Search

Community

Newsletter
Photos & Videos
Share
Learn

Bringing you the latest news from the Kyma community since 1990

Kyma Studio/Live Performance of the Month

• Click here to view previous studio and live performance photos

Sven Miracolo's Q-Room: a recording, editing, mastering, and post-production studio in Bolzano. Giant windows illuminate the rooms and afford a spectacular view of the Dolomites.

New Releases

26 Apr 2008 — Listen for Edmund Eagan's Kyma/Continuum/Serge drenched score on Nik Sheehan's new documentary, Flicker: the True Story of Brion Gysin and the Dream Machine, premiering at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto. Eagan's score is perfectly evocative of the era and of the questions being explored by Gysin in his collaborations with William S Burroughs. The score features extensive use of Kyma, analog synthesizers and the Continuum to help bring to life Gysin's art, friendships, ideas and his fascination with self-identity. A sonic four channel interpretation of the Dream Machine was created using a Serge modular synthesizer, which could then be selectively tuned to harmonize within the various movements of the musical score. The voice of Marianne Faithfull (one of the principal characters in the documentary) was sampled and analysed within Kyma to create time variant deliveries of the phrase "beautiful, simple, magical object." Granular ambiences, modal tone shaping, formant shifted voices and numerous other Kyma sounds were played on the Continuum with the assistance of Wacom Tablet and Wiimote control input. Listen to the trailer and a sampling of the music here. more...

20 Apr 2008 — USO (Unidentified Sound Object) is featured in Transition—Turbulence, a project of New Radio and Performing Arts. Turbulence is dedicated to commissioning, exhibiting, and archiving new and emerging hybrid networked art forms. Check out the USO feature here or the above link. more...

17 Apr 2008 — Cristian Vogel's Double Deux / Delicado is now available on Last.FM. Known for his work on experimental techno labels such as Tresor, Novamute and Mille Plateaux, Vogel's music has more recently been electrifying a different kind of dance floor. When Franz Treichler (Young Gods) introduced Cristian to Swiss choreographer Gilles Jobin it was, as they describe it, "love at first sight". Since then Cristian has scored the music for four of Jobin's creations including Double Deux (2006) and Delicado (2004). more...

14 Apr 2008 — Taylor Deupree used Kyma to do the processing on NYC/Tokyo artist Sawako's CD Hum. In Hum, Sawako starts with sounds of everyday life, processes them, and works them into melodies and arrangements employing piano, voice, roomtones, field recordings, and DSP processing by Deupree. more...

31 Mar 2008 — Sound (and experience) designer Lorenzo Brusci has set up a new network of professionals dedicated to the idea of conceiving and re-designing human habitats through environmental interaction design, sound composition and site specific acoustics research. Their goal is to enhance urban life and public/private architecture, with an eye (and ear) toward improving the human experience. For example, they are doing work on masking and transfiguring the noise inherent in city environments. For more information on their goals and activities, visit http://www.soundexperiencedesign.com more...

10 Jan 2008 — Camille Troillard has released a new version of OSCulator at http://www.osculator.net. Already widely used for controlling Kyma with the Nintendo Wiimote and Jazz Mutant's Lemur touch surfaces, Camille's new version of OSCulator now includes support for the 3D Connexion Space Navigator. more...

23 Dec 2007 — In an interview with GameZone, sound designer/composer Kemal Amarasingham describes how he used a lawnmower and Kyma's REResonator to create animalistic animalistic language for Mage Knight Apocalypse. As Kemal puts it, ""We believe that when audio, visuals and gameplay are all tied into one another that all three become much stronger." For the full interview, see GameZone. more...

22 Dec 2007 — Thinking of interfacing Kyma with other software and hardware? Check out some of the offerings by your fellow Kyma-ites on the tweaky, including:

* AC Toolbox: Paul Berg's algorithmic composition toolbox, written in LISP, can generate and send control values directly to the Capybara via the Flame Firewire interface.

* Flame Max Objects by David Kiers: Send int/float controller values from Max to the Capybara through the Flame Firewire interface.

* Capy Max External by Greg Wuller: Like David's flame object, the capy object can send controller values from Max to the Capybara via the Firewire interface but it adds support for Global Maps as well as being a Universal Binary.

* AlphaTrack to OSC by Garth Paine: A Max app that uses JavaScript to parse the MIDI messages from the Frontier Designs Alphatrack, and output them as OSC messages. This allows users to seamlessly pass the control messages through OSCulator to Kyma (note that there is a new release of OSCulator at http://www.osculator.net). The app is downloadable from: http://www.activatedspace.com/software/Software.html more...

21 Dec 2007 — Sound designer Dustin Camilleri has posted the first in what he plans to be a series of sample packs under the Creative Commons license. sndshare0107 focuses on ambient soundscapes and noises, all generated by patches he designed in Kyma. According to Dustin, you're free to use these samples in whatever way you'd wish as long as you drop him a line and let him know how you're using them. Dustin's goal is to create a free-flowing sound exchange where anyone can upload/download anything. Create, reshape, share, collaborate! (woot!) more...

20 Dec 2007 — Melissa Stark's Voices is a CD of evocative soundscapes realized in Kyma and mixed in Pro Tools. You can listen to excerpts from this work in progress on bMuze where you can also vote for your favorites. In the track titled Fall of Mercury we hear the whispers of a race of Mercurians even after their planet falls into the gravitational field of the sun. more...

18 Dec 2007 — Is it a wave? Is it a particle? No, it's both (and Egypt too)! Experience Greg Hunter's "smooth mix of crunchy glitch covered in a rich ethnodelic sauce" on his new "Lake of Dreams" podcast. "Love is the only miracle there is." more...

07 Dec 2007 — Ghost Strings, audio CD by Patricia Strange, violin (2006). A collection of five compositions for violin and computer processing including Ghost String by Jeffrey Stolet (2005) and Lyra by Brian Belet (2002). IMG Media CD-02-01, 2006. more...

28 Nov 2007 — Check out Cristian Vogel's crisply entrancing Never Engine videos on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s19NYeEDB0A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zb9IEKDVI3U

And Cristian's music for choreographer Gilles Jobin's dance company here: http://www.no-future.com/erutufon/showthread.php?t=25019 more...

27 Oct 2007 — If some of the tracks on AARDE A Whole Day (DirtyCDR 025) seem to evolve like slow surges of the deep sea or suggest the mesmerizing thrum of engines, the rush of water or screeches of gulls, the explanation could lie in this one unusual fact. Lois Laplace is both composer and a professional sailor. Aarde is a collaboration of Laplace on Kyma, and Guillaume Gargaud on computer and prepared guitar. Laplace, who describes the sound of Kyma as "very pure," has a talent for revealing subtle and delicate details in the midst of an industrial environment like a commercial ship. Whether focusing intently on the minutest variations of light reflecting off the surface of the water or constructing soundscapes of soothing engine drones with in-your-ear glitches and mysteriously delicate noise bands that evolve at just the right pace, Aarde's music is simultaneously vast and delicate: truly minimalist without ever becoming boring. You can listen to some of the tracks on Virb and order the CD from Dirty Demos. more...

19 Oct 2007 — Tobias Enhus used Kyma to render middle eastern flutes and Arabic vocals on the score for Rendition opening in theaters on October 19. Tobias performed the re-pitched flutes and voice live using his Max Mathews radio baton. Watch for Tobias' name in the credits under Synth Programming. more...

11 Oct 2007 — Providing enhanced support for multichannel sound synthesis, processing, mixing and recording, Kyma X.47 is now available as a free update to registered Kyma X users. Also included with the release are over 150 new multichannel Sounds for the Kyma Sound Library. more...

08 Oct 2007 — Cristian Vogel's The NeverEngine is a collection of recordings synthesized using his own custom sequencing algorithms in Kyma for interpolating between data-states, sliding beats into bleeps and tones into drones. Vogel has been overseeing the refinement and evolution of these interpolating state engines, and in tresor.321, he presents the first chapter documenting the sonic results of this concentrated research and development. more...

21 Sep 2007 — Hamilton Sterling used Kyma's CrossFilter to create weird, low-end wind-based drones that rise and fall with the winds for The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford, a film whose title is almost as long as the film itself (2 hours, 40 minutes). The musical score for the film is only 30 minutes long, so Sterling's drone ambiences (and their absence) play an important role in creating tension in the film (described by Sterling as "the most artistic film I've been privileged to work on.") Brad Pitt (who also produced the film) won the 2007 Venice Film Festival Best Actor award for his portrayal of James. Watch for Hamilton's name in the credits as Additional Sound Supervision and Sound Effects Editor. For more information and trailers, see the website. more...

