Sound and Video Clips

Tutorials

Video Tutorials: Brief tutorials on various aspects of sound editing and creation in Kyma

Pacarana Videos

Expansion: Hooking up an 18-processor SuperPaca (3 Pacas + 3 Pacaranas), synthesized sound track (no samples were used), filtered noise, oscillators, cross filter, binaural panning

Analogy: Audio from an espresso machine, analyzed using TAU editor, resynthesis combinations from TAU Gallery

Glimpse: Sound track by Tobias Enhus, using Kyma modal filters, Harm Visser's physical modelling toolkit for Kyma, CrossFilters and his own vocal synthesis algorithm implemented in Kyma and performed live with Max Mathew's Radio Baton

SprongZip: Edmund Eagan performing the Pacarana from a Continuum Fingerboard

Slip-Stick Synthesis

SlipStick Synthesis in Kyma: Sound synthesized using a physical model of friction (Continuum fingerboard controlling Kyma slipstick synthesis on Pacarana hardware)

Tuva2: Edmund Eagan performing slipstick synthesis as input to modal filters tuned to vocal formants on the Continuum fingerboard

USO Project slipstick study: USO Project exploring the slipstick timbre space!

Timelines

Haiku: sample clouds, aggregate synthesis, choppers, additive synthesis, morphing, GA resynthesis, sample mangling, resonator-excitor synthesis, featuring the voice of Yasuski
ReBack: grain clouds, GA resynthesis, chopping, FilterBank, and CloudBank resynthesis
ReZooma: all sounds came from two short samples of Zooma** (chopped & spectrally transmogrified)
Snailsbury Remix: Remix of a children's song by PDJ, includes morphing, vocoding, chopping, and resynthesis
The Planet of Intelligent Dogs: Formant-shifted beats, synthesized Harley RPMs, alien ambiences, analog synths, filtered noise-drums create the pack-mind of intelligent dogs. All the sounds in this example were generated using Tau synthesis.

Audio Morphing

Morphing in MiddleEarth: Examples of Tau morphing. Listen for time/frequency warped flutes, granulated trombone-dogs, morphing wizards, random trombone sweeps, a trombone morphing to male vocal "ah", Federico morphing to Valeria, a chorus of Jeffs, drops of water morphing into a spoken "oh", flute morphing to an angry cat, a bongo roll slowing down, and a monotonized Valeria morphing to Federico.

Morphs: woman to cat, baby to dog, dog to Harley, woman to little boy — all over a drum loop* background

HarpGuitarDog: a harp sound morphs into a guitar sound morphs into a dog bark

Down for the Count: A multi-way sonic morph back and forth among three different people saying "1, 2, 3" with some Tau transmogrifications and synthesis in the background.

SingScratch: a scratch drum loop is crossed with a voice

Weird: A montage of strange Tau morphs.

Visit Bantu Sound to hear morphing in radio advertisements created by Pete Johnston when he was at The Tape Gallery.

Alternative Controllers: Continuum, Wacom tablet, Wii, and others

Video experiments with a Wii remote (Wiimote), OSCulator, and Kyma:
- Wiimote->Osculator->Kyma (Large)
- Wiimote->Osculator->Kyma (Medium)

Video of Edmund Eagan controlling Kyma with a Wacom tablet and pen

Continuum Trombone: A key-mapped morphing Tau trombone played by Edmund Eagan on his Continuum fingerboard. He started with 5 individual trombone tones each played at a different frequency, analyzed them in the Tau editor, and pressed the Gallery button to get a key-mapped morph. All expression, frequency changes, and timbre changes are being performed live on the Continuum.

Video of Edmund Eagan using a Lemur and a Continuum to control Kyma.

Clear Pathetic: Another live performance by Edmund Eagan, this time crossing a temple bell with the sound of a breathy vocal.

Squeaky: An inexpensive violin and a rusty player supplied the four original tones. After Tau analysis, they were played realistically out of tune on the Continuum.

