Kyma and the space of computable sound @ ADC24

“…each instrument, each tool… implies an imaginable and explorable universe” — Jacques Attali

To Symbolic Sound co-founder, Carla Scaletti, every tool — from a user interface to a programming language, to an LLM — is a “map” to some underlying functionality. How do the design choices we make affect what people can imagine creating with those maps? How can we begin to navigate an abstract, completely unknown (and potentially infinite) space — like the space of all computable sound? How (and why) is the Kyma Sound graph radically different from other “visual” programming languages for sound and music?

Find out by watching her keynote address, presented at the 2024 Audio Developer Conference (ADC 24).

Violins abducted by aliens

They come in peace!

Anssi Laiho’s Teknofobia Ensemble is a live-electronics piece that combines installation and concert forms: an installation, because its sound is generated by machines; a concert piece, because it has a time-dependent structure and musical directions for performers. The premiere was 13 November 2024 at Valvesali in Oulu, Finland.

Laiho views technophobia, the fear of new technological advancements, as a subcategory of xenophobia, the fear of the unknown or of outsiders. His goal was to present both of these phobias in an absurd setting.

The composer writes that “the basic concept of technophobia — that ‘machines will replace us and make us irrelevant’— is particularly relevant today, as programs using artificial intelligence are becoming mainstream and are widely used across many industries.”

Teknofobia Ensemble poses the question: What if there were a planet inhabited by a mechanical species, and these machines came to Earth and tried to communicate with us via music? What would the music sound like, and would they first try to learn and imitate our culture in order to communicate with us?

Laiho’s aim was to reproduce the live-electronics environment he would normally work in, but to replace the human musicians with robots — not androids or simulants but “mechanical musicians”.

He asked himself, “What would it mean for my music and creative process if this basic assumption were to become true? As a composer living in the 2020s, do I still need musicians to perform my compositions? Wouldn’t it be easier to work with machines that always fulfill my requests? Can a mechanical musician interpret a musical piece on an emotional level, as a human being does, or does it simply apply virtuosity to the technical execution of the task?”

He then set out to prove himself wrong!

Teknofobia Ensemble consists of five prepared violins, each equipped with a Raspberry Pi that controls various types of electronic motors (solenoids, DC motors, stepper motors, and servos) through a Python program. This program converts OSC commands received from Kyma into PWM signals on the Raspberry Pi pins, which are connected to motor drivers.

In live performances, Kyma acts as the conductor for the ensemble, while Laiho views his role as primarily that of a “mixer for the band”.

The piece is structured as a 26-minute-long Kyma timeline, consisting of OSC instructions (the musical notation of the piece) for the mechanical violins. The live sound produced by the violins is routed back to Kyma via custom-made contact microphones for live electronic processing.

Composer Oriol Graus Ribas Unveils his “Secrets”

With a multidisciplinary background spanning industrial engineering, flamenco and classical guitar, music composition, and electronic music, award-winning composer/guitarist Oriol Graus Ribas composes for a wide range of instruments, multimedia, electronically-transformed acoustic instruments, and electroacoustic multifocal diffusion arrays.

Between 2014 and 2022, Graus Ribas embarked on a period of creative exploration, recording several improvisations in which he intentionally limited himself to a restricted set of pitches. In 2024, he selected the best of those recordings for further development and compiled them into a new album: Secrets — a serene, reflective soundtrack for introspection and contemplation as the new year begins to reveal its secrets.

Material for Secrets comes from an electric guitar stripped of any sound processing. Gradually, the sound of the guitar becomes inaudible as it is routed through Kyma modifications, primarily the CrossFilter and SampleCloud. Graus Ribas employs a pedalboard to dynamically navigate the flow between the raw and Kyma-processed sounds.

Composer Oriol Graus Ribas
Oriol Graus Ribas (Photo by Alba Espot)

Reflecting on his creative process, Graus Ribas writes, “Working with Kyma-Pacamara allows me to dedicate my time entirely to the music itself!”

Toe and Shell (IRL)

Remember the lockdowns? Throughout those bleak days when musicians couldn’t perform in public, a small group of Kyma artists managed to find a way to continue meeting and making music together via Zoom in two virtual concerts they called Toe and Shell. In early November 2024 they decided to meet in person at Splendor, a former bathhouse that Anne La Berge has converted into a musical mecca in the center of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Setting up for a multi-system jam session

The first order of business was for the participants to collectively agree on a schedule of presentations, discussions, and public concerts. Then, over the course of the three day meetup, everyone had a chance to ask questions, experiment, share expertise, and improvise together.

Pete Johnston, Anne La Berge, Charlie Norton sharing expertise

As part of the Toe and Shell, Anne La Berge hosted three public concerts at Splendor.

Alan Jackson performing with Anne La Berge
Steve Ricks improvisation with trombone and Kyma

Alan Jackson conducting the collective schedule-making session

 

 

Emergent life, mind, and music

At the IRCAM Forum Workshops @Seoul 6-8 November 2024, composer Steve Everett presented a talk on the compositional processes he used to create FIRST LIFE: a 75-minute mixed media performance for string quartet, live audio and motion capture video, and audience participation.

FIRST LIFE is based on work that Everett carried out at the Center of Chemical Evolution, a NSF/NASA funded project at multiple universities to examine the possibility of the building blocks of life forming in early Earth environments. He worked with stochastic data generated by Georgia Tech biochemical engineer Martha Grover and mapped them to standard compositional structures (not as a scientific sonification, but to help educate the public about the work of the center through a musical performance).

