Scaletti to present a seminar on sound synthesis for the R&D team at DiGiCo.
Following the lecture, Pete Johnston (who routinely prototypes and tests new signal processing algorithms in Kyma first before implementing them on the embedded processors in the live consoles) led the guests on a tour of DiGiCo’s testing facility and answered questions about the fully redundant, live fall-back dual consoles and the on-call 24/7 worldwide user support that DiGiCo provides for their live pro consoles.
Matt, Carla, Alan, Pete, and Robin discussing Capytalk expressions after the lecture at DiGiCo
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).
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:
Here, he is pictured during the final mix for the 2017 film To the Top: Mixing for the film “To The Top” (L to R) Samy Bardet, Sound Editor, Sound Designer, Laurent Perez Del Mar, Composer, Serge Hazanavicius, Director, Thierry Lebon, Recording-mixer
* 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.
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.
For composer Bruno Liberda, the train is his mobile studio (thanks to the battery-powered Pacamara).
For composer Bruno Liberda, the train is his mobile studio
This week’s journey, a mere one and half hours by train from Vienna, Austria to Brno, Czech Republic, finds him collaborating with students and faculty at the Janáček Academy of Performing Arts (JAMU), where students focus on developing their own artistic practice within the broader context of studies in history, theory, culture and society.
Entry to the Leoš Janáček Academy of MusicBruno Liberda presenting the Kyma seminar
During the seminar, students had an opportunity to delve into Kyma with the benefit of Bruno’s experience and guidance. Topics included sound design using the signal flow editor, composing for live performance in the Kyma Timeline, and reactive programming with Capytalk.
Pacarana installed in the electronic music studioModular synths and waveform sketches
Liberda dedicated a full day to the question top-most in the student’s minds: “How can we feed the sounds from a modular into Kyma?” Together they delayed, granulated and realtime spectralized / froze / singled-out individual overtones… in Bruno’s words, “we spectralized the hell out of it!”
Curious to hear some of Liberda’s music? L’après-midi im Stiegenhaus von Mozart, for various analog synthesizers, piano, Kyma, and organ pipes that Liberda claims to have found in Mozarts’ basement, was just released (4 April 2024).
Liberda requests that listeners please
listen with headphones (or on a good stereo system), otherwise you will not only miss the mysterious murmuring in the stairwell, but also all the shadows and fine cracks of light in the spatial structure, the top, bottom, front, back further left or right – everything quiet and surprising exploding in multifold time.
In a word: the soul of the piece!
The inaugural event of the ligeti center “Artists and Scientists in Residence” program and christening of their brand new spatial audio system was the 4 April 2024 world premiere of Fredrik Mathias Josefson’s spatial audio composition “Above a Sea of Fog,” an immersive electroacoustic environment that employs recording, Kyma synthesis, and “negative space” to weave a spatial soundscape. Josefson also provided insights into his creative processes and spatial audio methodologies and discussed his two-month residency at the ligeti center.
Bringing together expertise from the realms of art, science, and technology, the “Production Lab” at the heart of the ligeti center serves as a presentation venue and an open production space for creative exploration. From immersive spatial audio to haptics, from cyber instruments to music therapy, and beyond, it is designed as a hub for interaction, collaboration, and critical discourse. As a fully equipped studio space, “Production Lab” provides creators with a range of options for immersive sound production and performance, including motion capture technologies, VR/XR solutions, and a free space for creative thinking and experimentation.
Sound designers, electronic/computer musicians and researchers are invited to join us in Busan South Korea 29 August through 1 September 2019 for the 11th annual Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2019) — four days and nights of hands-on workshops, live electronic music performances, and research presentations on the theme: Resonance (공명).
“Resonanceâ€, from the Latin words resonare (re-sound) and resonantia (echo), can be the result of an actual physical reflection, of an electronic feedback loop (as in an analog filter), or even the result of “bouncing†ideas off each other during a collaboration. When we say that an idea “resonatesâ€, it suggests that we may even think of our minds as physical systems that can vibrate in sympathy to familiar concepts or ideas.