Slide Kalimba: In this example, Edmund Eagan started with just two Kalimba notes, both the same pitch, one soft and one loud. He used the Tau formant-shifting to make that one frequency playable over a wide pitch range on his Continuum fingerboard.

Kurt Hebel's Wacom demo video

Various video and audio examples of the Continuum fingerboard controlling Kyma (except as otherwise noted). Click Examples

Live looping

Video of John Paul Jones using Kyma for Live looping in the Triple Neck Song.

Granular Synthesis

ColdPlanet: granular synthesis
SampleCloud: granulating a harp loop and a vocal sample
Couscous: a mix of processed voice, chopped granular synthesis, and an electronic drum loop*

Sampling

BassBits: a bass guitar loop is chopped up and rearranged by Kyma's SampleBits module (here's the original*)
RandoMiniLoop: this module randomly changes the start and end loop points (the original was a bass drum hit*)
Deranger: vocal, drum, & saz* samples chopped to bits and rearranged in real time by the Kyma Deranger module

Synthesis

Velocity-sensitive multicycle oscillators designed and performed by Edmund Eagan on Continuum and Lemur
Tau synthesis of trombone with mute analyzed and recorded by Edmund Eagan on Continuum
Multiwave: oscillator whose waveform and filter cutoff are being changed in real time
HarpAh: a MIDI keyboard-controlled additive resynthesis of a harp morphs into a voice singing 'ah'

Effects Processing

BucketShoppe: a drum loop* filtered by a harmonic resonator that tracks the amplitude envelope of the drum
FilteredDrumChoppedVox: a drum loop filtered by an amplitude-tracking all-pass filter plus chopped rap sample*
Vocoder: live vocoder with changing noise content, input frequency, formant, and bandwidth

Spectral Processing

InvertSpectrum: various frequency ranges of a harp sample are spectrally inverted (original harp is at the end)
BirdCymbal: different amplitude ranges of a drum loop* are clipped in the spectral domain (here's the original*)

In Aggregate Synthesis, complex timbres are constructed using banks of simpler elements. Most people are already familiar with one form of Aggregate Synthesis: the classic "additive synthesis" in which hundreds of sine wave oscillators are combined to create complex, evolving timbres. Symbolic Sound has extended that technique to include banks of other sound generating elements such as filters, grain clouds, and synthesized impulse responses. Aggregate Synthesis algorithms can be used to resynthesize a live or recorded spectrum or to generate purely synthetic spectra.

CloudBank: A bank of grain clouds, each cloud assigned its own amplitude and frequency envelope in addition to the usual granular synthesis controls like density, grain duration, frequency jitter, etc. (here's the original drum loop*)
FilterBank: A bank of bandpass filters, each controlled by a center frequency and amplitude envelope with the additional parameter of bandwidth. (In this example, you hear a spectral analysis of a voice resynthesized through the FilterBank with extreme time-stretching. The bandwidth is controlled by the VoicedUnvoiced module).
FormantBank: A bank of synthesized impulse responses, each with its own amplitude and frequency envelope plus an additional control on the frequency of the formants, independent of the fundamental frequency control. (In this example, you hear a spectral analysis of a singing voice, resynthesized through the FormantBank. The Formant control is being varied to create the sound of a smaller head first and then a larger head.)

Want to hear more? Click here to request a free audio demo CD.

Visit Twelfthroot for two albums created entirely in Kyma: Distance Blue and Recombinant 01.

Discography of commercially available recordings where you can hear Kyma

Excerpt of a Demo: Brief excerpt of a longer demo at EMF studios in Manhattan (video shot and edited by Joseph Provede)

*Thanks to s p e c t r a l n o i s e and Sounds Good for some of the original samples on which these examples are based.

**Thanks to John Paul Jones for giving us permission to use samples from Zooma to make the ReZooma example.