This is a partial directory of Kyma users who would like to let other people know about their work. (Many Kyma users are either so shy or so overloaded with email that they have asked *not* to be included here).
Gianluigi Antonaci is a composer interested in live electronics and live processing of performers. A student of Agostino Di Scipio, he has studied in master classes and courses on musical interpretation and performance taught by Lazar Berman, Igor Ojstrakh, Vinko Globokar, and the Bartòk Quartet He also studied musical creation and improvisation with Vinko Globokar, using Kyma-Capybara in a series of highly successful projects for trumpet, trombone, two pianos and live electronics.
Based in Santa Barbara California, The Away Team is Penny Little (lead vocals, electronics, I-cube) and Nik Green (synthesizers, percussion and macerated vocals). Stylistically their music covers the gamut between radio friendly dance/pop to the outer limits and beyond. Their new album Aliens On Line is absolutely drenched with Kyma synthesis and processing (not to mention humor, philosophy, and frankly, some tunes that you will not be able to get out of your head). Order your copy from irreveRANT records. Visit the Away Team web site for more information.
Martin Aune lives in Oslo, Norway. Most of the time he writes for television features and commercial assignments. In-between, he works on personal projects. He uses his Capy-320 mainly for real-time spectral manipulations, vocoding, filtering and granular synthesis on all kinds of sonic material.
Dr. Barac-Cikoja is a researcher and a professor at Gallaudet University. Her research is in the area of human speech and perception modeled as a control system in which feedback is an essential element.
Antonio Barata is a composer and a professor of music at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo where he performs his own electronically processed allegorical poetry. He is Director of the Sound Design Program (music technology) with the Music Department. He teaches recording, electroacoustic composition and computer music, as well as traditional courses in music theory. Visit Professor Barata's web site or the Music Department's website for more information: http://www.calpoly.edu/~mu and the Cal Poly's website is: http://www.calpoly.edu.
Stephen David Beck is Professor of Composition and Computer Music at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA. He is Director of the Music & Art Digital Studio (the MADstudio) at LSU, a collaborative effort between the Schools of Music & Art which brings composers and visual artists together for the creation of digital art. He is, along with saxophonist Griffin Campbell, a founding member of the experimental electroacoustic band "Guys W/ Big Cars." Visit the MADstudio web site or his personal web site for more information.
Composer, clarinetist, video artist, Burton Beerman continues to seamlessly integrate technology with other media. Performances of his works have taken place at New York’s Carnegie Concert and CAMI Halls, Chopin Hall in Mexico City, Town Hall in Brussels, the American Cultural Centre and the Cite Universitaire Theatre in Paris, Spoleto Festival USA, Japan, Australia, Budapest, Canada, and New Zealand. He is a recipient of numerous commissions and awards, among these are awards from the International Society of Bassists for Voices for soprano voice and contra-bass, the Martha K. Cooper Orchestra Prize for Moments, and the Lipscomb Prize for Romance for piano and tape.
Recent projects include a 3 week residency at STEIM Research Center in Amsterdam (including concerts and masterclasses in the Netherlands), a performance at LOGOS Tetrahedron Theater in Belgium and a performance at the ORF RadioFunkHaus in Vienna, and concerts and masterclasses at the Traffo and Artus Theaters in Budapest in collaboration with the Gyula Berger and Friends Dance Theater, a concert in Italy sponsored Rive-Gauche Concerti, and a concert in Town Hall in Egar, Hungary as part of a residency at the International Clarinet Conference sponsored by the Hungarian Clarinet Society. Meditations for electric clarinet, interactive computer, and dancers was presented at the JIM’96 International Conference presented by IRCAM in Cannes, France.
Recordings include Electric Clarinet with clarinetist F. Gerard Errante (CPS-8607CD). SENSATIONS (Advance Recordings FGR-15S); polygraph VI (Orion Cassette OC 775); CONCERTO I (Orion Master Disk Recordings Ors 85487); SOUND AND WAILS Access Recordings (S-10); MISOGAMY (ASUC Recording Series asuc-8); ROMANCE (Capstone Records CPS @8602). Most recently the Warsaw Philharmonia, Poland, has recorded for compact disc, Richard Stoltzman performing Beerman’s Morning Calls for B-flat clarinet and orchestra. Beerman recently performed this work with the Memphis Symphony with himself as soloist.
You can read more about Burton Beerman at http://mustec.bgsu.edu/~bbeerma.
Brian Belet is a composer, performer, and theorist (reclaiming the exploratory definition of the term) living in Campbell, California. A Kyma user since 1991, his research activities involve algorithmic composition, real-time software sound synthesis, real-time computer improvisation, live performance human-machine interaction, and microtonal theories. He performs primarily contemporary music using Kyma, computer controllers, bass, guitar, and viola. His most recent compositions include (Disturbed) Radiance (piano and Kyma, 2003), Lyra (violin and Kyma, 2002), and Still Harmless [BASS]ically (electric bass and Kyma, 2000).
Dr. Belet serves as Director of the Center for Research in Electro-Acoustic Music at San Jose State University. He has scores published by the Society of Composers, Inc., Warner Brothers / Belwin-Mills Publishing Corp., and the International Trombone Assoc. Press; with music recorded on the Consortium to Distribute Computer Music, the Society of Composers, Inc., and Frog Peak Music CD labels.
In October 2002 Dr. Belet was Guest Composer in residence at De Montfort University and Dartington College of the Arts in the United Kingdom, where he presented lecture-demonstrations on using Kyma as a composing and live performance environment. He has attended (and survived) five Kyma immersion workshops (1992-2001), and can’t wait for the next one! He is past Vice President for Membership in the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States [SEAMUS], and also a member of ICMA, SCI, with his music licensed with BMI. (www.sjsu.edu/depts/music_dance/admin/faculty/belet/index.html)
We are using Kyma and the Capybara to create our own unique sounds to use in electronic music. Jennifer Berger's current website is http://wintermute.00space.com, Charlie Gerlt's current website is http://www.dimensional.com/~ch4rl13.
Craig Berkey, who is originally from Canada, is a free-lance sound designer living in Studio City, California. His film credits include X-Men and X-Men II, Men in Black II, Behind Enemy Lines, Sleepy Hollow, The X-Files, and Alien Resurrection.
Lloyd Billing is the managing director of The Tape Gallery Limited, a London studio specializing in sound design and voice-over, where he enthusiastically pursues the audio equivalent of the holy grail.
François Blaignan is the head sound designer and sound composer at Tinitus. A Hollywood sound designer for over 15 years and Kyma guru specializing in cross-synthesis (imposing the spectral envelope of one sound onto another), Francois graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and can count Hans Zimmer, Randy Edelman, and Frank Serafine among his mentors.
François has used Kyma in numerous film and advertising projects, among them: the voice of SID 6.7 for Paramount Pictures' film Virtuosity, the voice of the BORG in Star Trek: First Contact, special effects for the Nickelodeon series The Muppets Dr. Seuss, the sound for the new Dae Woo cars multimedia trade show rollout, television ads for Chevy trucks, sound design for the weekly cartoon series ChronoQuest, as well as several other television shows, independent films, and CD-ROM games.
Peter Brunnhofer is a composer and teaches at the Kantonsschule Freudenberg in Zürich, Switzerland.
Stephan Bugaj lives in New York City where he is a software industry executive by vocation and a computer programmer, soundhacker/designer, and experimental and industrial/dance composer by avocation. He uses his Kyma and Capybara for sound design and processing for his audio projects and is beginning a new project which combines his artificial intelligence, computer graphics, and music interests.