10 Sep 2007 — Musician/Remixer/Producer, DC, used Kyma for synthesis and processing of the NIN (Nine Inch Nails) song Only from their release With Teeth. The Remix title is: Melon Cucumber Headphone Remix by DC 4 defrostMusic. defrostMusic is DC's music production company with credits including the Grammy-Award-Winning "Just Chillin'" by Norman Brown, Al Jarreau, George Benson, Bob James and others... more...

21 Aug 2007 — Kemal Amarasingham, creative director at dSonic, used Kyma to generate ambient sounds and process voices for Irrational Games (now 2k Boston), new title: BioShock. dSonic was responsible for all the voice processing on the audio logs, radios, PA announcements, TVs etc., as well creating the sound effects for the plasmid weapons and ambient sounds for 5 of the levels in the game. more...

19 Aug 2007 — USO Project (Federico Placidi and Matteo Milani) have released Prelude of Noises, a Kyma-generated homage to Musique concrète as a free video on their blog. more...

13 Aug 2007 — On August 13, 2007, Outersect (Rob Rayle) released his worldwide debut solo album, Caldera, nine tracks combining acoustic vocals, instruments, and electronics in a variety of psychedelic downtempo styles ranging from dub to ethnotechno. Caldera is a spiritually motivated album intended to reach out to people using spiritual psychedelic music in order to help them move towards a higher understanding. You can hear lots of Kyma on the CD (including some new synthesis algorithms that Rob programmed for himself using DSP assembly language). In particular, listen to Track 7 (almost everything is Kyma or Kyma-processed) and Track 9 (the pedal-steel lead sound is Kyma), plus there are various Kyma sounds interspersed throughout the album. Check http://www.outersect.net for more information on the album and upcoming live dates. The name of the album comes from a free event Rayle hosted inside the caldera of an extremely large volcano in the Eastern Sierra. more...

22 Jul 2007 — Lots of Kyma applied in the mixing and performance of the debut album from Cristian Vogel's latest band endeavour, Night of the Brain. more...

01 Jul 2007 — How do you synthesize the sound of hundreds of tiny insect feet rapidly descending a blade of grass? Hamilton Sterling used Kyma to accomplish the feat for 11th Hour, Leonardo Di Caprio's feature-length documentary on the global environment described by Variety's Justin Chang as "a ruminative essay on what it means to be human in a scarce world." According to Sterling, "I quite liked using various granularized samples in a sequencer with a quick tempo to mimic the tiny feet of insect colonies rapidly moving up and down a blade of grass. more...

20 Jun 2007 — In his Chennai studio, composer A. R. Rahman used Kyma to design ghostly effects for his hauntingly obsessive score for Bombil and Beatrice, a tale of star-crossed lovers whose love survives 100 years, death, and reincarnation. Bombil and Beatrice was recently premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. more...

11 Jun 2007 — Kyma X users are invited to download the latest update, Kyma X.45.1 (6.451). Some of the new or improved features include: optional tick marks and labels on VCS faders, improved accuracy of bpm: for hot values of !BPM, new Sound modules (Replicator and MultiSpectrum), several new CapyTalk expressions (for example, 'aSamplesFileName' bpmForBeats: beatsPerBar), a quick expression for making multiple numbered copies of a fader using !Fader copies:, and several other improvements and optimizations. This update is free to registered Kyma X users. more...

10 Jun 2007 — Christiaan Gelauff has announced the release of CAG5, an extensive set of synthesis and filtering modules for Kyma, available for download from his site for 35 Euro. more...

09 Jun 2007 — Supervising Sound Editor Paul McFadden made extensive use of Kyma's RE Synthesis on the BBC's new Doctor Who series. Listen for the RE effect in the sounds of Werewolves and the Beast. McFadden also used Kyma to morph The Wire's scream into a 1 kHz television tone. more...

08 Jun 2007 — A new version of OSCulator (a Macintosh application for interfacing OSC devices and Nintendo Wiimote to Kyma) was released on 8 June 2007. The new version allows for four Wiimotes at once in the same document (and as many simultaneous documents as you want). Also, a couple of annoying bugs have been corrected. more...

07 Jun 2007 — David Mooney and Maxine Heller's collaborative piece, Why Do You Want to Come to Santa Barbara Graduate School?, has been selected for inclusion on elektramusic's CD, Electroacoustic Music Volume 02, scheduled for release on June 7, 2007. more...

30 May 2007 — In May, Treyarch released its Spiderman-III game, featuring an original musical score with Kyma processing by Tobias Enhus and Kyma-assisted sound design by Brian Fredrickson. more...

19 May 2007 — Photos and videos of Wacom and Wiimote-controlled Kyma performances have recently been sighted on the web:

http://www.syncsonics.com/blog/?page_id=99 (Garth Paine & Wacom tablet)

http://www.machinehead.com/dc/visuals/dc_wiiandkyma.mp4 (Dustin Camilleri, a dog, and a Wimmote)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlTnLxqxUZs (USOProject's Jedi Fantasy)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESDzYYl0__s (Wiimote->OSCulator->Kyma)

http://picasaweb.google.com/ecodigitography/CamdenHavenMusicFestival (Garth Paine @ Camden Haven Music Festival) more...

18 May 2007 — Enrico Barbaro did the sound design and mixing for Y que cumplas muchos más, a short film by director David Alcalde that asks the question "What if a serial baby killer meets a baby serial killer?" (He warns potential viewers that the film is disturbing and gory). Barbaro used Kyma to generate and process the ambiences for the film. He also used Kyma to process the sound on a 30 second spot for Peugeot XBox (don't touch that button!). Both these clips (as well as excerpts from his musical projects utilizing Kyma) are available at Enrico's website. more...

17 May 2007 — Paul Berg has written a Universal Binary version of the AC Toolbox (with Capybara support) and it is now available through the tweaky Share area or directly from his website. more...

16 May 2007 — Mike Johnson, Audio Post Production Manager at Sony SCEA, utilized his Kyma system on the God of War II video game project for Playstation 2. According to Johnson, Kyma "gave me a creative edge in creating god-like vocals, electrical effects, and other-worldly surround ambiences. The granular functionality of the system allowed me the freedom to experiment with and abuse audio while always generating useful results." more...

15 May 2007 — Sound designer for the Apple iPod television commercials, François Blaignan, has just revamped the website for Tinitus Sound Design and Music. Blaignan and his partners have started construction on a new studio in proximity to the USC Film School where they will be doing music and sound for advertising and independent films. more...

14 May 2007 — Composer Kees Tazelaar has launched a comprehensive new website on his work, including the reconstruction of classic electronic compositions, his own original compositions, photography, upcoming performances, broadcasts and lectures. Included are complete mp3 recordings of three compositions realized entirely in Kyma: Lasciar Vibrare v.5 (2004, 34 minutes), Chroma 1 (2006, 12 minutes) and his newest work, the shimmering, lively and evocative Zeitraum - Ort - Zeichen - Sterne (2007, 20 minutes). more...

02 Apr 2007 — Camille Troillard (currently on tour with his band Neïmo) has announced a new version of his Open Sound Control translator, OSCulator 2.0. Among other things, version 2 enables Mac users to control the parameters of Kyma Sounds using the Wii Remote, an inexpensive wireless 3-D accelerometer made by Nintendo for the Wii gaming console. Check out the demo video. more...

08 Apr 2007 — Karl Richard and The Orange Hut Studio announce the launch of their new website. To quote the Orange Hut team, "We proud parents are happy to say that the Beta crawl has (at last) turned into the fully-fledged hip-swinging stride of a sexually charged hedonistic adolescent. So play with its knobs, press its buttons, and leave the seeds of your ideas here to grow in its fertile folds... And kindly do let us know of any errors, insights, views you may have had while treading it's shimmering silicon shores." more...

07 Apr 2007 — Unidentified Sound Object (MatteoMilani and FedericoPlacidi) have started aggregating media and texts related to sound design, news, and history of electronic and computer music on their new blog. There is at least one new video per day guaranteed to be of interest to sound designers and electronic musicians so it is well worth bookmarking it or subscribing to their RSS feed. more...

06 Apr 2007 — Michael Strohmann and Dietmar Bruckmayr used Kyma for live vocal processing in their work Imago. The original idea was that the voice of a singer/performer should be the sole generator for everything that happens to that voice. Digital machines dismantle, transform and duplicate his voice and ultimately merge it in its frequency domain with other sounds. This recursive relationship between voice and machine leads to a successive dissolution of the difference between analog and digital sound sources for the listener and the singer. Although the singer remains outwardly the creator and authority in charge of the acoustic events, the purported expansion and enrichment of the vocalized expression ultimately turns into manipulation and estrangement. more...

