Official organ of the Symbolic Sound Corporation
Cristian Vogel will be talking about NeverEngine and Kyma as a recombinant artists’ expert system at the Redbull Music Academy in Madrid on Saturday, 29 October 2011.  For the rest of the workshop, he’ll be dissecting one of the Kyma Sounds he uses for live performance.  The session is open to the public.
Sound designer, Samy Bardet, used Kyma to design a singing monkey, some supernaturally fast growing plants, and the voice of the ‘monster’ in Bibo Bergeron‘s new animated feature, Un Monstre á Paris.
We recently spoke with Samy to find out more about his work in sound design for film:
 What is your earliest sonic memory? (from childhood?)
The purring of my cat Mao.
When did you first realize that you wanted to be a sound designer? (Did you start from the side of music? From audio engineering? In other words, how did you come to be a sound designer?)
After a short stint as a live sound engineer, I fell in love with sound for motion picture and became a sound editor. I started out by doing a lot of cartoons for TV. That period was essential because I learned editing, creation, and sound design.
My first movie was Le général, le chien et les oiseaux… in 2003. But it was Persepolis in 2007 that was a real revelation for me and it was that experience that made me decide I wanted to be a sound designer for motion picture.
Do you remember how it was that you heard about Kyma and how or why you decided to use it in your work?
I first heard about Kyma about 10 years ago…but at that time it seemed to me a very strange and inaccessible machine.
But then I met a director named Valérie Moncorgé and worked on her film Le forcené. That was an unforgettable experience; there was no music, only a few voices and a lots of sounds.
Her favorite sound for picture was the work that Hamilton Sterling and Richard King did on “Master and Commander”. One day she came in with an article talking about the sound design on Master and Commander; in the article she had circled the name “Kyma”, and she asked me “What is this?”. In order to answer her, I decided to buy one!!!
For Un Monstre á Paris, please tell us about the evolution of the singing monkey sound, how you imagined it, how you realized it, how you performed it, etc.
I started with the voice of -M- singing like an opera singer. When I saw the animation, I first tried using the classic monkey sound but it was unsuccessful. Those sounds were too short and not close enough in frequency.
I finally found a sample of capuchin monkey whose frequencies were closest to those of the human voice. I analyzed the human voice and the capuchin monkey in the Tau Player. Then I performed the result using my Motormix and, after several tries, once I was able to perform it in sync with the picture, the result was incredible!!!!
I understand that there is also a scene of a plant or plants growing at incredible speed. Can you tell us more about that scene and how you designed and controlled the sound for it?
This was created with a SampleCloud (one of my favorite prototypes) and played on the Wacom tablet. I took a short sample of leaves rustling, and with this magic tool it became a giant sunflower!
Who is the monster in Paris (and how did you design his voice)?
The voice of the monster in Paris is a mix between rock singer Matthieu Chedid ( “-M-” ), a raccoon, and my own voice … I used the Tau player again to morph these three sources in order to make him credible and sensitive.
From the point of view of the sound designer, what are the differences between working on an animated feature vs a live action feature with human actors? Or is it virtually the same? Do animated features give you more latitude for sound design? Or is it the same either way?
The editing is very different. In a live action feature, you’re constrained by the way the sound was spoken during shooting, and especially by the ambience. It must match exactly.
In an animated feature, you receive only the voices, so all the atmospheres can be created by your imagination…
In the end, though, I think that sound design is not so different between live action and animated features, because even in live action features you rarely use “real” sounds (of guns, cars, etc), it’s always exaggerated to make it more spectacular. And it’s the same in animated features.
Where does Kyma fit in your arsenal of sound design tools? Do you turn to Kyma for specific kinds of sounds or ways of working?
I’m working with a Pyramix which is the tool I find most flexible and effective for sound editing (and I think it is less well known in the US).
My Pacarana is connected via a Capybara (used as an audio interface) directly through digital inputs and outputs to the Pyramix. That way I can use Kyma as an external effect, sending a sound from the Pyramix. Or I can play Kyma Sounds and record directly in the Pyramix.
What would you identify as the strong points of Kyma or the sort of things that Kyma is best at?
Kyma is especially impressive when you want to treat a real sound and want it to stay organic and real-sounding… for example, with voices…
Were there any sounds on this film that you could not have done without Kyma?
The monster, the singing monkey and a great morph between a metallic sound and the name of “Raoul”.
Describe your ideal meal. Who would be there, what would be on the menu, where would it be, what would the conversation be like, etc
You would be there to talk about your vision of sound…
Einstein would be there to explain to us this strange dimension called space/time and also explain why today a neutrino can go faster than light…
Someone would be there to give the beginning of answer on the origin of life…
There are too many things to talk about with so many interesting people; it’s too complicated to reduce it to one meal…
If you were to give advice to someone who is just starting out as a sound designer, what would that be? What would you advise them to study, where should they live, what kind of work could they do to prepare themselves?
1. Listen to real life all around you; this is very inspiring….
2. Sound can be simple®
3. Break the rules.
What’s next for you? Do you have a project lined up (one that you are allowed to discuss yet?)Â What new sound design challenges are in store for you in 2011-2012?
I’ve just finished the sound design for an exposition in Paris. And I’m preparing a new motion picture called The Marsupilami by Alain Chabat; this is very big sound design challenge.