Kristine Burns is the Artistic Director and Composer of the performance art group, [schwa]. She has taught on the faculties of the Oberlin Conservatory, TIMARA Department (Technology in Music and Related Art); Dartmouth College, Department of Music and the Bregman Electro Acoustic Music Studios, and currently serves as Director of the Electronic Music Studios at the Florida International University School of Music. Dr. Burns specializes in intermedia compositions and theatrical works that employ extended vocal techniques. She has had performances throughout the United States and in Europe, including the International Congress of Women in Music; the FUTURA Festival (Drome, France); SEAMUS National Conferences; SCI National and Regional Conferences; and Festivals and Concert Series including Bowling Green State University, Clark University and California State University at Los Angeles. Kristine has been developing systems for interactive composition/performance in the Max, Director, and Interactor programming environments. Kristine is also the owner and editor of a new web site called WOW'EM, Women On the Web — ElectronMedia. The site is devoted to young women (junior and senior high school) who are interested in the media arts — music or visual art, as well as science, math or computers. Many other women and men have assisted by writing articles. Visit Kristine's personal web site.
Sarth Calhoun is an electronic composer, bass player, synthesist, and sound designer. He uses Kyma as his primary sound source for "live sound design" with his New York-based rock/electronic bad Number 19. Visit his web site at: http://www.numbernineteen.net.
José is a composer and teacher living in Spain. Visit his web site to learn more about his latest projects: www.envelooponline.com.
Joel Chadabe is professor of music at The Manhattan School of Music and Bennington College. He is the founder of the Electronic Music Foundation and has also written a highly entertaining history of electronic sound, concentrating on the human beings and the music behind the machines called Electric Sound: The Past and Promise of Electronic Music, published by Prentice Hall.
Eric Chasalow is professor of composition and director of the Brandeis Electro-Acoustic Music Studio [BEAMS] at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. He earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Columbia University, and he has received composition awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Composer Rodrigo Cicchelli Velloso graduated with a doctorate in composition as a student of Denis Smalley and is now teaching composition in Brazil. He has, thus far, used Kyma in two of his recent works: Multiple Reeds, for saxophone and tape, and 15o Harmonico, for piano and tape. He has won several international prizes and attended the IRCAM's Cursus from October 1995 through September 1996.
Stanley Cowell is a composer, jazz pianist, and a professor of music at Rutgers University.
Franz Danksagmüller studied recorder, piano, organ and theories with his father; further studies in organ, composition and church music at the Universities of Music in Vienna and Saarbröcken (Germany). Franz worked as a teacher for organ and improvisation at the University of Music in Vienna. At present, he is an organist and componist at the Cathedral of St. Pölten (near Vienna). Franz writes for organ, choir and electronics, and also performs with several musicians and actors. In addition to all this, Franz makes film music and club music.
Lloyd Dawe is a professor and chairman of the Department of Psychology at Cameron University. He uses Kyma for demonstrations in class and for experiments in dichotic listening and attention. Lloyd has his Kyma System serving double-duty by using it at school and using it on his computer at home.
Robert DeFord describes himself as "a storyteller, artist, sculptor, husband, father, gardener, technical writer, and computer lover. He says: "I do not know music theory, nor do I play a musical instrument. Yet, eight years ago I had the strange notion that I could paint and sculpt with sound to tell stories. The "music" I had in mind was something new... something not tied to the legacy of musicians playing with animal skin, strings, and wood. My computer was the key. It would somehow enable me, the storyteller and artist, to use sound as my medium of artistic expression. I built a MIDI based system and began to create music. It was awful in the beginning, but it got better and better. I began to call my work "electro fantasies." It was good, but I was not satisfied with it. Then, after eight years of progress I began to feel that I was stalled far short of my goal. I had pushed my conventional synths to their limits. I began to worry. How was I to continue? Then, a few months ago I became aware of the Kyma sound creation system. I saw the light. I sold all my synths. I bought a Kyma system. It is good." To contact Robert, email him at: rdeford@dragonfarm.us or visit his web page: http://www.dragonfarm.us.
Caleb Delamare is from Perth in Western Australia. He has been into synthesizers since 1985. He says, "When I found Kyma, I just about went loony! I did know that the power was out there, but not in one machine as the Kyma and Capybara." Caleb's music and sounds verge deep into the unknown as he uses a lot of real-world sounds such as the calls of his Raptors (birds of prey) that he cares for. His music is mostly electronic based with an environmental cyber-edge to it and also has a very "soundtrack" (fantasy film) feel to it. According to Caleb, "Kyma rocks!"
Composer, theorist, philosopher, Mac-head, and master glass-blower (Waterford crystal), Pascall de Paor is also the course director for the Masters in Music Technology program at the University of Limerick http://www.ul.ie/~ccmcm. His research areas are composition, interactive performance, aesthetics and recording production and in his spare time, he... umm, well he doesn't actually have any spare time, but he does have an email address.
Daniel Dettwiler has studied Audio Design at Musikhochschule Basel. He composes popular music, creates and performs live-electronic applications, as well as sound and audio design for films, theater productions, installations and concerts.
As an interpreter of live-electronic music he has performed in concerts and festivals such as the Biennale Berlin, the Tage für Live-Elektronische Musik Basel and "Roma 2000" in Rome. He has realized sound installations in Massachussettes, Weimar, Vienna, and most recently he composed and designed a large-scale, interactive installation at the new Tadao Ando building "Fabrica" for Benetton in Treviso, Italy.
Daniel Dettwiler has composed soundtracks for 2 Witness Videos (concepts by Peter Gabriel and Fabrica) and a WWF Video, as well as the soundtrack for a documentary of the late Kickboxing Worldchampion Andy Hug.
He has also created sound and audiodesigns for several European films, theater productions and concerts including the acclaimed "LUX- eine Autobiographie des Lichtes" (a motion picture by Fred van der Kooij), "The Left Hand of Glenn Gould" (a theaterpiece by Heiner Goebbels) and "Voices", a multi-media opera composed by Andrea Molino with David Moss, perfomed at the Festival "Roma 2000" in Roma. As sound engineer, Daniel Dettwiler has produced and engineered for well-known performers such as Mirjam Klein, Kolsimcha, Malgruw Miller, and Chrystjan Zimerman.
Daniel Dettwiler developed live electronics and audio design for the opera "Midea" (Oscar Strasnoy) and "Rialto" (Beat Gysin), a concert in a swimming pool for the "Europäischer Musikmonat 2001. He has also completed songs for his Musical "Freeze," which began playing in December 2001 in Switzerland. http://www.ideeundklang.ch.
Taylor Deupree is a musician, graphic designer, and photographer residing in Brooklyn, New York. On January 1st, 1997 he founded 12k, a music label and homebase for his creative output. Over the last four years, Taylor and 12k's sonic mission has been to push the boundaries of minimal, digital sound art and to bring a new level of design-consciousness to music in America. The name "microscopic sound" was perfect in describing these tonal experiments in frequency and rhythm, and is a phrase that Taylor uses to describe his sound aesthetic.
In September 2000, Taylor and collaborator Richard Chartier launched LINE, a subdivision of 12k that explores new, digital, conceptual, ultra-minimalist sound and the relationship between sound, silence and the art of listening. LINE is a carefully balanced counterpoint to the granular rhythmics of 12k.
In addition to 12k, Taylor records for a number of other labels including ritornell/mille plateaux, raster music (Germany), fällt (Ireland), and audio.nl (Netherlands). Over the past 8 years he has recorded albums for Instinct Records, Caipirinha Music, Plastic City (USA), Disko b (Germany), Dum (Finland), and KK Records (Belgium) among others.
Taylor designs mainly for the music, film, and fashion industries in New York City. His cd cover art and web design has appeared in numerous design books and a spot in the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s 1997 show "Mixing Messages: Graphic Design in Contemporary Culture." Taylor’s clean and minimalist approach to design is highly recognizable and an integral part in the combination of elements that make up the aesthetic of his label, 12k. Having graduated from NYU (1993) with a degree in photography, Taylor has continued to apply his strong sense of composition and shape to both his design and photography. Visit him at http://www.12k.com.
Agostino Di Scipio was born in Naples and studied the Conservatory in l'Aquila where he took diplomas in composition, electroacoustic music and aesthetics of music. He also attended computer music workshops at University of Padua and elsewhere. Since 1987, Di Scipio has worked at the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale (University of Padua) and with other music research groups in Italy including the Centro Richerche Musicali in Rome and teaches electroacoustic music at the Conservatory of Bari. Di Scipio has authored several articles and has edited a book of selected writings by G.M. Koenig (published by Semar in Rome 1995).