05 Apr 2007 — Christiaan Gelauff is cooking up a new version of his CAG microsounds and he has included several mp3 demos in the table of new modules. more...

04 Apr 2007 — Harm Visser has developed a new series of wind instruments for his Kyma Acoustic Modelling Toolkit. Among other things, they provide a much better breath control and the breath noise can start before the actual instrument sound starts. He has also made improvements to overblowing and multiphonics using Christiaan Gelauff's saturator. Anyone who purchased the original acoustic modelling toolkit should have received this update by email (if not, please notify Harm Visser). more...

03 Apr 2007 — The German professional magazine Sound & Recording is holding a film music recording and sound design contest for which they have invited Dipl.-Ing. Judith Nordbrock both to serve on the jury and to select the film. She has chosen Manuel Schmitt's 2005 3D animated movie Living Legacy for which Judith created the sound design in Kyma. Contestants will receive a copy of the movie and one audio track. more...

22 Feb 2007 — Composer Tobias Enhus has just finished scoring the soundtrack for Paragraf 78, a Russian sci-fi thriller involving viruses and commandos (directed by Mikhail Khleborodov). To create an intimate, even claustrophobic feel, Enhus went with reduced orchestrations and just the slightest touch of reverb in contrast to his usual lush atmospheric style. Enhus even orchestrated some of the cues specifically to work well with his custom Kyma processing patches for doing time-stretching, pitch shifting and convolution. Orchestral segments are augmented by recordings of Tobias (Kyma + analog synthesizer) improvising with Richard Fortus (6-string electric cello). The result is described by Enhus as Solaris meets Aliens...but more evil! more...

17 Jan 2007 — Camille Troillard has just released version 1.4 of OSCulator—the application that lets OSC-enabled hardware and software talk to Kyma. Included in the new version are: OSC-generated keystrokes (works with Edmund Eagan's QWERTY keyboard layout on the Lemur) and high-precision transmission of MIDI inputs to Kyma from other applications. For full details, please visit his website. more...

13 Jan 2007 — Listen to the rich and deeply resonant sounds of Richard Lainhart's live radio performance on WDFH in New York. One of the versions of "Cranes Fly West" is for electric lap steel guitar processed by Kyma; on "One Word" he plays Kyma using MIDI faders; and "The Tiger's Dream" is for Continuum and Kyma. more...

11 Jan 2007 — Check out the video of USO's live performance in Rome at last month's LiveiXem: live synthesis under keyboard and tablet control, live processing of acoustic bass, plus a pair of baby-blue LEDs staring out at you from the dual Capybaras. USO (unidentified sound object) is Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi. more...

10 Jan 2007 — Harm Visser has won the 2007 Electronic Musician Editors' Choice award for his physical modelling toolboxes. Check out the toolbox he created (and continues to expand upon) for Kyma. more...

08 Jan 2007 — Scot Solida's new Christus and the Cosmonaughts album has just been made available as a digital download from Beta-lactam Ring Records as the full CD version of the original LP plus two additional bonus tracks. Solida describes the album as "utterly chocked to the brim with Kyma goodness." One of the tracks, "The Fractured Faithfull" was done entirely within Kyma, but no track was untouched by the Kyma/Capybara combo. Solida warns that "spinning the artwork on a turntable has been clinically proven to cause lethargy in children and dust mites." more...

05 Jan 2007 — Mimmo Galizia talks about the syncretization of roots music and computer music in the November/December issue of World Music Magazine in an article titled: "Electro-world: when hip hop, dance, and techno encounter the sounds of the world. The intrusion of the computer into world music." more...

19 Dec 2006 — Electronic Music Foundation invites individuals and nonprofit organizations with a professional interest in electronic music to join the EMF. Benefits include promotion of your events in Arts Electric, distribution of your recorded music at CDeMusic, an artist page at the EMF website, news on upcoming professional opportunities alerts, and discounts on CDs and software ordered through CDeMusic. more...

15 Dec 2006 — You can follow the development of Robert Jarvis' new installation "gr0w" on his blog. Over the course of a year, Jarvis will be learning about plants and making recordings in the garden. In the wider community, he will be talking with local gardeners on the themes of growth, aging, gardening, and life. Check out his Resource Links on Acoustic Emissions from Plants. more...

08 Dec 2006 — Composer Sascha Dikiciyan was featured in an online article describing the powerful hybrid live-orchestra/industrial score he composed with Cris Velasco for Ubisoft's Dark Messiah of Might and Magic. Using everything from metal chains to complex Kyma-generated atmospheres, Dikiciyan created custom sound design and electronic elements to be layered in with Velasco's symphony orchestra plus Sanskrit-singing choir. An official soundtrack of the game is to be released as part of the collector's edition. For more details, see http://www.myth-games.com/news1923.htm more...

06 Dec 2006 — You can listen to Polynomial, Karl Richard's "Electronica/Techno/Experimental based within mathematical reasoning" project on his My Space website. Ranging from the truly Ky-"manic" Granular Acid to the dreamily algorithmic Mavis Dile's Smile, Rhythm in the Numbers, and the elegant alien minuet Slanet Paturn, Polynomial joins a distinguished lineage of composers who, over the ages, have sought to recreate the music of the spheres. more...

01 Dec 2006 — Microgravity, Seth Talley's compelling exploration of how the human mind reacts to the isolation of space, won two awards at the First Annual 2006 Science Fiction Short Film Festival (SFSFF) at the Seattle International Film Festival (SIFF) in February, and was chosen to open for Terry Gilliam's Tideland in September at Fantastic Fest in Austin.

As a series of equipment failures conspire to isolate cosmonaut Enika in orbit around the moon, she begins to lose her sense of time, the ability to distinguish between dreaming and waking states, and her confidence in her own abilities to maintain the thin shell separating her from the absolute vacuum outside. David Sanders directed and also did the cinematography; Seth Talley wrote the screenplay, and used Kyma in creating the sounds for both the film and the trailer. more...

30 Nov 2006 — Sound designer/composer Harm Visser announces the release of his new Kyma Physical Modeling Toolkit, a collection of Kyma Sounds based on modal synthesis. According to Visser, "What makes this toolkit special is the integration with the Kyma environment; for example, you can use the CrossFilter to model the body of an instrument, and you have endless possibilities for creating excitation signals and developing tables for non-linear string and bore behavior." The toolkit comes with a large library of instruments, ranging from guitars, eastern plucked strings (like the sitar), to a large number of wind instruments (saxophone, shakuhashi, etc) and keyboard instruments (clavichord, clavinet, Hammond, etc). You can hear demos of the new sounds (sequenced by Harm Visser plus a few performed live on the Continuum by Edmund Eagan at http://www.hvsynthdesign.com/kymax.php. more...

28 Nov 2006 — Jörg Lensing's Cinema/TV students—Christiane Buchmann, Leif Thomas and Matthias Heuser—have won the Newcomer Prize in the Sound Design category of the European Film Music Awards, presented in a ceremony at the culmination of SoundTrack_Cologne 3.0, the Cologne Congress for Music and Sound in Film and Media. The prize was for the sound design on a short animated film entitled Zasucanec, which the students realized in Professor Lensing's course on Auditive Design at the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund, Germany. The jury describe the sound track as "vivid, entertaining, surprising and funny" as well as "very precise and synchronized with the action." They also noted "the sophisticated way of dealing with backgrounds and dynamic elements and the symbiosis of music and sounds." more...

22 Nov 2006 — Hamilton Sterling used Kyma to create believably kitschy whooshes for the television news scenes in Chris Guest's new comedy For Your Consideration, a sendup of the Academy Awards starring political humorist and 'Spinal Tap' bassist Harry Shearer. more...

22 Oct 2006 — Film composer Tobias Enhus used Kyma to score a TV spot for UK mobile phone network O2. Unusual in its lack of either voice-over or sound effects, the hypnotic combination of images and music has been airing in the UK for the past two years and has even inspired a popular ringtone. All drums were synthesized in Kyma, and the reverse shaker sound was generated by Enhus' patch called ReGrain. An arpeggiated bell was generated with Synclavier FM, the bass drop is from his analog modular synth, and the female vocal is what Enhus calls his "canned wife" vocal samples performed by his wife Marissa (who happens to be a professional vocalist and composer), and resynthesized in Kyma under control of a Max Mathews Radio Baton. more...

