Course on Design Patterns for Sound and Music

Music 507 Design Patterns for Sound and Music. The art of sound design is vast, but there are certain patterns that seem to come up over and over again. Once you start to recognize those patterns, you can immediately apply them in new situations and start combining them to create your own sound design and live performance environments. We will look at design patterns that show up in audio synthesis and processing, parameter control logic, and live performance environments, all in the context of the Kyma sound design environment.

Registration open starting November 2017 (course starts in January 2018)
Music 507 Spring 2018
Mondays, 7:00 – 8:50 pm
Music Building 4th floor, Experimental Music Studios
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Resistance & irritation in Berlin

So-called new music is an aesthetic of resistance, of irritation, and self-reflection. In contrast to the visual arts, in which abstract and contextual works have long been accepted as a matter of course, the analogous musical experience continues to be difficult. So Schoenberg’s prognosis that his works would be understood 50 years down the road has remained illusory.


Bruno Liberda is a composer, promoter and performer. His lecture UNERHÖRT! 3000 (0) years new music is a tour de force through the history of sound systems, instrument developments and notation, and leads us to a new focus on hearing.

Text and Lecture: Bruno Liberda
Idea, development and scenic means: Fanny Brunner

A co-production of dreizehnterjanuar Wien and Wiener Klangwerkstatt. Funded by the Austrian Cultural Forum Berlin

How technology & music mutually influence each other

What would happen if you sat the designers of Reaktor, the LinnStrument, Ableton Live, and Kyma down together on a couch and asked them to talk about how music influences technology, how technology influences music, and what exactly is a musical instrument anyway? That’s what happened at the 2015 Loop Summit. Dennis DeSantis (author of Making Music and moderator of the discussion) wrote this summary with video clips.

Screen Shot 2016-08-23 at 9.09.18 PM

Silvia Matheus at CMMR in Brazil


Composer/sound designer Silvia Matheus is one of the presenters on the scientific program of the 12th International Symposium on Computer Music Multidisciplinary Research (CMMR2016) in São Paulo, Brazil on 05-08 July 2016. Matheus’ talk, State of Art in Sound Design, Production and Synthesis will include an opportunity for conference attendees to learn more about how Silvia uses Kyma in her sound design and composition work and to interact directly with her Kyma 7/Pacarana system.

Lectures & Concerts at BYU

Composer/performer, Steven Ricks invited Carla Scaletti to Brigham Young University for the week of March 7 to work with his students, present lectures, and participate in two concerts. Here’s the full schedule:

Tuesday, March 8
Barlow Lecture: “Data-driven”
3PM at BYU (E400 Harris Fine Arts Center, 50-minute lecture)

Wednesday, March 9
“Computer Music” Looking back/looking forward
11AM E400 HFAC, 50-minute lecture

Thursday, March 10
Overview of Kyma 7
11AM at BYU Electronic Music Studio

Thursday, March 10
Group for New Music, featuring works by Scaletti, Adler, Cage, Pärt
7:30PM BYU Madsen Recital Hall

Friday, March 11
Concert
7:30 PM Art 270 Gallery
Salt Lake City

ICMC2015 keynote smiling at laptop2

Kyma Klub of Santa Cruz

When PhD candidate Madison Heying discovered there was a Kyma system at the University of California at Santa Cruz and that Kristin Erickson, Technical Coordinator of the Digital Arts & New Media center also had a personal Kyma system, they decided to organize the Kyma Klub — an informal group of students and staff members who meet weekly to read through Kyma X Revealed and teach themselves Kyma. The first public performance by club members was AQULAQUTAQU — a sci-fi operetta by Madison Heying & Kristin Erickson (voice & Kyma) with Matthew Galvin (voice & video), David Kant (voice), and Maya Galvin (narrator) — that they premiered at KISS2015 in Bozeman Montana (home of first contact).

In early February 2016, UCSC faculty composer Larry Polansky invited Kyma creators Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel to UC Santa Cruz where Carla presented a graduate colloquium on data sonification and a seminar on sound design in Kyma 7.

Here, Madison and Kristin are presenting some of the generative algorithms they implemented in Kyma for AQULAQUTAQU:

Madison Heying, Kristin Erickson Carla & Kurt UCSC 2016

After the seminar, the Kyma Klub invited Kurt and Carla to Kristin’s studio where David Kant interviewed Kurt,

Kurt Kristin Carla David UCSC 2016

and Kristin Erickson interviewed Carla, while Matthew Galvin filmed their responses in front of a green screen for an as-yet-undisclosed proposal the Kyma Klub members have in mind to make for KISS2016.