Independent artist Dorsey Dunn is using Kyma for sound design, installation, and performance in the Bay Area and elsewhere. Visit his homepage at http://itinerantstudio.com
John Dunn lives in Fort Worth, Texas and has a software design company called Algorithmic Arts. Visit his homepage at http://geneticmusic.com
Edmund Eagan owns the Twelfth Root studios in Ottawa Ontario where he is kept busy doing sound for animated features (and tries to set aside time for composing his own computer music whenever he can).
Matera Enrico is a sound and DVD authoring engineer, working in the field of multimedia products. In his spare time, he is always composing and playng music, but often this hobby turns out to be work in the form of music and sound design for DVD trailers and for corporate videos. Matera is preparing a CD of electronic experimentations that will be self published soon. He says: "I am going to enjoy very much the great help Kyma will give me and the wonderful new sounds I can create."
Steve Everett is a composer on the faculty of Emory University in Atlanta.
Peter Farber is a composer at the Neues Studio fur Computermusik in Zurich Switzerland.
Anthony Fedele is a sound designer at Concentrix Music and Sound Design in Charlotte, NC. He is a graduate of the Full Sail Center of the Recording Arts. To learn more, visit http://www.concentrixmusic.com.
Burt Fenner is professor emeritus of music at the Pennsylvania State University. His most recent projects include compositions in microtonal tunings and sonification for a sequence of CD-ROM-based physics courses.
A composer and professor at San Francisco State University, Richard Festinger also organizes concerts and directs an independent new music ensemble from his home in Berkeley.
Kelly Fitz received Ph.D. (1999), M.S. (1992), and B.S. (1990) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where, in addition to digital signal processing, he studied sound analysis and synthesis with Dr. James Beauchamp, and sound design and electroacoustic music composition with Scott Wyatt, using a variety of analog and digital systems in the Experimental Music Studios. Dr. Fitz is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Washington State University.
Dr. Fitz is a principal researcher and developer of the Reassigned Bandwidth-Enhanced Additive Sound Model, and of the Loris software, an open source library for digital sound analysis, synthesis, manipulation, and morphing. Previously, he developed Lemur, a widely-used software application for sound analysis, transformation, and synthesis based on the sinusoidal analysis method of McAulay and Quatieri, and co-developed the Virtual Sound Server (VSS), a client/server system enabling data-driven sound computation in interactive real-time environments, at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
Dr. Fitz is a member of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Audio Engineering Society (AES), the Electronic Music Foundation (EMF) Institute, the International Computer Music Association (ICMA), and the Society for Electro Acoustic Music in the United States (SEAMUS). http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~kfitz/
Blair is a graduate of the Full Sail Recording School in Winter Park, Florida. By day, he says he is "a mild-mannered DVD engineer" at Masterdisk in New York City. By night, he morphs into "an evil genius remixer/electronic music producer (goa trance, jungle, industrial, ambient)/mastering engineer." Blair modestly allows that "obtaining Kyma is the final step in my plan for world domination."
Lawrence Fritts is the Director of the Electronic Music Studios and Assistant Professor of Composition and Theory at the University of Iowa. Visit his website at http://theremin.music.uiowa.edu.
Ivar Frounberg is a composer and professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Maki Fujii is part of two bands: Soft Ballet and Schaft (for whom he does computer programming and acoustic piano performance as well as supplying noises from various electric devices). Both groups record under the Victor Entertainment label (JVC). "Threshold" from his Twist and Turn remix dance album (done under the name Soft Ballet) was number 13 on A. Maskell's Brickhouse Chart in Manchester, UK. in March of 1993. To visit Maki Fujii's homepage and find out more about his upcoming albums and touring schedule, click here.
Leonardo Gala has spent 40 years as a concert pianist, and 25 years as a specialist in 20th Century music of Latin American composers. His first contact with electronic music was at Arizona State University in the early '70s (ARP 2600). Back east in the early '80s at City University, Hybrid Moog Studio, and later at Columbia/Princeton studios, he worked with Serge, Buchla, and Moog units. Leonardo says that he has always been searching for the "beyond" in music and sound, and has a tendency to crush pianos by pushing them beyond their limits. He frequently blew out the audio systems at Columbia by experimenting with Danger Music technologies. Leonardo has tried to remain semi-retired for several years, working on his music with newer and improved technologies. He performs much less, but is becoming inundated with students and requests for arranging. He says he is not embarrassed to say that he enjoys working with his General Music Pro 2, and he plans to release a disc of late 20th century piano sonatas soon.
Patrick Germann says, "Kyma is an interface between my brain and heart."
"to feel + to think --> Kyma--> to hear"
Eugenio Giordani was born in Pesaro, Italy, in 1954. He received a diploma in Pianoforte at the Conservatorio G. Rossini in 1973, and a diploma in Electronic Music in 1975. In 1980, he obtained a degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Ancona with a graduation thesis on the simulation of key hammer action in electronic pianos using piezo-electric buzzers.
He has taught piano since 1976, and he has taught Electronic Music at the Conservatorio G. Rossini since 1981. In 1982, he started a collaboration as an audio researcher at ISELQUI (Instituto Elettronico per la Qualita Industriale). In the same year, he received an honorable mention at the XI Electronic Music Competition of Bourges with the composition "Voicings" for magnetic tape. In 1988 he won the 3rd prize at the Newcomp Computer Music Competition with "Solaria", a two track computer generated composition using Music 11 and perhaps the earliest version of CSound, which ran on a VAX 785. He was for many years a member of Musica Verticale and a co-founder of the Musica/Complessita(M/C) association. With M/C he participated as a teacher at the Musica-Complessita Seminars in 1988/89 with Guido Baggiani, Walter Branchi, Anselmo Cananzi, Barry Truax, Ervin Lazslo and others in Italy.
For three years, he played with the Electravox Ensemble, an Italian group specializing in electro- acoustic performances. The group included Luigi Ceccarelli, David Keberle, Mark Dresser. In 1990 he joined with two electrical engineers (Sandro Gabrielli and Stefano Bondi) and founded the Studio Associato El. Project (Sape), which worked for the Italian digital organ manufacturer Viscount and Viscount Professional. The group has produced four ASIC DSP audio chips: the AGE, AGEplus, DRD and DRDplus. They designed several products for the same factory. Some of the products are sold in the USA by Oberheim (including a Hammond B3 clone named Ob3), as a commercial joint venture. At present he is an external consultant at the same factory. He is the director of the Laboratorio Elettronico per la Musica Sperimentale at the Conservatorio G. Rossini in Pesaro, and he is a member of their administration council. When not involved in some digital audio activity, he plays piano in a jazz trio.
Pat Gleeson began this odyssey on the 1st Buchla box (at Mills), never could keep it tuned so bought 10th Moog modular, then Emu modular, Synclavier, etc. Currently has the usual film/TV composer's setup of multiple samplers/synths. He has played and recorded with Herbie Hancock (1970-72), apparently the first person brave or ill-informed enough to use synth for live performances with commercial jazz group. Pat was "Master synthesist" for Apocalypse Now; numerous bad movies, a few good ones, and lots of television (Knots Landing, Unsolved Mysteries, etc.).
Jim Grater is a composer (and erstwile cameraman for ESPN in New York) currently living and making music in Houston, Texas. To read more about his activities, visit his website at http://www.riojet.com/grater.
Scot Gresham-Lancaster (Oakland, CA) has been active in electronic and acoustic music for over twenty years. A composer, performer, and instrument designer, he has been a composer in residence at Mills College, STEIM, Amsterdam, and the Djerassi Artist Residency Program, and performed nationally and internationally in a wide variety of venues. He is currently a lecturer in Computer Music, Electronic Technician and Recording Engineer at the Music Department at California State University, Hayward. To find out more about Scot Gresham-Lancaster, look him up at http://tesla.csuhayward.edu/~scot.