20 Oct 2006 — Sound designer Frank Kruse used Kyma to create organic backgrounds for Tom Tykwer's new film Perfume—The Story of a Murderer. Kruse writes that "Kyma was a cool tool in creating 5.0 ambiences that are static in a way but start moving if you listen closely" in the naturalistic soundscape of this sensual and disturbing film. Starring Dustin Hoffman and Alan Rickman, the film will be released in the USA in December, 2006. more...

14 Oct 2006 — Each autumn, Monarch butterflies undertake a lengthy migration from Canada, across the entire United States, to arrive in central Mexico where they spend the winter in the pine forests. Papalotzin, a new film tracking the journey of Francisco Vico Gutiérrez as he follows the Monarch Migration path in his glider (painted in Monarch colors). Jack Morgan Rosete composed the score which combines elements of world music (live vocals and instrumentation) with experimental electronics, including some live segments performed with a Lemur/Virus TI and Kyma synthesis algorithms. Rosete used CapyTalk logical expressions and generative patches for glitchy beats (mimicking the 'imagined' sound of a butterfly flapping its wings). He also designed a Kyma patch for morphing from one chord to the next; assuming that each note is a separate voice on his Virus TI, the algorithm controls the pitch change of each voice to arrive at the new chord position with some swarm code from the library adding a butterfly-like variation. The results give a sense of dreamy floating. Rosete writes, "The score was a great success, everyone loved it, and I have plenty to thank Kyma for!" Papalotzin premieres at the Morelia Film Festival in October. more...

01 Sep 2006 — Sascha Dikiciyan made use of Kyma in his music for the new SPlinter Cell 4 videogame for Ubisoft. He has also been using it for some of his remix work under the name of Toksin on remixes of BT, deepsky, Destiny's Child and others. For examples visit http://www.toksin.com or http://www.myspace.com/toksin. more...

14 Jun 2006 — Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi have released USO (Unidentified Sound Object), an exuberant journey through spaces (literal and abstract) populated by elementary particles organizing themselves into increasingly complex structures. The sound quality is superb and it's obvious that Placidi and Milani share a genuine love for sound exploration. Listen on your DVD player or with VLC media player for the 4-channel surround sound experience! You can hear an excerpt on U.S.O. Project, and order the DTS Music Disc from CDeMUSIC or Music Zeit Download Platform (formats: mp3/flac). more...

18 Apr 2006 — Tom Holkenborg was interviewed in Remix in connection with his new album, Today. When asked about Kyma, he describes it as: ...basically a complete empty box, and it can be whatever you want it to be—you can program a patch that turns a guitar into a vocal, or you can morph in between four, five or six different sounds, in real time, to make new sounds. I definitely took the processing of my guitars and vocals to a whole new level that I've never been to before. more...

14 Oct 2005 — Composer Tobias Enhus has just finished scoring The Matrix: Path of Neo game for Atari. In conjunction with the game's release, Warner Brothers will release a soundtrack album and a music video with Crystal Method superimposed into the game. more...

14 Nov 2003 — As one of two sound effects editors working on the new Peter Weir film, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, I was charged by the supervising sound editor, Richard King, with creating and cutting all of the sound effects for the storm. Though my cutting work included two additional reels as well as updating all of the effects tracks and predubs through myriad changes, the storm sequence was the most challenging and most rewarding work of my career.

As most people know, a final track is made up of many elements (see Richard's interview with NPR), tracks that are combined to form predubs like wind, ocean, water, ship creaks, and specific sync effects. To this can be added design elements. One idea that Mr. Weir wanted to pursue was the unique sound of the wind in the rigging, an idea he found in a remarkable documentary of the last tall sailing ship to round Cape Horn. In this silent film shot in 1929, the narrator describes the wind in the rigging as sounding like a thousand animals screaming.

A thousand animals screaming: the problem is not so much in the execution, as in potentially losing the realistic quality of the previously recorded, pitched, shaped, and cut material. Wind is a delicate thing, chaotic in frequency and amplitude. In order to find a mix with the design elements, there had to be a way of tracking what had already been predubbed in order that the mixer, D.M. Hemphill, could bring in the design sounds without them calling attention to themselves.

As a reader of the ancients, my first thought was of the siren's song, the harmonic lure that made Odysseus bind himself to the mast for fear of steering his ship into the rocks. That ancient sailor's call, the thrumming melodies of the lines and the sheets, these are what inspired my approach. First I tried for a physical effect. Most sound editors prefer to start gathering their sound effects in the organic world. Richard had recorded many wind effects working with tangible objects like ropes and grills, and to accompany this I tried recording my lyre harp to produce tuned harmonies. Placing microphones inside the sound box and driving high speed with the engine off down a mountain road while holding the lyre out the roof of my car was thrilling in more ways than one. And while this produced an interesting effect that was musical in nature, the physics of pitch shifting this into a gigantic aeolian harp of line and rigging weren't there.

Still a learning student of Kyma (I hope forever), I called Carla and Kurt and asked for advice on how to properly track, with both frequency and amplitude, the predub of the winds. The sequence, being long, needed to be processed live. Though I had worked with various vocoded sounds, using the wind to modulate choral and animal samples, what I really wanted, at least as an element, was that giant aeolian harp. Carla sent me some wonderful Sound examples of resonant filters at play, and these gave me ideas on how to refine my approach. The combination of these elements I then mixed in ProTools, keeping some separate, and combining others, tracking all with the previously recorded mix.

The wonderful thing about working with Kyma is that, like any good art form, the more you do it, the more ideas it generates. That is the gift of Carla and Kurt. Three cheers for Symbolic Sound. Huzzah! Huzzah! Huzzah!

Hamilton Sterling is a sound designer, director, and Greek history buff. more...

Events

Athens, 17-18 May 2008 — Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel will be participating in the ElectroMediaWorks Festival in Athens. On May 17, Scaletti will present a 3 hour seminar on Kyma at the Centre for Music Composition and Performance. On May 18, there will be a concert of live Kyma music by Carla Scaletti and Joel Chadabe. Both events are open to the public. From May 20-22, Chadabe and Scaletti have been invited by Andreas Mniestris to present seminars and workshops on Kyma for his composition students at Ionian University. more...

Eugene, 03-05 May 2007 — On May 3-5 2008, Carla Scaletti & Kurt Hebel have been invited by Jeffrey Stolet to the University of Oregon for a three-day event featuring music, workshops, individual coaching, and lectures. The events begin on Saturday night May 3 with a concert of live Kyma music by Carla Scaletti and Jeff Stolet's composition students. The concert will include the premieres of two new pieces by Scaletti: SlipStick (for Kyma and Continuum) and Cyclonic (for Kyma solo). On Sunday May 4, from 12-6 pm, Scaletti will present a 6 hour workshop on sound design for interactive performance. The workshop is open to the public; please contact Professor Stolet to make a reservation. On Monday, Scaletti will work with individual composition students during the morning and will present an afternoon lecture for Jeff Stolet's electronic music classes. more...

Ashville, NC, 29 Apr 2008 — Lou Reed of Velvet Underground fame is currently touring the east coast of the US and he's brought Sarth Calhoun along to live-sample and process the band through Kyma. Sarth is involved in nearly every song, processing bass, guitar, vocals, and drums in turn. more...

San Jose, CA, 23 Apr 2008 — On Wednesday, April 23 in San Jose, this year's New Music South Bay concert featured music by Brian Belet, Jeff Stolet, and others. Belet's trombone quartet Refraction: Three Gestural Reflections was performed by the SJSU Trombone Quartet, and Stolet's Gongs of Tiny Insects was diffused through a multichannel playback system. Also on the program was Allen Strange's NGate and Belet's System of Shadows, both written for Stephen Ruppenthal performing on trumpet and flugelhorn processed through live electronics. more...

Sydney, 18 Apr 2008 — Garth Paine performed a new work for flute and Kyma and a new work for SynC with Michael Atherton (Waterphone and bowls) in the Aurora Festival at the Joan Sutherland Centre for Performing Arts on Friday 18 April.

From January 6-22 2008, Garth Paine was on tour in Köln, London, Leicester and Frankfurt. Paine performed live with Wiimote and Wacom tablet controlling Kyma and also led several workshops and seminars on musical interfaces. Paine's newest work is for Singing Bowls, Hand Bells, sensors and Capybara/Kyma system. For more information on this work and other work by his Synsonics project, see http://www.syncsonics.com/. more...

Lisbon, 17 Apr 2008 — Carlos Alberto Augusto took Kyma out of his studio for the first time to perform live for a new production of the 15th century German writer Johannes Van Saaz's "The Plowman from Bohemia" featuring the composer/musician as a third character. In February Augusto also used Kyma in a live improvisation with bowed instruments (violin, viola, cello. double bass, guitarviol) plus percussion at the Mascavado Festival at Lisbon's "Centro Cultural O Século". more...