Kristin Erickson interviewing Carla Scaletti UCSC 2016

Note the special blacklight Kyma Klub T-shirts (with matching event posters) designed and printed by Kristin and Madison for the visit.

carla on madison & kristin greenscreen UCSC 2016

Tonsalon: Lecture/performances by Bruno Liberda & friends

tropfen, die auf wasser fallen+R

Wiener Klangwerkstatt’s Tonsalon, the Viennese sound workshop founded in 2007, is now open to the public! You are invited to attend three Tonsalon events at Elektro Gönner in Vienna on the 2nd Tuesday of each month:

8 March 2016
12 April 2016
10 May 2016

In June, they yield to the soccer season and will resume again in the fall.

The program for the first Tonsalon on 8 March 2016 will be:

20:00: “No random random notes”, a lecture by Bruno Liberda

21:00: “Taming of the fact”, a live perfomance by Marina Poleukhina & Alexander Chernyshkov & Bruno Liberda

For updates and information on future performances, follow Tonsalon on Facebook.

Here’s a previous performance by Marina and Alexander:

Kyma morphing workshop in London

Have you ever wanted to do audio morphing like this?

 

UK Kyma Users’ group organizer Simon Smith announces that the second meeting of the group will take place at the University of West London, Ealing on the Saturday 20th of February from 10:30 am to 4:30pm and will feature a morphing masterclass by Pete Johnston.

DSC00095

Simon Smith

Charlie Norton, Kyma user and senior lecturer at University of West London, has generously agreed to host the event at the University music studios. The day will consist of a Masterclass/Workshop in the morning then after lunch, mingling, brainstorming and sharing of Kyma tips and hints. Also this will be an ideal opportunity to talk to the local organisers of this year’s Kyma International Sound Symposium (KISS2016) in Leicester UK: Craig Vear and Simon Smith.

If you would like to morph your own sounds at the workshop, please bring your Kyma system with headphones and some sound files you wish to morph.

To reserve a space, please email organizer Simon Smith.

NeverEngine Labs & Kyma 7 workshop in Milan

Cristian Vogel will be at Dude Club in Milan to present a free workshop on his NeverEngine Labs for Kyma 7:

Saturday 28 November 2015 from 16.00 to 18.00
Dude Club – via Boncompagni, 44 Milano

The workshop is free but space is limited to 25 participants, so please register early if you’d like to ensure your place in the workshop!

Access to the NeverEngine Labs virtual laboratories is through a monthly or yearly subscription; each lab is a library of sounds and instruments for Kyma 7, and each month, they focus on a different aspect of sound design, so you can get a taste of the limitless continuum of sound design that is Kyma 7.

Kyma at ICMC2015

Kyma had a strong presence at the 2015 International Computer Music Conference in Denton Texas, September 25 — October 1, including live performances by

Jeffrey Stolet,
ICMC2015JeffStolet2

Wang Chi,

Jon Bellona,
JP Bellona ICMC2015.jpg

Jon Bellona angst2

and Sun Hua,
Sun Hua ICMC2015.jpg
a keynote lecture by Symbolic Sound president Carla Scaletti,
ICMC2015 keynote Title Slide

ICMC2015 keynote social brain crowd

ICMC2015 keynote IMS to Platypus

ICMC2015 keynote platypus meets capybara Wang photo

ICMC2015 keynote close2

ICMC2015 keynote SSC in 1989

ICMC2015 keynote smiling at laptop2

ICMC2015 keynote output from the brain

ICMC2015 keynote computer musicians predict the future

ICMC2015 keynote making imaginary real

a one-hour Kyma workshop also presented by Scaletti (new music pioneer Larry Austin is seen in the audience at the lower left)
Kyma workshop ICMC2015 photo by Chi Wang

and fixed media pieces by Fred Szymanski and Jinshuo Feng. (If we’ve left anyone out, please let us know!)

Thanks to the ICMC 2015 organizers, presenters, and composers!

Special thanks to the ICMC organizers, Wang Chi, Sun Hua, and Jon Bellona for the photos and Iacopo Sinigaglia for the video excerpt.