Hendrik Groger is President/Producer/Composer at Warrior Productions, Inc. in Fresno, California, specializing in music production. You can learn more about Hendrick and his studio at www.warriorproductions.com.
Francesco Guerra is a physics professor at the University of Rome "La Sapienza." In addition to his work in theoretical nuclear physics, he leads a group of researchers including mathematician Tedeschini and physicist D'Autilia in sound and music research. Visit their beautifully designed webpages to find out more: http://romagtc.roma1.infn.it/.
Lippold Haken has a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign and is a senior software designer for UCI, a firm that supplies hardware and software for computer-based education (an offshoot of the original PLATO system developed at the University of Illinois). He also teaches a course in computer music for engineers at the University of Illinois. Lippold's research interests include spectral analysis, DSP programming, sinusoidal resynthesis, the continued development of the LIME music notation and the Lemur spectral analysis programs, and the development of a new performance interface called the Continuum. For more information, visit http://www.cerlsoundgroup.org/Continuum/.
London-based Kyma user, Giles Hales-Tooke, with a background in Music, Radio and TV Post Production, extends a warm hello to the world of Kyma users and an open invitation to get in touch with him for a chat on sound design in dance music, drums & percussion, algorithmic composition or the general exploration of "Noise."
Some artists may use "smoke and mirrors" to inflate their grandeur and reputation, but for Florida producer Bll Hamel, what you see (or rather what you hear) is what you get. Regularly charted and supported by renowned and acclaimed dance acts such as Sasha, Paul Oakenfold, John Digweed and Paul Van Dyk amongst many others, Hamel's remixes have all been successfully placed in many acclaimed mixed albums, including Nick Warren's Budapest Global Undergound, Noel Sanger's TranceNation, Dave Seaman's Cape Town Global Underground and Renaissance Awakening.
2002 was a major turning point for Bll Hamel, with partnering up with electronic guru BT and doing a remix for N'SYNC member-gone-solo, Justin Timberlake. 2002 also marked the release of Hamel's second mixed album, Balance 3, delivering a fresh style and driving progressive punch. This double CD set features tracks by Way Out West, Lamb, Tilt, Quivver, Hippe-E and many more, released via Stomp/EQ Records.
Hamel continues to contribute to the Florida dance scene with a DJ residency at Orlando's Club Icon and regular performances at Miami's infamous Club Space.
Kurt Hebel is the vice president of Symbolic Sound Corporation and the designer of the Capybara digital signal processor.
Ken Heitmueller, sound designer, composer, and erstwhile bassist for Suddenly, Tammy! (Warner Brothers) is into experimental music and sound art (and into sneaking some of these experimental techniques into his more mainstream recordings). Ken lives and works in New York, helped organize the Tibetan Freedom Concert, and is working on a portable battery pack for his Capybara so he can fulfill his dream of playing Kyma-processed bass in the New York subways.
Marcus Hobbs is an animator at Disney Studios where he spent two years rendering the hydra sequence for Hercules on hundreds of networked SGIs and is now manager of the "look and feel" for the feature animation Atlantis. Still nothing moves him quite so much as sound and music, so this mathematician/animator/programmer is using Kyma in his quest for sounds at the edge of chaos.
Hwang Sung Ho is a professor, theorist, writer and program supervisor of KBS-FM. He graduated from Seoul National University, then studied composition and music theory at Brussel Koninklijk Conservatorium and Electronic Music at Utrecht Conservatorium and Instituut voor Sonologie, Utrecht University. Now he is a Professor at Seoul National University, President of KEAMS (Korean Electro-Acoustic Music Society) and also serves as Music Director of the new media performance series, NextWaveConcert. He has received numerous commissions and performances of works by major orchestras, ensembles and dance groups in Korea, including orchestral works by KBS Orchestra and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra, Organizing Committee for Winter Universiade '97, etc. Several of his electro-acoustic pieces were performed throughout the world at festivals such as Asian Composer's League Festival '93 (Taipei), HKUST Multimedia Concert (Hong Kong), ICMC'96 (Hong Kong), 96'FEM (Bladislova), Kwangju International Biennale '95, etc.
John Hunter is a sound designer, experimental musician, Thereminist, educator, and fomer sax player with the Ululating Mummies (De-Haunting The BodyHouse). Title track to Hunter's "Black Lotus—African American Ambient & Space Music" album has enjoyed radio airplay on Musical Starstreams (Waveform Records), Sedona, Az. John is Co-Founder of the University of Virginia's lay/university community's Sonic Guild.
Oeivind Idsoe, born in 1972, is a composer living in Oslo Norway. He describes himself as a "musical autodidact" who is currently studying comparative literature at the University of Oslo. His goal in life is to use Kyma to engineer some kind of recombinant gene-pool using the principles of electroacoustic/acousmatic music combined with the rhythmic antics of post-Techno Electronica. Those who have an idea of how this might be achieved are invited to contact him.
Hanley Jackson is a composer who teaches at Kansas State University. He has a website at http://www.personal.ksu.edu/~hjackson/
Robert Jarvis is a composer and performer (trombonist) based in Kent, England. You can visit his website at http://www.robertjarvis.co.uk.
Pete Johnston is the technical manager at The Tape Gallery Limited in London where he works with Lloyd Billing turning men into women, morphing women into cats, creating computer voices to describe how "really cool" the chunnel train looks, and performing other brilliantly odd sonic transformations for advertising and film. He is the "rocket scientist" of sound design and arguably the master of the sonic morph.
Dan Jones is a composer living in Bristol, UK. He composes frequently for television, theatre and film, his most recent project being the score for The Longest Memory for BBC Channel 4. His other film credits include the score for Jaguar: Year of the Cat, a Telenova production filmed for HDTV which was broadcast in the US as the season premiere of the "Nature" series (PBS) and which will have theatrical distribution in Japan.
John Paul Jones is unique among Kyma users in having a US battleship named in his honor. When not busy fulfilling his duties as the father of the American navy, the Catholic church, and his own three daughters, he somehow finds time for composing, producing, performing, writing Smalltalk scripts, and developing insanely complex nonlinear feedback distortion patches in Kyma. While he could yield to external pressures to repeat successful formulae of the past, JPJ chooses instead to follow the dictates of his own cheerfully insatiable intellect into new and decidedly non-mainstream waters. He is currently in production on a new solo album, a followup to his solo debut Zooma. The song does not remain the same!
Kevin Jones is on the music faculty at Kingston University in Kingston upon Thames, UK.
Larry Julien is a semi-retired telecommunications engineer with 25 years of industry experience in hardware test and software development. He is a classically trained pianist whose second instrument is acoustic bass. Currently, (Fall, 2001) he is setting up a 5.1 project studio near Dallas, Texas where he will perform, record, and master original compositions in several genres. He believes that the last frontiers of music are timbre and sound spatialization, and he hopes to push the sonic envelope by emphasis of these musical elements.
Sylvain Kepler is French composer who proposes another version of techno rhythms: the sound material isn't frozen any more but is really alive. Taking advantage of a Discovery shuttle flight ticket, in the way of a 21st Century Cristopher Colombus, his music invites us to explore sonic worlds featuring undefinable reflections. Throughout some synchronous reflected melodies, also tinted with both positivism and melancholy, telluric hummings, atmospheric choirs, sunny climates, oxyacetylenic rains, twinklings in levitation, and other cloudy calmness, atmospheres are meeting...
Sylvain's first conceptual album, issued in 1998, is titled EXPLORA. It is dedicated to Caludie Andre-Deshays, the first French female astronaut. Today, Sylvain prepares another album due to be released in 2004. The title and the concept, which will be developed through his next album, are kept secret until the decisive time of the production. By now, Kyma definitely takes part in his works. For more information, visit http://sylvain.kepler.free.fr .
Tim Kreger is a lecturer in computer music at the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology.
Ron Kuivila is on the music faculty of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, USA. You can read about his FORTH-based music language FORMULA in the Computer Music Journal.