Baton Rouge, 26 Mar 2008 — Stephen David Beck presented the world premiere of his new work for Wiimote and Kyma, A Little Light Saber Rattling on "Cinema for the Ears," a concert of experimental electronic and computer-generated music on March 26, at the Manship Theatre in downtown Baton Rouge. The performance was presented using the 27-channel surround sound system called ICAST and in "electroacoustic cabaret" style, with casual tables, open seating and friendly discussion. more...

Berlin, Through Feb 2008 — Agostino Di Scipio is teaching in Berlin at the Elektronisches Studio of the Technische Univesitaet through February 2008 as this year's "Edgard Varése Guest Professor" where he is presenting seminars on his compositions with examples using Kyma and PD. more...

London, Press Release — Robert Jarvis has been shortlisted for the 'New Music Award' for his proposed new Kyma-powered sound installation for the London Wetland Centre. Entitled ECHOLOCATION, the piece will take the form of a responsive composition for a 'choir' of bat detectors that will pick up the ultrasonic calls of the bats that visit the reserve of an evening and transform them into a multichannel musical experience for visitors the following day.

The award seeks to recognise those who are pushing the boundaries of new music, and will eventually present its winner with £50,000 towards the creation and performance of a creatively adventurous new composition. The winner will be announced in April and the first performance of the new work will be in the summer of 2009. More details about the award itself, together with the other shortlisted candidates, can be found on the PRSF website at: http://www.prsfoundation.co.uk/newmusicaward/index.htm . more...

Rome, 23 Dec 2007 — Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi, Unidentified Sound Object, will be online Sunday, 23rd December 2007, for a live gig via the Mogulus Internet broadcast network. Starting 21:00 UTC time, you can enjoy a live video feed of USO performing live with Kyma and Ableton Live from Rome via either the USO Project blog or on the USO Mogulus Channel. Later rebroadcasts will also be available on the USO channel. Check for updates here: http://usoproject.blogspot.com/2007/11/uso-live-internet-broadcast.html more...

Bloomington, IN, 15 Dec 2007 — At Art Hospital in Bloomington, Indiana on December 15, 2007, audio artists/composers Silvia Matheus and John Dawson created a live improvisational dialog using Kyma, MAX/MSP running on a laptop and several controllers. As Matheus describes it, "The thrill of the performance is to keep the momentum going—the various sound textures have to transform continuously." Matheus and Dawson created sound textures with variable loops, pitch and time variation, live processing, and live panning/mixing. Some of Silvia's sounds were also sent to John Dawson's environment for further processing before being sent to multiple speakers. more...

's Hertogenbosch, 08 Dec 2007 — theatre production of Piet Arfeuille and de Wetten van Kepler.

sound design and live performance of the score by Frederik Van de Moortel - Sakuran more...

San Jose, 15 Nov 2007 — Brian Belet's work-in-progress for multiple trumpets and Kyma system was presented on Thursday, November 15, at 7:30 pm, at San Jose State University. Belet has been collaborating with trumpet virtuoso Stephen Ruppenthal on the work in which all computer sounds are generated in real-time using the trumpet as source material for processing, Stephen improvises with the computer sounds as they occur. Three movements (out of the projected 4 movement piece) were previewed in San Jose with the entire work scheduled for premiere in late January on a concert in Washington state. more...

Lüneburg, 21 Oct 2007 — After the first performance of Requiem for Soprano and Kyma at the Music Biennale Zagreb Festival, composer Zlatko Tanodi and soloist Lidija Horvat-Dunjko were invited to open the 33. Festival NEUE MUSIK LÜNEBURG 2007. The German premiere of Requiem is scheduled for the 21st of October 2007. Tanodi writes, “The idea of composing Requiem first came into my mind when I was working with Lidija Horvat Dunjko on the composition 'Anima – Animus ', also written for soprano and Kyma, and premiered at the 2001 Music Biennale Zagreb. Considering the fact that this is interactive music in which the female voice creates and controls musical parameters generated by an electronic device, the composition should have been entitled 'Requiem for a Woman Alone'. (according to Schaeffer's 'Symphonie pour un homme seul'). The piece begins with a composer's summary – a flashback made of quoted sections taken from other compositions which guide us through the time tunnel towards bright light. And this is the moment when the Mass for the Dead begins...” more...

St. Paul, 28-30 Sep 2007 — Zeitgeist performed Shape Shifting: Shades of Transformation at Studio Z in St. Paul, Minnesota (September 28-30, 2007) before taking the show on tour throughout the Czech Republic during October 2007. Shape Shifting: Shades of Transformation is a collaboration of Zeitgeist, composer Scott Miller, poet Philippe Costaglioli, and video-artist Ron Gregg to create an evening-length musical response to the nature and challenges of change. more...

Missoula, 21 Sep 2007 — Brian Belet was the featured guest composer for the Mountain Computer Music Festival at University of Montana on September 21 2007. Belet presented a lecture "Composing in 2007: Why do we do it? What does it mean?", an interactive installation Lobby Reforms, for unsuspecting audience, concert hall lobby, and Kyma processing (2006), (Disturbed) Radiance, for piano and Kyma processing (2003), and Still Harmless [BASS]ically, for electric bass and Kyma processing (2000), featuring the composer on electric bass. In Lobby Reforms, the pre-concert sounds of people passing through the lobby are transported into the concert hall (as well as back into the lobby) in an informal collage of social activity that differentiates the concert experience from the isolated activity of listening to music through headphones. The transition zone from the outside world to the inner container of the concert hall is an important time and place that physically and metaphorically defines the "before, during, and after" of the concert experience. The audio sources are processed in real-time and then directed back through the sound system to create a sonic environment that leads naturally into the concert itself as the lobby sounds eventually diminish as a result of the audience leaving that space for the concert hall. more...

Oporto, 20 Sep 2007 — Carlos Alberto Augusto's The Moment of Being for marimba, glockenspiel, Japanese woodblock, eTrack (produced entirely within Kyma), and the player's voice, was premiered September 20th at Casa da Musica in Oporto, Portugal as part of the Musica Viva Festival. Pedro Carneiro, the virtuoso Portuguese percussionist to whom the work is dedicated, performed the premiere. The entire program was performed again on October 13th at the French-Portuguese Cultural Center in Lisbon. The piece will be recorded and the concert will be videotaped for future release. The electronic track of The Moment of Being is based exclusively on the sounds of Carneiro's marimba; specially composed musical phrases, notes, and even the sound of the mallet handles were sampled and later processed in Kyma to produce the eTrack. more...

Ottawa, 12 Sep 2007 — Sculptor/dancer/acoustic artist Ken Emig's work deals with echoes and reflections, so when he and composer Edmund Eagan collaborated on a live performance for the opening of Emig's show at La Filature in Ottawa, they tried to express these same ideas using sound and movement. Eagan performed in one room (with light boxes) and Emig simultaneously performed in a video shooting space, a room featuring his dish sculpture and another room housing his cube sculpture. The spaces were sonically linked with Eagan using Kyma, the Continuum, a Mbiraski, Logic to process a microphone-feed from Emig's room, creating echo loops using delay lines and using the two different spaces as resonance before sending the resulting mix back into Emig's room. The audience was free to migrate through the gallery during the performance. Emig danced in front of a dual projection / dual camera video feedback setup creating multiple echoes of him on the wall, and a camera directly above Eagan captured his hands on the Continuum surface, projecting the image onto the same wall. This triple projection was then captured AGAIN by another camera, which projected it into the room where Eagan was performing. A DVD is in the works. more...

Copenhagen, 30 Aug 2007 — Hector Bravo-Benard performed Styrotron (2007) live at the ICMC in Copenhagen at the end of August. Styrotron takes styrofoam, a packing material always shipped alongside computer equipment and usually discarded as trash, and reinterprets it as a musical instrument. Different pieces of styrofoam are excited with a violin bow, or rubbed against each other, producing noises and pitched sounds with a rich spectrum that are only partially controllable, and whose behavior is predictable only from a rather general point of view. Using a constructed noise instrument such as this one, without any real history, also makes it possible to eliminate the connotations that are usually associated with traditional musical instruments, in order to be able to focus more freely on the exploration of sound itself. The acoustic sounds produced by the styrofoam are taken as the only sound source, and they also generate most of the control signals used as these sounds get transformed in real time through a processing network implemented in Kyma. The performer controls only the transitional points and some simple processing parameters through the use of a pedal. The large-scale structure of the pieces is clearly defined, but many of the smaller details are left open, as a result of the chaotic nature of the sound source itself. more...