Photo by Belinda J Carr
At KISS2019, the concept of resonance will be explored through an opening concert dedicated to “ecosystemic†electronics (live performances in which all sounds are derived from the natural resonances of the concert hall interacting with the electronic resonances of speaker-microphone loops), through paper sessions dedicated to modal synthesis and the implementation of virtual analog filters in Kyma, through live music performances based on gravity waves, sympathetic brain waves, the resonances of found objects, the resonance of the Earth excited by an earthquake, and in a final rooftop concert for massive corrugaphone orchestra processed through Kyma, where the entire audience will get to perform together by swinging resonant tubes around their heads to experience collective resonance. Sounds of Busan — two hands-on workshops open to all participants — focus on the sounds and datasets of the host city: Busan, South Korea. In part one, participants will take time series data from Busan Metropolitan City (for example, barometric pressure and sea level changes) and map those data into sound in order to answer the question: can we use our ears (as well as our eyes) to help discover patterns in data? In part two, participants will learn how to record, process, and manipulate 3d audio field recordings of Busan for virtual and augmented reality applications.
Several live performances also focus on the host city: a piece celebrating the impact of shipping containers on the international economy and on the port city of Busan; a piece inspired by Samul nori, traditional Korean folk music, in which four performers will play a large gong fitted with contact mics to create feedback loops; and a live performance of variations on the Korean folk song: Milyang Arirang, using hidden Markov models.
Hands-on Practice-based Workshops
In addition to a daily program of technical presentations and nightly concerts (https://kiss2019.symbolicsound.com/program-overview/), afternoons at KISS2019 are devoted to palindromic concerts (where composer/performers share technical tips immediately following the performance) and hands-on workshops open to all participants, including:
• Sounds of Busan I: DATA SONIFICATION
What do the past 10 years of meteorological data sound like? In this hands-on session, we will take time series data related to the city of Busan and map the data to sound. Can we hear patterns in data that we might not otherwise detect?
Photo by Belinda J Carr
• The Shape Atlas: MATHS FOR CONTROLLING SOUND
How can you control the way sound parameters evolve over time? Participants will work together to compile a dictionary associating control signal shapes with mathematical functions of time for controlling sound parameters.
• Sounds of Busan II: 3D SOUND TECHNIQUES
Starting with a collection of 3D ambisonic recordings from various locations in and around Busan, we will learn how to process, spatialize, mix down for interactive binaural presentation for games and VR.
Photo by Belinda J Carr
Networking Opportunities
Participants can engage with presenters and fellow symposiasts during informal discussions after presentations, workshops, and concerts over coffee, tea, lunches and dinners (all included with registration). After the symposium, participants can join their new-found professional contacts and friends on a tour of Busan (as a special benefit for people who register before July 1).
Sponsors and Organizers
Daedong College Department of New Music (http://eng.daedong.ac.kr/main.do)
Dankook University Department of New Music (http://www.dankook.ac.kr/en/web/international)
Symbolic Sound Corporation (https://kyma.symbolicsound.com/)
Busan Metropolitan City (http://english.busan.go.kr/index)
The Arts Division at the University of California Santa Cruz and Symbolic Sound invite proposals for talks, live performances and workshops for the 6-9 September 2018 Kyma International Sound Symposium — KISS2018: Altered States (and Ecosystems).
Altered States
State spaces, state of mind, state of the art, deep state, state machines, state of the nation, state variable filters, topological state, head of state, solid state physics, state of grace, state transitions, spin states, state of the union — whatever your definition of state, one thing is for certain: Sound and music can alter states.
Join us in the state of California as we explore the multifaceted concept of Altered States through talks, workshops, and live musical performances at KISS2018, 6-9 September 2018 on the campus of the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Ecosystems
Atop a forested hill overlooking the Pacific ocean and Monterey Bay, on the tectonic boundary between the Pacific and North American plates (aka the San Andreas Fault), accessible from the San Jose or San Francisco Airports, Santa Cruz is shaped by the economic/technology ecosystems of Silicon Valley, the biological ecosystems of the Pacific ocean and the Santa Cruz mountains, and a continuation of the counterculture lifestyle and political protest movements of the 1960s — hence the sub-theme of the conference: Ecosystems. Whether “Ecosystems†inspires ideas for environmental music & field recording, ecosystemic feedback control systems, the human microbiota, or more abstract political/economic/social ecosystems, we welcome proposals involving “complex networks or interconnected systems†of sound and music.
Important Dates
26 March: Deadline for submissions 15 April: Notification of acceptance & start of early registration