Marc S. Langelier is an electro-acoustic musician/composer/sound designer. He has been commissioned by many faculty and student choreographers. A CD of some of his dance compositions will be released later this summer (2003). Marc also is an accompaniest for the VCU Dance Dept., The Richmond Ballet, the Latin Ballet of Virginia, Henrico High School for the Arts, and The Starr Foster Dance Project.
Otto Laske is a composer internationally known for his work in computer-assisted score and sound composition. In the 1980’s, he co-founded and co-directed the New England Computer Arts Association, NEWCOMP, together with Curtis Roads (1981-1991). In 1999, his 30-year long work as a cognitive musicologist was introduced to, and explained for, a larger public in J.N. Tabor’s OTTO LASKE: NAVIGATING NEW MUSICAL HORIZONS, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, a Festschrift written by international colleagues. The book contains a comprehensive bibliography of Otto’s compositions, poems, choreographies, and musicological writings.
Otto is in demand as a conference speaker and contributor. He also practices as a psychologist/coach and management consultant specializing in personnel development consultation, especially in high-tech companies. Since 2000, he has focused on working with artists, especially composers, both as a coach and a mentor of algorithmic score composition.
Otto is presently working on a new score-based composition using the resources of Kyma, following a piece for organ & percussion and a string quartet.
Those interested in compositional mentoring by an expert in algorithmic composition are invited to contact Otto at one of the following links: www.emf.org/subscribers/laske/index.html or www.cdemusic.org/artists/laske.html.
Founder of the first Sound Group at Apple Computer, director of research at OpCode, system software designer at GO, and father of his very own object-oriented programming language, Glyphic, Mark was also the very first Beta tester for Symbolic Sound and the first person ever to be interviewed in the Eighth Nerve (when he described what it was like to see sinusoidal motion in a concrete floor during the Loma Prieta earthquake). Mark is currently doing some very cool things using Glyphic as a scripting language for web design and to produce a series of interactive mathematics courses for a Boston-based publisher. Visit Glyphic Technologies website!
Bruno Liberda is professor of music at the Musikhochschule in Vienna where he studied composition under Roman Habenstock-Ramati. His opera Wieso verschwindet Mozart auf der Reise nach Prag? was premiered at the Staatstheater Karlsruhe im ZKM October 1999.
His numerous earlier commissions include compositions for the Wiener Staatsoper (the first electro-acoustic music ever to be heard at the Viennese opera house), for the Burgtheater in Vienna, opera houses in Frankfurt and Ulm, for the Berliner Ensemble, and many others. His music has also been performed at the opera in Amsterdam, the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, and on concerts throughout Europe and the United States, and he also composes music for film and television. In his premiere acting role, Liberda recently played the lead in a made-for-TV movie biography of composer Hugo Wolf. Visit Bruno's web site for more information.
Oliver Lieb is a writer and producer living in Koenigstein, Germany.
Magnus Lindberg is a musician and sound producer living in Hagersten, Sweden.
John Livengood is an organist and a composer of tape music who records with Red Noise and tours with Planetarium. His musical influences include Soft Machine, Terry Riley, and Miles Davis. During the 1970s, he discovered his first synthesizer (an ARP 2600), founded the group Spacecraft, and created the Livengood Laboratory for the study of electronic and computer music. During the 1980s, he studied computer music at IRCAM, continued the activities of his laboratory, worked as a beta tester, and composed pieces for his upcoming album File room. In 1993, he teamed up with Richard Pinhas to produce the Cyborg Sally album recorded on the Tangram New Series label, performed that same year in concert at the UK Electronica Festival in London. (Cyborg Sally, by the way, is the name given to the virtual-personality reflected by the vocoded voice of Norman Spinrad). Livengood's list of compositions includes music for film and theater as well as for live and recorded musical performances.
Hau-man Lo graduated from the Hong Kong Conservatory of Music and Chinese University of Music where he received his Master and Doctor of Music degrees in composition. He studied composition with Mr. Law Wing-fai, Professor Chan Wing-wah, and Professor David Gwilt. He has written music for various media including dancing, drama, multi-media performances, chamber music, orchestral music, jingles and popular songs. His works have been performed in Japan, Singapore, Malysia, UK, France, China, Australia, Norway, Taiwan, and New Zealand; he won a finalist prize in the "Collection Campaign for Music Works in Honour of China's Resumption of Sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997." Professor Lo is now teaching in the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is an active composer as well as a conductor, and also Secretary of Hong Kong Composers' Guild.
Jonathan MacKenzie's research centers on the use of new developments in chaos theory and fractal geometry as a means to model sound with the computer. The aim is to find new ways to generate and manipulate sound that may be of use to anyone involved with it creatively, for example in music, film, radio, or multimedia. You may be familiar with an application of his research in the form of a Plug-In marketed by SynchroArts that can extend the duration of background noise.
Brian MacQueen is a playwright who originally turned to radio simply because it was the practical means for getting his work performed. He has since become an enthusiastic proponent of the evocative power of sound and radio theater, and regularly writes and produces dramatic series for National Public Radio's Radio Playhouse.
Andreas Mahling was born in 1961 (Germany), studied Informatics at the University of Stuttgart and music composition and music theory at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst, Stuttgart. He did his doctoral thesis on knowledge-based computer music composition. Between 1990 and 1992, he and his students developed a pool of musical objects (the knowledge base), MIDI interfaces (software) and editors for CMN, sequencing, arranging and for manipulating 'Musikalische Gestalten'.
In addition to his job as co-founder of a software company, he teaches computer music composition at the music conservatory at Stuttgart, Germany, since 1989. Some of his work was published in the ICMC-Proceedings 1988, 1990, 1991. Programming experience includes LISP and SMALLTALK.
In 1996 he started to develop a new system for computer aided composition, called MusicTalk. The name stems from the programming language on which it is based: Smalltalk. MusicTalk includes several compositional paradigms which can be seamlessly extended and integrated by its users. One paradigm follows the stream-approach of Rick Taube's Common Music but adds a dialog-oriented interface to help users in assembling their compositional algorithms without the knowledge of a programming language. It also adds a couple of transforming procedures like STRUCTURAL morphing, parameter-mapping and arranging procedures. Users can extend the system at any level because it is available with full source code. A beta version of MusicTalk can be downloaded from the MusicTalk homepage at: http://www.s.netic.de/mahling/musictalk.html.
John Mantegna is a composer and classical guitarist living in Virginia.
Sal Martirano was professor of music at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign until his retirement in 1995. He studied composition with Herbert Elwell, Bernard Rogers, and Luigi Dallapiccola. He is perhaps best known for his creation of the Sal-Mar Construction, an instrument that permits simultaneous creation and performance of improvisatory compositions. At the University of Illinois he was one of the first artists to work with computers in composition. His first computer-generated piece, 123-456, was composed in 1964. During the past two years, he performed in concerts of his music in the US, Korea, and Romania. His latest work, Isabela for orchestra (1993) received its first performance by the Radio/Television Orchestra of Bucharest, Romania, Edwin London conductor. His music is published by Schott, London and Smith Publications, Baltimore. He has recorded for CRI, Advance, Heliodor, Polydor, New World Records, Centaur CD, Einstein Records, Neuma Records and GM records. During the final months of his life, he worked with Larry Austin to produce a CD retrospective of his work in electroacoustic music as part of the Centaur CDCM series.
Alain Massé is a song writer who believes in words and thus believes in sounds. He lives near Montreal, Quebec, but mostly, he says, he lives in his imagination. He is always searching for tools to modulate his imagination and to communicate his musical creations. Alain says he likes minor 7b5 chords, turkey lasagna, and his four daughters. Now his daughter Aviel's hamster has a new friend: the Capybara 320!
David McClain works as a Senior Scientist for the Space Defense industry in Tucson, Arizona, teaching computers to "see in the dark." He studied music as a youngster playing piano, woodwinds, and violin. However, the siren song of science caught his ear and he, perhaps wisely, decided to pursue physics as a career (actually astronomy, the other non-paying profession, but having had lots of computer experience, he can now afford a Kyma system!).