San Diego, 05 Aug 2007 — IMAGO is presenting their audio-visual triptych on this years SIGGRAPH in San Diego, California. They are looking for other options and venues to perform the piece, since they have to travel all the way over the big lake. Any suggestions are welcome! more...

Nedde, Limoges, 14 Jul - 04 Nov 2007 — Kyma user, Robert Jarvis, will be taking his Capybara to The City of Insects at the beginning of July for a two-week residency. During his stay he will delve into the world of insect song and other entomological sounds and create a surround sound composition inspired by recordings that he makes in the local area.

Imagine a room full of butterflies… Imagine living in a beehive or an ants’ nest… Imagine going for a ride on a back of a dragonfly… what would that sound like? Robert’s new work allows the listener access to this unique sound world and to imagine life through the ears of an insect.

The resulting surround sound installation will be featured at the museum for visitors to experience from July 15th through to November 4th, 2007. Follow Robert's investigations into all things creepy crawly at http://www.entomophonix.wordpress.com more...

Syracuse, 15 Jul 2007 — Ceremonial Rituals, a new piece by Norbert Oldani, will be aired on NPR station WCNY-FM on Sunday, July 15, 2007, from 2-3 pm, as part of the weekly Syracuse Society for New Music— Fresh Ink program. Oldani made use of indigenous rhythms and South American pan flute performance techniques mixed with Kyma granulation sounds. more...

Lefkada, 11-13 Jul 2007 — Kyma will play a part in at least two events for the July 11-13 Sound and Music Computing Conference SMC07 in Greece: a new sound installation by Marinos Gianoukakis and Joel Chadabe's Many Times... for flute and live Kyma interaction. more...

Paris, 09-10 Jul 2007 — On July 09-10, Federico Placidi is presenting an introduction to Kyma with particular emphasis on granular synthesis and live controls for students in the CCMIX summer course. more...

Corfu, 05-09 Jul 2007 — Joel Chadabe will present a three-day seminar at Ionian University in Corfu, Greece, entitled: "A Dynamic Approach to Sound Design and Interactive Performance with Kyma" from July 5-9. more...

Vienna, 23 Jun 2007 — Bruno Liberda will be performing his metaphonics exploration, JETZT, on the 23rd of June 2007 from 2-8 pm at the Museum und Archiv für Arbeit und Industrie im Viertel unter dem Wienerwald, a museum recognizing working people as the true heroes of history and the proper focus of modern historical research. During a performance of JETZT, the audience listens and watches screen projections of Liberda in the process of composing a new piece of music using Kyma. more...

Rome, 22 Jun 2007 — Joel Chadabe will be in Rome on June 22, 2007 for Flussi Correnti, an outdoor multidisciplinary art event at Piazza Tevere (between Ponte Sisto and Mazzini) on the Tiber river. Sponsored by Tevereterno, the event will begin at sunset with Luminalia, a new light installation by artist and Tevereterno co-founder Kristin Jones and architect Daniel Brown. At 21.00 and again at 24.00 there will be a performance of water-related compositions by the Ars Ludi ensemble, and at 23.00 there will be a presentation of water-related Ambienti Sonori from Ear to the Earth, including two Kyma-generated pieces: Joel Chadabe's Green Island (based on the sounds of water hitting the rocks in Penobscot Bay, Maine) and Carla Scaletti's Frog Pool Farm (based on the sounds of frogs singing and splashing in a pond on Illinois farmland). Kristin Jones and Tevereterno have worked with the city of Rome to create the Piazza Tevere as a site for collaborative projects that bring artists and the public together for greater environmental awareness in an urban context. Last year, 10,000 people attended an all-night program involving visual artists and composers. This year, attendance is expected to double. more...

Barcelona, 14 Jun 2007 — Cristian Vogel's band, Night of the Brain, performed songs from their debut album Wear This World Out at the Sonar Festival in Barcelona last Thursday evening as part of the Station 55 Records showcase. Vogel used the Wiimote and OSCulator to control Kyma alongside the traditional guitar, voice and other electronics. More about the band, their debut album, and a video with the angel of death on a Segway, can be explored at the No Future website. more...

Chicago, 09 Jun 2007 — A R Rahman, award-winning composer/vocalist/keyboardist, played to sold-out arenas in North America this summer with his 3rd Dimension Tour, a 3.5 hour show performed in three languages and demonstrating the composer's mastery of a broad range of musical styles. Audiences in Chicago and Toronto were treated to a tantalizing glimpse of something new when Rahman performed a short solo of Carnatic music on Continuum fingerboard (controlling Kyma). Rahman, who is classically trained in both Carnatic and western musical traditions said that, as a child, he loved playing the keyboard but at the same time he found it frustrating not to be able to produce the microtonal tuning and ornaments of Indian classical music on a standard 12-tone keyboard. His dream is to inspire kids to continue the classical tradition by combining the world of digital audio with that of classical Carnatic music. more...

Bourges, 09 Jun 2007 — Agostino Di Scipio performed live electronics and sound diffusion for a performance of his 3 pezzi muti at the Festival Synthése in Bourges on 9 June 2007 with Ciro Longobardi on piano. more...

New York, 04 Jun 2007 — SynC (Garth Paine and Michael Atherton) is performing at the New York Electronic Arts Festival for the entire first half of the concert. All three works use Kyma:

Atmospheric Ripple: Garth plays the flute and uses its amplitude and pitch to control the processing

Cyberdidj Australis for didjeribone (slide didjeridu) and electronics: Garth uses a Wacom tablet (in his signature palette-like style) to control the processing.

Encounter for hurdi-gurdi and electronics: Garth is using the WiiMote to drive the Kyma processing of the hurdi-gurdi.

Sync will also be performing Cyberdidj Australis on the opening night of the NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) conference in NYC on June 7 at 6:30. more...

Philadelphia, 01-03 Jun 2007 — Electro-music 2007, dubbed the Woodstock of Electronic Music by the Philadelphia Inquirer, will take place from June 1-3 at the Cheltenham Art Center in Philadelphia. The brainchild of composer Howard Moscovitz, the event promises three full days of experimental electronic music, jam sessions, visual music, and demos. Starting on June 1, the electro-music website will stream live audio as well as a live chat room from noon to midnight on each day of the festival. more...

Rye Bay, East Sussex, 26 May 2007 — Kyma user Robert Jarvis' 'Keybird' sound installation utilises a conventional piano keyboard of which every note is assigned to the call of a different bird. Visitors to the space encounter the keyboard and by pressing the different notes they trigger the different birdsongs and before long the room fills with moving sounds. more...

Florence, 24 May thru Oct 2007 — Lorenzo Brusci used Kyma for music and sound design, and USO Project (Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi) used Kyma's SampleCloud for the latest incarnation of "Giardino Sonoro La Limonaia dell'Imperialino" Sonic Garden Lab. more...

Kiev, 20 May 2007 — Yuri Spitsyn will be performing live with Kyma on May 20 2007 in Kiev at the EM-VISIA Festival organized by the Association for New Music in the Ukraine. Spitsyn will perform b-i-r-d-r-e-a-m for Theremin and Welcome to the Machine! for acoustic laptop. He will also be presenting a talk during the conference entitled Kyma: Survivor in the Age of Native Processing. more...

Ames, 18 May 2007 — In addition to the premiere of Mario Davidovsky's Synchronisms #12, there were several pieces at the SEAMUS Conference (held March 8-10, 2007 at Iowa State University) featuring live interactive Kyma processing, including John Ritz' a well-devised trap for string quartet and live, adaptive Kyma processing, Amaro Borges' Ecoando for cello and live Kyma capture/processing, and Scott Miller's Chimera for violin and Kyma. more...

Cologne, 17 May 2007 — The Queen is the Supreme Power in the Realm by Yannis Kyriakides is scheduled for its premiere performance on Thursday, 17 May at 18:00 in the Theater am Tanzbrunnen in Köln. Based on the telegraphic codebooks of the late 19th century, Kyriakides was commissed to compose the piece by MusikFabrik and the ZKM. The concert will be repeated on the 18th of May at the ZKM in Karlsruhe, and again in November 2007 at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in the UK. Kyriakides will be performing the live electronics using Kyma for this semi-composed, semi-improvised piece, and will also be accompanied by live video artist HC Gilje. more...

Houston, 10 May 2007 — Pulizter-prize-winning composer Mario Davidovsky was recently commissioned by SEAMUS and a consortium of American universities to compose two new pieces in his famous Synchronisms series: Synchronisms #11 (for contrabass) and Synchronisms #12 (for bass clarinet). Davidovsky completed the electronic portion of Synchronism #12 at REMLabs in collaboration with composer Kurt Stallmann.