Data from IRCAM software and PyMOL were mapped to parameters of physical models of instrumental sounds in Kyma. For example, up to ten data streams generated by the formation of monomers and polymers in Grover’s lab were used to control parameters of the “Somewhat stringish” model in Kyma (such as delay rate, BowRate, position, decay, etc). Everett presented a poster about this work at the 2013 NIME Conference in Seoul, and has uploaded some videos from the premiere of First Life at Emory University.

Currently on the music composition faculty of the City University of New York (CUNY), Professor Everett is teaching a doctoral seminar on timbre in the spring (2025) semester and next fall he will co-teach a course on music and the brain with Patrizia Casaccia, director of the Neuroscience Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center.

Anne La Berge at the Cortona Sessions

A highlight of this year’s Cortona Sessions for New Music will be Special Guest Artist, Anne La Berge. Known for her work blending composed and improvised music, sound art, and storytelling, Anne will be working closely with composers and will be coaching performers on improvisation with live Kyma electronics!

Anne La Berge at KISS2017

The Cortona Sessions for New Music is scheduled for 20 July – 1 August 2025 in Ede, Netherlands, and includes twelve days of intensive exploration of contemporary music, collaboration, and discussions on what it takes to make a career as a 21st-century musician.

Anne is eager to work with instrumentalists and composers looking to expand their solo or ensemble performances through live electronics, so if you or someone you know is interested in working with Anne this summer, consider applying for the 2025 Cortona Sessions!

Applications are open now (Deadline: 1 February 2025). You can apply as a Composer, a Performer, or as a Groupie (auditor). A full-tuition audio/visual fellowship is available for applicants who can provide audio/visual documentation services and/or other technological support.

Generative sound design at University of West London

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 Studio
Alan Jackson and Pete Johnston pondering the EMS Vocoder
Composer Bruno Liberda (the tall one) with Symbolic Sound co-founder Carla Scaletti

 

Brainwaves, Hyper-organs, DJ sets & Opposites

Franz Danksagmüller has had a densely packed fall 2024 concert season of hyper-organ plus Kyma performances in London, Köln, Helsinki, Lübeck and Berlin.

Between October performances of Nosferatu with his students from the Royal Academy of Music in London, Franz Danksagmüller traveled to Cologne to perform a concert with Kyma and the Hyper-organ at Kunst-Station St. Peter in Cologne on 18 October 2024. Here are some photos from Cologne including one taken from inside the organ (placing the mics for live Kyma input can be a risky business!)

Franz Danksagmüller placing mics inside the organ at Kulturstation St. Peter, Cologne (narrow and treacherous paths…)
Cologne, Kunststation St. Peter (which despite it’s name is a functioning church with a congregation and services) – looking down from the balcony to the mobile organ console.
Cologne, Kunststation St. Peter organ console with Franz Danksagmüller’s Glove controller and Muse EEG scanner
Cologne, Kunststation St. Peter, the horizontal trumpets…
Cologne, Kunststation St. Peter with paper score & iPad running Kyma Control

After the film festival at St Albans in London, it was on to Helsinki for Danksagmüller, where he performed with Kyma and the new hyper-organ at the Musiikkitalo on 11 November 2024 — the first time that this organ was played with live-electronics and video! Danksagmüller performed his new composition there is no free will for EEG scanner and Kyma and a live-electronics “remix” of a prelude by D. Buxtehude.

Helsinki, Musiikkitalo, view from the stage of the organ console
Helsinki, Musiikkitalo, organ console
Helsinki, Musiikkitalo, Franz Danksagmüller featured on a sign outside the concert hall
Helsinki Musiikkitalo; the entire organ is in a swell box with wooden shutters (in addition to the individual swell boxes) for dynamics. The twisted organ pipes are fully functional!
Helsinki organ console with laptop and Kyma Control on iPad

Following the Helsinki performance, Danksagmüller returned to Lübeck to perform an hour-long DJ set with Kyma and variety of controllers for an after party following a concert at the Kunsttankstelle Lübeck.

Lübeck, Kunsttankstelle, Franz Danksagmüller’s live DJ setup
Kulturtankstelle Lübeck; the first part of the performance (Danksagmüller joined at the end of their first part and played the last part)

And the busy concert season is not over yet! Danksagmüller’s students are performing their own compositions for hyper-organ and Kyma at the Musikhochschule Lübeck on 8 December, and Franz will perform with organ and Kyma in Berlin on Friday the 13th at the Zum Heilbronnen church on their Opposites Attract series. Danksagmüller’s “Light and Shadow” — featuring music by W. Byrd, J. S. Bach and F. Danksagmüller — is framed by other concerts on themes like “Fire and Water”, “Life and Death”, “Beginnings and Endings”, and other evocative opposite-pairings.

Audio Developer Conference 2024

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.

 

Percussion Robot

Ping Pong Percussion represents a new, hybrid art form created by experimental composer / visual artist, Giuseppe Tamborrino and featuring a robotic instrument that he designed and built.

Part robot, part sound sculpture, part musical composition, part video art — Ping Pong Percussion Experimental Sampling with Wifi Servo Motor & Live Granular Synthesis. Laterza (TA) 2024-10-6 blends robotically-actuated acoustic percussion sounds with live Kyma granular synthesis and leads the viewer on a path from real world to imaginary visuals.

Giuseppe Tamborrino’s Wi-Fi servo motor-controlled sound sculpture

In his compositions, Laterza-based composer Giuseppe Tamborrino combines jazz scales, Greek modes and personalized scales with partially tonal, tonal and non-tonal timbres, blended with instrumental acoustic effects. Each work takes a different form, some are stochastically shaped, others reflect the golden section, others take on algorithmic structures experimentally generated by custom software for computer music and sound.