However, music is still a burning passion and especially electronic instruments capable of producing unnatural sounds. David first started using synthesizers in the early 1980s at the same time as getting diverted to software development in Forth, Smalltalk, Lisp, and ML. He worked with Lenra Studios, where they made one of the first, albeit small, attempts to completely automate the soundtrack production for documentary films. DSP knowledge was later obtained in a big way while working for the Intelligence Services, specializing in geolocation by means of radio signal correlation, and untangling Faraday rotation effects of Earth's ionosphere. There David worked mostly at 10 MHz sample rates, so the 44.1 KHz in the studio was a breeze!
"A physicist, astronomer, compiler writer, mathematician, and amateur musician describes me best," says David. "My latest language system, called NML, is useful for image processing and ad-hoc numeric modeling, but it also includes some CSound-like capabilities." Free source-included copies for the mathematically inclined can be had from http://www.azstarnet.com/~dmcclain/nmlpromo.html
Al McNeil was one of the original programmers for MacroMedia (nee MacroMind) Director program. Despite numerous offers for full-time employment from the likes of Apple, MacroMedia, and others, Al prefers to work as a freelance consultant and programmer and live in the mountains of Montana with his family. His company is called Dragon Software and he is the guy that Apple calls in when no one else can figure out some low-level persistent bug. So if you are looking for the multimedia expert that Apple turns to when they are in a bind, you should contact him. His company is called Dragon Software.
tanner menard is a composer and sound designer. He is a member of the San Francisco based digital media collective Recombinant, in association with Surround Traffic Control and Asphodel Records. menard has contributed vocal processing to Asphodel releases. Recently, his Kyma sound mangling was used in Naut Humon’s A-Track Remix project, and was premiered at the Elektro Festival in Montreal, Canada. His 2001/2002 piece bumping prana for Kyma [or cd] and wind ensemble was premiered at the North by North West regional meeting of the CBDNA, and was featured on a five concert tour through California and Nevada. bumping prana was commissioned by Stuart Sims and California State University at Stanislaus, where, in the spring of 2002, he held an artistic residency. He has also used Kyma for creating interactive virtual performance environments, including levi’s loops for clarinet and Kyma, and prana’s mental for piano and live Kyma processing. menard is currently working on a series of pieces that he calls audiographs, or photographs of the human voice. His latest piece in this genre is from the mouth of his guru, a cosmic interview with his metaphysical teacher and ex-sixties radical, Leo Womack. Presently, menard is making field recordings in his native Louisiana, where he is capturing remnants of the dying Cajun French and English language. tanner menard has studied sound and music with Steven David Beck at LSU and has been highly enlightened by Naut Humon. If you wish to contact tanner for custom sound design or Kyma lessons, he can be reached at tmenar1@lsu.edu.
Laurent Mialon was born in 1973 in Bordeaux—spending his childhood between the vineyards and the Pyrenees. After some finance studies, he began mixing in the underground rave scene throughout Europe under the name La Peste (teknivals, Thunderdome, Seppuku, Fischkopf parties...). In 1997, Laurent created Hangars Liquides, a leading experimental electronic hardcore label with 22 releases to date. From 2000 to 2002, he was the music manager of Europe's biggest TV channel, Eurosport International. In 2001 Laurent met Djehan Derungs and began working on the Hendeka installation. (More info at http://www.hendeka.org.) In 2002 Laurent created Audioblique, a broadcast sound design agency, and is now a freelance sound designer/composer (works produced for Kia Motors, Samsung, le Futuroscope, Singapore Airlines, Chronopost, JVC, Dynastar, Nestlé Aquarel, LCI, Pilot, Eurosport International, the State of Canada, the city of La Coruña ...). In October, 2003 he will release WTC.XTC, an electronic experimental hardcore album with an acousmatic ending. The CD will come with an extensive DVD that will include Dolby Digital /5+1 soundtracks, texts, art photographs, and video clips. More info at http://www.hangars-liquides.com.
Matteo Milani is a sound editor living in Milan, Italy. He shares his passion between sound designing for advertising, film, multimedia and his family. He is still looking for a perfect place to live. You may find samples of his work visiting http://www.graphicalsound.com.
Dennis Miller received his doctorate in music composition from Columbia University and is a professor at Northeastern University in Boston where he recently created a new degree program in multimedia arts. He is also an associate editor at Electronic Musician magazine.
Scott Miller is an Associate Professor of Electroacoustic Music and Composition at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. Current compositional interests are electroacoustic music with live peformance components and multimedia collaborations. Vist his web site and listen to his music at: http://web.stcloudstate.edu/slmiller/MusicSite/index.html.
Kyma is part of his home studio which includes a Yamaha SY99 synthesizer, Digidesign Session8 eight track hard disk recording system, a DAT recorder, various miscellaneous items, assorted software, and two networked PCs that tie it all together. He has been a listener and appreciator of electronic/computer music since the early '60's and abused a few tape machines into early graves in high school and college. His musical training, such as it was, ended in high school more than 30 years ago. He began composing "seriously" in the mid '90s. To talk with David about music and life, visit his website at http://www.city-net.com/~moko/.
Yoichi Nagashima, professor of music at Shizuoka University of Art and Culture, was born 1958 in Japan, has been active as a computer scientist, licensed professional engineer of Japan (information processing / electronics), musician/conductor, and composer of choral/computer music. He is the director of ASL(Art & Science Laboratory), researcher of LIST(Laboratories of Image Information Science and Technology), and he teaches computer sound, media art and computer music classes at some universities and colleges. His private project as a composer is called PEGASUS (Performing Environment of Granulation, Automata, Succession, and Unified- Synchronism) project, and he produces original software, sensors, MIDI equipment, sound generators, and algorithms for real-time musical information processing. He is also writing a book on computer music, complete with sound examples. He uses Kyma along with MAX and an SGI Indy to do real time interactive performances. While he was first learning Kyma, he kept a diary of his experiences on the web at http://www.kobe-yamate.ac.jp/~nagasm/kyma/
Hidenori Ohnishi is a sound designer in Tokyo using Kyma for video game production.
Norbert Oldani is a math professor and composer living in Utica, New York. His first synth was an ARP 2600 and he has been an avid electronic and computer musician ever since. Over the years, he became interested in Fourier analysis/resynthesis as a means for transforming samples in nontraditional ways. His current interest is constructing Fractal algorithms to produce sound effects and electronic music.
Daniel Oppenheim is a composer and Smalltalk programmer working with the Computer Music Group at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center.
Garth Paine uses the Kyma system in all his composition, performance and installation work. He regularly develops interactive dance and installation works that use the Kyma system for realtime synthesis according to interactive input. His installation works and compositions can be heard at http://www.activatedspace.com.au.
Emanuele Pappalardo is a composer, born in Catania, and now living in Rome. He studied composition, choral music, electronic music and classical guitar at the Conservatory A. Casella at l'Aquila. His commissioned works have been performed and broadcast throughout Europe and are published by Edipan and Berben. He is on the music faculty at the Conservatory L. Refice at Frosinone.
Mark Phillips, a professor and Presidential Research Scholar at Ohio University, won the 1988 Barlow International Competition. His music has received hundreds of performances throughout the US, and in Europe, South America, Japan, and China, including over 40 orchestra performances, by groups such as the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and the Cleveland Orchestra. His music has been recorded by Richard Stoltzman and the Warsaw Philharmonic Orchestra, the Lark Quartet, and several solo artists.
Composition Department: http://www.cats.ohiou.edu/music/composition.html
Personal: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~phillipm/
Federico Placidi is a composer and plays double bass. He also works as a freelance sound designer. He is currently involved in the _Quadrivium_ project, both as the group's live electronics specialist and as a soloist. His compositions are based on a quest for and renewal of sound sources and means of production, and their interaction with traditional musical forms. "Expression and intelligibility are the ultimate goal of a composition, the attainment of which is the product of a desperate struggle between the primitive matter of sound and the soul."