Davidovsky wanted to create an electronics part derived largely from samples of the clarinet, bass clarinet, and piano, so he and Stallman used Kyma to analyze the samples for spectral content and to develop/modify spectral data for resynthesis. They also used several other Kyma tools to manipulate the samples and generate synthesized material. According to Stallman, "Davidovsky enjoyed hearing 'Kyma' through the speakers each time it started up and grew attached to that sound icon." more...

Ockley, 04 May thru 28 Oct 2007 — Robert Jarvis' latest sound installation is for the renowned Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden (www.hannahpescharsculpture.com).

Situated in a secluded part of the garden known as 'The Oriental Pond', a series of musical compositions emanate from the undergrowth. Fast moving but gentle musical patterns derived from the plants' DNA contrast with slower melodies based on different amino acid sequences governing the processes of growth and aging. The sounds slowly fade in, teasing the ears with their presence, and quietly dance around the pond before fading out again returning the listener to the garden's gentle soundscape.

The installation is the result of an eight month residency where Robert has been investigating related themes connected with the plants of the garden, including the ultrasonic acoustic emmisions of plants as well as the sonification of genetic data. A weblog diary at http://www.gr0w.wordpress.com documents many useful resources available on the internet.

The music was composed entirely in Kyma, also utilizing Harm Visser's physical modelling toolkit as well as advice and input from the Kyma community. more...

Boston, 28 Apr 2007 — Several Kyma users, including BT, Brian Evans, and Dennis Miller were featured on the VISUAL MUSIC MARATHON at Northeastern University, Boston, Saturday, April 28th, 2007, a 12-hour screening of time-based art works that reflect the convergence of musical composition and animated images. All new works presented at the Marathon will be included in a special permanent collection that will be housed in Northeastern's Snell Library. For an hour-by-hour schedule and preview of works that were shown at the event, visit http://www.music.neu.edu/vmm/schedule.html. For a complete listing of all events, visit the Boston Cyberarts Festival website. more...

Zagreb, 21 Apr 2007 — Zlatko Tanodi, Professor of Electronic and Film Composition at the Academy of Music, University of Zagreb, will be premiering his interactive composition, Requiem for soprano and Kyma, on 21st of April at the Music Biennale Zagreb Festival. Meanwhile, he has just finished The Queen Katarina K. K., an historical musical based on the last Bosnian queen. more...

Abbeville, 13 - 22 Apr 2007 — Une note, un chant, Robert Jarvis a conçu un clavier de piano peu ordinaire. En effet, en guise du do, ré, mi, fa, sol … un chant d’Avocette, de Bergeronnette, de Chardonneret décline ainsi l’alphabet jusqu’à la dernière touche du clavier....

Kyma user Robert Jarvis' 'Keybird' sound installation utilises a conventional piano keyboard of which every note is assigned to the call of a different bird. Visitors to the space encounter the keyboard and by pressing the different notes they trigger the different birdsongs and before long the room fills with moving sounds. more...

Linz, 13 Apr 2007 — Cristian Vogel (Mute / Station 55) will be performing live during Ars Electronica in Linz on 13 April 16:00 at the Red Bull Music Academy. First, the Info-session: a dialog with Cristian Vogel and Patrick Pulsinger! Then, at 22:00, Electro-acoustic Madness with Patrick Pulsinger and your friend from MMA Gerhard Daurer/Richard Eigner/Roman Gerold in one special improvised live set. Modular synths meet percussion gear and granular processing. Cristian Vogel presents his new Kyma programmed Livetool — the Neverengine. Free participation with advance notification at http://redbullmusicacademy.com Limited number of participants! more...

Bari, 24 Mar 2007 — Electroacoustic remixer Mimmo Galizia has recently branched out into using Kyma for live guitar effects in his band Uross during their last gig in Bari on March 24th. URoss' motto, "Nel silenzio...mi son perso!" underlines their relaxed and self-described "healing, easy-listening concrete" sound. more...

Kerkplein 3, Breda, 21 Mar - 21 April 2007 — Spring has arrived and so too has the return of Kyma user Robert Jarvis' 'Keybird' sound installation. Upon entering the exhibition space, visitors encounter a conventional piano keyboard of which every note is assigned to the call of a different bird. Pressing the notes triggers the different birdsongs and before long the room fills with moving sounds. more...

Paris, Hamburg, Spring 2007 — Cristian Vogel used Kyma to compose the music for choreographer Gille Jobins's Double Deux, and he did it on-site in Geneva just a couple of weeks after he first got his system. Jobin writes, "I can testify! Cristian used ONLY Kyma to make one hour of music for the piece. Which was a bit worrying when he arrived with a machine in a box, and a telephone book size instruction book... But with a lot of sweat and a lot of talent, he managed to make a fantastic score. I must say that using the Kyma concept was great for this piece. The 'morphing' of one sound into another, of one patch into another, the continuous state of transition was just the right thing for the choreography of this project."

Double Deux explores the concept of pairs, of 2s in all combinations, additive and multiplicative: binary symmetry, coupling, the uniting of two, and binary division of cells necessary to produce life. The piece is now on tour and will be in Rennes, France, Bruxelles, Belgium, Paris, France, and Hamburg, Germany in Spring of 2007. You can read more about the pieces, see photos, see video clips, and order a DVD at the Parano Foundation website: http://www.parano.org more...

Brussels, 14 Mar - 16 Sept 2007 — From the 14th of March until the 16th of September 2007, Italian image-and-sound designer Riccardo Mazza is presenting a visual and audio environment at the Atomium in Bruxelles. Six projectors in sync with 10 spatial audio zones paint the 150+ square meter space in one of the spheres of the Atomium where INSIDE, a sculpture from Italian artist E.T. De Paris is on display. The audio, synthesized and spatialized phrases from Italo-French poet J.C. Oberto, was created entirely in Kyma, including the spatial algorithms. Mazza specifically chose to create the entire concept using the Kyma signal flow editor. more...

Romainville, 01 Mar 2007 — The Centre de Création Musicale Iannis Xenakis is now offering memberships with benefits that include access to CCMIX courses (up to 3 free short-courses a year as an auditor), special ticket prices for CCMIX concerts, and discounts on CCMIX CDs and books. There are two Kyma-related short-courses coming up in March 2007 that could be included as part of your membership: a week-long introduction to composing for real time performance with Kyma presented by Bruno Liberda, and a three-day workshop presented by Agostino Di Scipio on his ecosystemic approach to composition with Kyma.

Other Kyma-related courses will be offered later in the summer and fall of this year. For full details, please go to http://www.ccmix.com/english/index.html and select Members from the CCMIX menu at the top left. For further information, please contact the Director of CCMIX, Gerard Pape at the email address listed on the Contacts page (also available from the CCMIX menu). more...

Napoli, 23-24 Feb 2007 — Agostino Di Scipio and his students have organized several concerts for the Dissonanzen Festival in Naples. On 23 February 2007, Francesco Scagliola will be using Kyma to do the live electronics for Giacinto Scelsi AITSI (for piano and "distortion" device) and Michelangelo Lupone CICLO ASTRALE 2 (violin, tape, and electronics). The next day, 24 February, there is a presentation of Di Scipio's PAYSAGES HISTORIQUES, produced last year by IMEB (Bourges), which includes the 6 tape pieces composed between 1998 and 2005, using Kyma. Di Scipio will be using Kyma to diffuse two of the pieces over a multichannel system: PAESAGGIO STORICO n.3 (Paris, La Robotique des Lumières) and PAESAGGIO STORICO n.4 (New York, Background Media Noise). more...

Minneapolis, 21-22 Feb 2007 — As part of the Spark Pre-Show: Twin Cities Showcase at The Whole Music Club on Februrary 20th, Scott Miller and Zeitgeist performed "Jardins Mecaniques" from their show Shape Shifting. On Wednesday, Februrary 21st, at the Spark Nitelife at the Nomad World Pub, Pat O'Keefe (bass clarinet) and Scott Miller (Kyma) will perform "improvised/interactive electroacoustic grooviness." Finally, as part of the Spark Festival, Marion Judish will perform the short-version of Miller's Chimera No. 2 at the Southern Theater on Thursday, February 22nd. more...

Prague, 08 Feb 2007 — David Moss used Kyma for live processing and mangling of both voice and music as the host of an IllFM internet radio show originating in Prague on 8 February 2007 from 8pm to 12pm GMT. The show featured DJ's and live artists from the Czech underground music scene and also includes some of Moss' custom circuit-bent keyboards and gameboy-generated sonic chaos. more...