Thank you Samy!  We look forward to seeing (and especially hearing) Un Monstre à Paris!
London UK-based Zelig Sound, creators of music composition and sound design for TV, film, advertising and branding, recently created the sound and music for “The 360 Project”, two dramatic short films by Toronto-based director and photographer Ryan Enn Hughes that capture peak dance moves using 48 simultaneously firing cameras surrounding the performer (designed by The Big Freeze).  The result is a cross between photography, video, and ‘digital sculpture’, where time is frozen but is then unrolled in new three-dimensional sequences.
KRUMP 360 (The 360 Project) from Zelig Sound: Composition & Sound on Vimeo.
Sound designer Matthew Wilcock and his team used Kyma, performed on a Wacom tablet, for the whooshes, passes and synth sounds in both 360 pieces, BALLET 360 & KRUMP 360. They used Kyma to create a selection of sounds around the timbre they wanted, and later brought them into a DAW to edit them and layer in the music.
BALLET 360 (The 360 Project) from Zelig Sound: Composition & Sound on Vimeo.
The team used the same process on a Zelig Sound branding project for Black Ocean. Wilcock estimates that 70% of the sound for Black Ocean was created by Kyma controlled by movements and gestures on the Wacom tablet.  The team set up the film to run in a loop while recording multiple performances of custom-designed Kyma Sounds on a Wacom tablet.  They then took the results of that session, and edited, selected, and layered them in their DAW.
Black Ocean Ident from Zelig Sound: Composition & Sound on Vimeo.
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.
Joseph Fraioli of JAFBOX SOUND has posted a new project on his sound design reel featuring a character called lee that was created entirely in Kyma.  lee is an amorphous formation of oil speeding through its paces on a futuristic test track in a new advertising campaign directed by psyop.
http://www.jafboxsound.com/works/view/502
To create the voice of lee, Fraioli created kits of vehicle sounds, including bys, accelerations, idles etc and performed them using his Wacom tablet. Â He recorded all of his performances, selected the best ones, and then edited and layered the results in Pro Tools.
Leaving us with the question: why does lee bother to stop at the traffic light?
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!)
Jean-Edouard Miclot’s “Field and Toys 2010” is an entertaining and enlightening video starring the sound designer in a variety of intriguing, and often amusing, sound-recording scenes. At around 4.40 you can see Jean-Edouard controlling Kyma with the audio output of a slide whistle and a Wacom Tablet.
Sound adventurer Mikkel Nielsen posted a video on his blog demonstrating his Kyma-processed sounds for a multi-touch device. Mikkel starts with bird whistles and chirps ends up with R2D2 phoning home on his iPhone!
Sound designer Mike Johnson made extensive use of Kyma in his sound design work for Blizzard Entertainment’s latest World of WarCraft expansion, Cataclysm, to create hybrid vocalizations for several of the new creatures that now populate the world of Azeroth.
Sound designer, Mike Johnson made extensive use of Kyma in the sounds for Blizzard Entertainment‘s latest World of  WarCraft expansion,  Cataclysm.
Johnson used Kyma to create hybrid vocalizations for several of the new creatures that now populate the world of Azeroth. Â Creatures with names such asRock Demon, Fire Dragon, Slime Creature, Rock Worm, Stone Golem and Wood Creature were created by taking various human and animal vocalizations and warping them with fire, rock, and other elemental forces to visceral, terrifyingly effect. According to Johnson, “I couldn’t have done it without my Kyma system.”
Kyma played such a strong role in the sound design for Yogesh Kubchandani’s directorial debut, The Acceptance, he gave it an ending credit. Can you solve the mysteries in this compelling, poetic film? http://www.3stonespictures.com
Following the initial screening of The Acceptance in New York City, director Yogesh Khubchandani, was barraged by questions when he took the stage. He politely declined to speak about the film, suggesting only that if people still had questions, they should watch the film again, adding “there are no symbols in the film; I just had one impression that could not be expressed in words, and so the film came out.” Can you solve its mysteries? (Order your own DVD copy of the film at http://www.3stonespictures.com)
Certain unforeseen events can almost literally befall us, unexpectedly and violently tearing into the web of our interconnections and relationships. In Yogesh Khubchandani’s new film, The Acceptance, one such event has disrupted the existence of Elli (compellingly played by Alicia Lobo) to its very core. Khubchandani’s poetic, spell-binding film uses images and sounds to create an urgent sense of mystery as he traces her inner journey from near despair to a calm acceptance. Khubchandani masterfully recreates a seamless interleaving of the inner imagination and outer events that constitute Elli’s flow of experience. Intense emotion is experienced as sudden silence and a sense of time slowing almost to stop as the character focuses full attention on the anger or fear or frustration and the rest of the world disappears for that stretched-out moment of time. Several threads weave themselves throughout the film: the restorative power of nature, thanking God for what we do NOT have, vegetarianism as identity, the relationships between mothers and daughters (the male characters rarely appear on screen).
Khubchandani also did the sound design for the film, using the sounds of birds, wind and water contrasted with the rattling drones of machines to underscore his themes. Like the images, the sound slips easily back and forth between realism and the logic of dreams. Kyma played such a large role in this transformation, it even gets a credit at the end of the film!