John R. Platt is a professor of psychology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. His research area is music perception and psychoacoustics. To read more about his research in musical psychoacoustics, visit Professor Platt's home page.
Yulian Pugachevsky has been a freelance sound designer and recording studio consultant for about 10 years. His main applications for Kyma are in music, industrial videos and occasional independent short films. He is currently working for the Matrox Broadcast Video Products Group as an audio/video specialist for the support/integration department of the DigiSuite line of non-linear video editing products. Along with some friends, he has recently formed a video, audio and multimedia production group called "la boite Orange" as well as a pre-production/editing facility bearing the same name. There, Kyma is used for real-time signal processing and synthesis applications catering to clients with unusual demands.
He writes: "My Capy makes me v-e-r-y happy!!!"
Like his web site, Andrew says his career is evolving....dissolving ideas, attempting to find the bridge into audio-related sustainment. Currently on the other side of that bridge, he maintains Unix supercomputers ("Well, they look 'super' to me!") and Sybase databases. Visit Andrew at http://www.resonant.de.
Michael Radentz is a sound designer at Technisonic Studios, a 17,000 square foot post production studio near downtown St. Louis. Technisonic's Sonic Solutions-based audio suites provide sound design, recording, mixing, sweetening, and worldwide digital telephone links via EdNet for recording voice-over talent in other cities. Be careful of that cute little creature in their logo, as he is some kind of fertility symbol.
Dick Robinson received Master's degrees in composition and violin at the American Conservatory in Chicago. He also studied electronic and computer music at Cornell University, Moog Studios in New York, the University of Toronto, the Boston School of Electronic Music, Brooklyn College, and the University of Illinois. In 1965, he founded the Atlanta Electronic Music Center, which he continues to direct. Mr. Robinson played violin with the Atlanta Symphony for 36 years, retiring in 1987 to devote his full time to composition. His music has been performed at universities and festivals throughout the United States (including first prize in the Dartmouth International Electronic Music Competition) and Europe. His music is recorded on the Vox and Sacred Frame Records labels. Ask Dick about his work with the performance art group Public Domain!
Joran Rudi is the director of the Norwegian network for Technology, Acoustics and Music (NoTAM), a network and production/research studio that brings together academic and independent composers and computer music researchers from all of Norway. You can find out more about Joran and his music by visiting his homepage http://www.notam.uio.no/~joranru.
André Ruschkowski (b. 1959 in Berlin, Germany) received his Ph.D. in Musicology 1993 at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin. He began his compositional studies in 1984 and has been Composer-in-Residence at several studios for electronic music (i.e. Berlin, Budapest, Paris, Vienna). Since 1992 he has lectured Electronic Music and Music of the 20th Century at the Music Academy "Mozarteum" in Salzburg (Austria), the Technische Universitaet Berlin and the University of Cologne (Germany).
He is currently Professor for Electronic Music at the "Mozarteum" at Salzburg, where he directs the Electronic Music Studio of the Composition Department. He has prizes and mentions from various competitions for electronic music (i.e. Italy, France). His works are recorded on CDs of TonArt, Berlin, and *La Muse en Circuit* Paris. You canvisit his web site: htt://www.ruschkowski.de.
Kelvin Russell is an engineer and a composer living in Maryland. He has just started a new electronic musical instrument repair service called Russell Labs, specializing in the repair or modification of vintage analog synthesizers (he is registered as a warranty technician on lots of newer equipment as well). Kelvin's past experience includes working as the head technician for a very large music store, and, back in the 70s, as a custom modular analog synthesizer builder under the company name Russell Systems. Kelvin is open to the idea of doing some custom analog design work, but on a limited basis only (as custom work is extremely time-intensive). So if you need any kind of electronic musical instrument repaired (and especially if its a vintage synth), contact Kevin at rlabs@comcast.net. Kelvin also performs live electronic music as part of the group Pure Gamma.
I've been doing visual work and writing since the early '70s. My visual work started out in a highly geometric "op" style and then after a lot of meandering and experimenting evolved into an art of minimal assemblage using found material (mostly industrial scraps). My writing started mostly as a series of notes that I've arranged and rearranged several times without satisfying results but the production of 'notes' is still my normal literary method. The visual and literary aspects of my work overlap in a series of collages and works derived from book pages. The major output of this has been two long experimental texts. One is basically a reduction of a not very good novel by eliminating most of the words. The other was made by taking words and short passages from Lord Jim and Vanity Fair and arranging them into different variations. I have done no art works using sound but have wanted to get that element into my work for a long time. Since my visual work consists of taking found objects and arranging them and my literary work consists of taking words and arranging them, I assume that my 'music' work will consist in taking sounds and arranging them. By this I do not mean some form of music concrete but synthesized and manipulated sounds or sounds created from non sonic data structures etc.
Bill Rust is a New York sound designer who does music and sound effects for advertising and multimedia (as well as "disturbing innocent bystanders").
James Paul Sain is looking forward to maxing out the 10 DSPs in his system soon. His bio can be found at http://nersp.nerdc.ufl.edu/~jsain
Carla Scaletti is the president of Symbolic Sound Corporation and the designer of the Kyma language.
Planeta Synteza (which means "Planet Syntheses" in Slavic languages) is the name of one of Robert's fictitious bands, which actually consists of Robert and his recording studio. There is a rather extensive bio on his website which details his involvement with real and fictitious bands, as well as his travails with electronic music synthesizers over the past quarter century. There are also links to web pages that promote the two CDs he has produced in the last couple of years. Robert says: "In the header of my bio, I describe myself as a musician, producer, composer, midiot, and so forth; now I'll have to add one more: 'Kymaniac'!!" Visit Robert's website at http://www.PlanetaSynteza.com.
Bob Seiple owned Catywumpus Stoodio on Music Mountain in Southwest Virginia. Kyma was part of a synth collection, including Waldorf Q, ANIX, Nord MicroMod, E-Mu, PZK, and Metasynth. Two Buchla controllers, Thunder and Marimba Lumina, helped complete this array.
Catywumpus Studio was sister to Big Dipper Studio in Vero Beach, Florida where Bob was part of The Light Tribe, a group of musicians, artists, and scientists working on music-to-light.
Bob was a psychotherapist and designed and produced CD's for relaxation, hypnosis, and brain-wave training. He used Metasynth, Artmatic, and AcidPro as therapeutic tools. He was very interested in collaborative artistic endeavors including the process of creative community. Bob's primary instrument was trumpet.
William Sequeira received a Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in Computer Science. Previously he studied classical guitar at the Conservatorio de la Universidad de Costa Rica, where he also received a B.Sc. in Informatics. Although music is more than his hobby and not his primary occupation, Dr. Sequeira has developed media projects as part of his interactive TV background for BellSouth, and participated in Team Metlay, an Internet electronic music experimental group. He is currently Vice-President of Engineering for Organic Online, one of the premiere web and new media architecture companies.
Composer and sound designer Frank Serafine's film credits include The Hunt for Red October, TRON, Star Trek, Virtuosity, and The Lawnmower Man. He has also done the sound design for advertisements for NIKE, Microsoft, Energizer, and others. Serafine is the president of Venice California-based Serafine Sound Design where he is kept so busy these days that he hardly gets to see his dog anymore--a lovable, giant lab/elk hound mix with cute "airplane wing ears."
Bruce is a technical writer by trade, and a music addict by admission. He is also a MIDI hobbyist with abiding interests in composition and timbral exploration. Bruce's earliest pieces, which date back to his teenage years, involved the distorted plucking and clangings of office supplies and kitchen utensils played back on cassette decks at different speeds. These experiments, in what he calls 'conceptual noise', would sometimes form standalone sound collages. Other times, he would use them as novel backdrops over which a friend would play rhythm guitar while Bruce recited 'nonsense' poetry. His formal training in music is limited to the single introductory theory class he took in college. Since then, Bruce has studied classical harmony and counterpoint; jazz, atonal, algorithmic, and aleatoric approaches, and Schillinger's techniques. He says he has mastered none of these, but has incorporated elements of all of them into his work at various times. Since his adolescent sonic travesties, he has continued to acquire more sophisticated tools––samplers, drum machines, sequencing software––and to exploit their aural possibilities. But, says Bruce, none of these tools holds as much promise as Kyma. As a new user, he looks forward with excitement to designing and processing new sounds and finding interesting ways to compose and combine them.