St. Paul, 30-31 Jan 2007 — On January 30 and 31, Scott Miller premiered a new collaborative work with poet Philippe Costaglioli and director Jeffrey Bleam at Studio Z in St. Paul, MN, and at St. Cloud State University, MN. The work, titled What You Have Taken, is a dramatic work for spoken word in an interactive electroacoustic environment provided by Kyma. These concerts also featured the U.S. premier of Chimera No. 2 performed by violinist Marion Judish. At SEAMUS in Ames, IA this coming March, Miller will present Chimera No. 2.1, a four channel acousmatic remix of the work for violin and tape, born of performer scheduling conflicts. more...

Anaheim, 18-21 Jan 2007 — Edmund Eagan will become something of a one-man convergence of new instruments, controllers, and Kyma at the 2007 NAMM show in Anaheim California this January 18-21. If you stop by the Haken Audio booth, you'll be able to meet Continuum inventor Lippold Haken and hear a live performance by Ed Eagan on Continuum fingerboard controlling his Kalimba sound (created in the Kyma TAU editor) mixed with a live feed from a stereo trilobyte Mbiraski, a beautiful new instrument created by Yasuski, sampled and processed in realtime through Kyma. Ed will also be using Camille Troillard's OSCulator software to communicate between the Jazz Mutant Lemur tablet and Kyma via Open Sound Control. Plus, you'll also be able to take in a bit of Eagan's visual style in the form of the new Continuum stand that he designed in partnership with industrial designer Sarah Dobbin. more...

Los Angeles, 14 Jan 2007 — You can participate in Phil Curtis' ongoing piece, Tracking Feldman starting at 4 pm Sunday afternoon, January 14, at the Dangerous Curve Gallery in downtown Los Angeles. This performance is a continuation of a sound installation Curtis first did in Fall 2006 at the Long Beach Sound Walk. Tracking Feldman is a hybrid performance/sound installation that invites the audience to participate in controlling computer-generated sounds. Audience members will be able to control sound processes through a Wacom tablet, a shuttle controller, and a virtual reality glove; they will also be able to send sound into the system via an audio input from either a radio or ipod. These various elements cross-modulate and interact in unpredictable ways with samples, filters, delays, noise, oscillators, and sundry other electronic music staples, in ways that develop and change over the course of the piece. more...

New York, 11 Jan 2007 — On Thursday, January 11th Lucibel Crater plays their first show of 2007, their first show as a trio, and their first show at Fat Baby, 112 Rivington St between Ludlow & Essex in New York (cost is $7 at the door). Go listen to Sarth Calhoun use his Kyma system to capture and process live acoustic sounds in non-obvious ways. more...

Rome, 17 Dec 2006 — U.S.O. - Unidentified Sound Object (aka Matteo Milani and Federico Placidi) has been selected among the most interesting electronic avant-garde artistic productions to perform @ Live!iXem 06. Federico will be on Mac and Matteo on PC as part of a marathon of live sets at the Live!iXem 06 festival/contest in Rome, which starts at 6:00 pm on Sunday December 17, 2006 at the Rialtosantambrogio, via S. Ambrogio n. 4. USO is scheduled to go on at around 1 am, and will be processing live input from acoustic bass and voice inputs and using the Wacom tablet as controller. more...

Prague, 15 Dec 2006 — Scott Miller was the featured composer at this year's Mlade Podium Festival in the Czech Republic, September 4th through the 14th. For a full program with photo gallery (including some live Dr. Seuss characters) visit their website. In addition to participating in panel discussions on new cultural developments in the US and the Czech Republic, the festival organizers also commissioned Miller to compose a new piece, Chimera No. 2, for violin and Kyma-generated electronics. more...

Seville, 14 Dec 2006 — On Thursday December 14th, Agostino Di Scipio spoke on "Mediation and Responsibility in Sound" at the International Congress on Music & Contemporary Technology in Seville. Di Scipio's "Craquelure (2 silent pieces, a Giuliano)" for synthetic sounds and room-dependent signal processing through Kyma was also performed during the congress. more...

New York, 04 Dec 2006 — Students in Joel Chadabe's electronic music course at Manhattan School of Music are presenting a concert of live electronics on Monday, December 4, 7:30 pm at Greenfield Hall, Manhattan School of Music, 122nd Street & Broadway. more...

Atlanta, 01 Dec 2006-06 Jan 2007 — The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA) announces LIGHT-SOUND INTERSECTIONS, Structure and Movement in Space and Time, to be held at MOCA GA Midtown from December 1, 2006 - January 6, 2007. LIGHT-SOUND INTERSECTIONS is an exhibition curated by Atlanta musician and composer, Dick Robinson. Using electroacoustic music that he composed from the 1970's to the present, Robinson has created a soundtrack to accompany an exhibition of artwork that he has selected from MOCA GA's permanent collection. The opening reception, featuring a concert of Robinson's most recent music (composed since 2005) will be on Friday, December 1, 2006 from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. A second reception with concert is scheduled for Wednesday, December 13. Both performances are free to members, $5 for non-members.

One of the first composers to adopt the Kyma environment in his work, Robinson studied electronic music with Bob Moog and Hugh LeCain and founded the Atlanta Electronic Music Center in 1965. Robinson is also a professional violinist, having played with the Atlanta Symphony for 36 years before retiring in 1987 to devote his full time to composition. MOCA GA Midtown is located at 1447 Peachtree Street, two blocks north of the High Museum of Art. Museum hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. until 5 p.m and admission is free. For more information, call +1-404-881-1109, visit the website or send email to: info@mocaga.org more...

London, 27 Nov 2006 — For the second year running, Robert Jarvis has won the new media category of the British Composer Awards, this time for his installation Magic Stones.

Commissioned by the Millennium Court Arts Centre, in Portadown, N. Ireland, the work takes its inspiration from the South East corner of Lough Neagh and issues surrounding its ecological sustainability. The music, interspersed with comments from local resident Eddie Franklin, questions our relationship with the landscape, its musicality and the stories within it.

The award ceremony can be heard in full on BBC Radio 3 on Monday 27th November at 7:30 pm together with musical extracts and interviews with the winning composers. The broadcast will also be archived for seven days (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/performanceon3/pip/evy2j).

Both Magic Stones and last year's award winning composition, Disappear, can also be heard on Robert's latest CD. To listen to extracts or obtain further information please go to http://www.chameleonlectra.co.uk/MagicStones.html. more...

London, 24 Nov 2006 — Magic Stones - Robert Jarvis's sound installation for the Millennium Court Arts Centre in Portadown, Northern Ireland, has been selected as one of three finalists for this year's British Composer Awards in the New Media category. The awards will be presented at London's Hayward Gallery on 24th November and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on Monday 27 November at 7.30pm.

Inspired by the south east corner of Lough Neagh and its surrounding countryside, the Magic Stones installation takes its title from a listening game played by young visitors to the Portmore Nature Reserve who would be invited to take a 'magic stone', grasp it, and with their eyes closed see what they could hear. Jarvis's atmospheric score is composed from recordings taken from around the lough together with sections of an interview with local resident, Eddie Franklin. The layered sounds tell their own story of a countryside on the verge of change - an area being taken over by the 'progress' of our time. Magic Stones invites the listener to pause and to reconsider this relationship.

The composition can be heard on Robert's latest CD, released on the Motile label, together with other compositions inspired by time and place, including Disappear - winning work in the New Media category of last year's British Composer Awards.

CD information at: http://www.chameleonlectra.co.uk/MagicStones.html more...

Cologne, 03-05 Nov 2006 — Joel Chadabe's new Kyma piece One World was performed at Computer Music IV, a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Lejaren Hiller's historic collaboration with Leonard Isaacson at the University of Illinois, resulting in the Illiac Suite and Max Mathews' first synthetic sound generation experiments at Bell Labs. The festival took place from 3-5 November 2006 in Köln. more...

Evanston, 24 Oct 2006 — On Tuesday, October 24, Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel will be at Northwestern University to lecture on sound design in Kyma for students in Gary Kendall's music technology and sound design programs. more...

Brooklyn, 14 Oct 2006 — For upcoming live electronic performances by Lucibel Crater in and around New York, check their myspace page. It's live looping that doesn't sound like it! Recent performances were at the Living Room Lounge in Brooklyn on October 14th, and an almost-performance at the Brooklyn shipyard before the police shut down the event. more...

Paris, 08 Oct 2006 — "Vaporized orchestras" and "vocals morphing in embracing oceans" were heard in La Nuit Blanche, Lorenzo Brusci's Sonic Garden installation in Paris, 7-8 October 2006, Le Square Georges Caïn, Marais. Kyma was the main transfiguring tool. Find more information in the Current Event section of Giardino Sonoro. more...