Laurie Spiegel is one of the pioneers of electronic and computer music. You can find out about her work at http://retiary.org.
Yuri is a composer and sound designer at the Theremin Center of Electro-Acoustic Music at the Moscow Conservatory. He sees Kyma as being a "universal tool for any kind of human activity inside first several tens of kilohertz of the frequency spectrum - either in studio work or on stage." His goal is to seek out "the compositional principle with which was composed the symphony we hear during our life around us."
Stairway Records is an indie boutique label focusing primarily on rock/pop music and music videos. Stairway operates a 4-room private recording studio in Media, PA.
Jeff Stolet is associate professor of Music at the University of Oregon in Eugene Oregon. His voice can be heard in the sample called "Count" supplied with every Kyma System. His studio is Future Music Oregon.
Oded Streigold is a 28 year-old physiotherapy student, musician and retired computer programmer who lives in Haifa, Israel. He recently released a CD that he says is "quite strange music." He calls it Flat. Two songs from the album, Breathing and Untitled, use Kyma for generating synthisized sounds based on the pitch and amplitude of a vocal input. The song Breathing is available on the website which also contains a beta version of the Super-Eel, a free VST plugin. Visit his page at http://www.sadglad.com to download some songs and the Super-Eel.
Fred Szymanski is a freelance composer and sound designer.
Elias Tanenbaum is a composer and a professor at the Manhattan School of Music. His most recent commission was for a concerto for the first chair contrabass of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (entitled "First Bass Man").
Zlatko Tanodi (born 28.01.1953, Zagreb, Croatia) graduated in composition at the Academy of Music (University of Zagreb). He collaborates as keyboard player with many ensembles and orchestras (from pop and jazz to avant-garde). He has been a freelancer since 1981. Zlatko is also an editor-producer in the Music Production Department of Radio-Television, Zagreb. At the end of 1996, he joined the Academy of Music at the University of Zagreb, lecturing in theory and electronic music. Since 1987, he has been recording music in his own electronic home studio. Tanodi is the author of many orchestral, chamber and concert works including music for electronic instruments, theater and film.
Stephen Taylor is a film composer working with Erv Wilson, Gary David and Harvey Starr on the UATH-72, a generalized keyboard for microtonal music.
Laura Tedeschini is professor of mathematics at the University of Rome III where her research interests range from nonlinear dynamics to the gong-makers of Bali and the indigenous music of Sardegna.
Dr. Robert Thompson trained as a composer of instrumental and elctroacoustic music earning the B.Mus. degree from the University of Oregon, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California San Diego. His primary teachers have included F. Richard Moore, Bernard Rands, Roger Reynolds, and Joji Yuasa. He has created work in a wide variety of forms ranging from chamber and orchestral music to works for the virtuoso soloist, computer music, and video and performance art. He is the recipient of many prizes and distinctions for his music including the first prize in the 2001 Pierre Schaeffer competition (Italy), and awards in the XVI Concorso Internazionale "Luigi Russolo" (Italy), Irino Prize Foundation competition for Chamber Music (Japan), and Concours International de Musique Electroacoustique de Bourges (France) among others.
In 1991, Robert was named a Fullbright Research Scholar and was Composer in Residence at the Danish Institute of Electroacoustic Music (DIEM) where he collaborated on fundamental research and composed the long-form computer music work––The Strong Eye. His music is published on recordings by EMF-Media, Neuma, Drimala, Capstone, Hypnos, Oasis/Mirge, Groove, Lens, Space for Music, Zero Music and Aucourant record labels.
Robert is active as a composer for feature films and as a mastering engineer, creating master recordings for labels such as Funtone and CRI (Composers Recordings Inc.). On the technical side, he has collaborated with MicroTechnology Unlimited, assisting them in the development of DNOISE––a real-time digital audio noise reduction software appliction. He is serving as editor for an up-coming book on computer music syntehsis techniques featuring the CDP software suite. Recently he expanded his professional audio activities to include audio forensics work for the Fulton County District Attorney's Office working with the Major Crimes Division.
Robert's first Kyma project is the score for the motion picture Strait into Darkness by director Jeff Burr.
Physics, Tainted Love, Messaien, and the Synclavier--What do these things have in common?
Mike Thorne likes his music confrontational and intense. When he first graduated with a BA in Physics from Oxford, he had scarcely even heard of the Beatles; he'd been too busy studying 20th Century composers like Schoenberg and Messiaen. But then he discovered the Stones and the Doors and became a fan of pop music with muscle. Since then his musical interests have been 50/50 pop and classical.
Keyboardist, composer (studied with Buxton Orr at the Guildhall School), journalist (editor of Sound on Sound), and entrepreneur (he bought one of the very first Synclaviers and directed The Synclavier Company in '92), Thorne was also the producer behind albums by Wire, Soft Machine, The Shirts, Jone Cale, Soft Cell, Nina Hagen, Bronski Beat, Roger Daltrey, Communards, Sir Michael Tippett, Laurie Anderson, China Crisis, Hilly Kristal, Peter Murphy, Blur, and Information Society among others. In 1981, he hit the commercial jackpot, producing what is arguably technopop's biggest hit ever, Soft Cell's Tainted Love.
Thorne's New York studio, The Stereo Society, has evolved into what he describes as "one of the most powerful music rooms in the world". But he's not blindly addicted to technology-for-technology's-sake. "Too much music is driven by technology and the process..." he writes, "But if we control technology, we find new means of expression, new ways of waking people up."
His latest venture is http://www.stereosociety.com, a new web site where you can find his own first album along with new albums from Hilly Kristal, the Reds, and the 'oddly compelling microtonal composer and bassoon virtuoso' from Brooklyn, Johnny Reinhard. Thorne is also working on a book, Music in the Machine, which will also be available from his website.
For more details, see his bio in the Billboard Encyclopedia http://www.stereosociety.com/thencyc.html
Eilert Tosse, born in Bergen Norway in 1954, graduated as an organist at the Bergen Conservatory in 1980, and, since 1983, he has worked as an organist in Samnanger. His composition studies include private studies with Ruth Bakke and Kjell Samkopf and a one year course at Bergen Conservatory. Since 1991, he has been a member of the Ny Musikks Komponist Gruppe, a national group of contemporary composers. Tosse compositions include church music, chamber music, theatre and ballet music.
The following is taken from a tribute to Dr. Tsao Chieh, delivered by his friend during a service at St Andrew's Cathedral in Singapore on 29 October 1996:
Tsao Chieh was born on 27 Dec 1953. He had his early schooling in St Michael's and St Joseph's Institution which culminated with a 6 points aggregate in the "O" levels, a rare achievement in those days. He went on to the National Junior College and won a government scholarship to read Electrical Engineering at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). While at UMIST, he was able to further his love for knowledge and won every single prize in the University in the process. At the same time, he studied orchestration at the Manchester Music Department.
Soon after that, Tsao was awarded another scholarship to read for a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Along the way, Tsao also picked up a Masters in Engineering, a Masters in Mathematics and a Masters in Music from Stanford. He studied composition under Professor Leland Smith. He also learnt to play the flute, and achieved his most deeply cherished ambition—to write serious music. His first work for voice and orchestra, "Four Songs from the Romantic Poets" also won him first prize at a music competition at Stanford University.
Tsao made his mark in the music scene in Singapore when his first composition for large orchestra - " Singapore - A Symphonic Suite" was premiered by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra in 1986. Another orchestral work for narrator and orchestra written in collaboration with Edwin Thumboo—"Amidst the Sough of Winds"—was premiered in 1990. He also wrote pieces for the Singapore Youth Orchestra; one of which, " Stasis" was premiered on their tour to Western Australia. Tsao's work did not go unrecognized for he won the Outstanding Young Person's Award in 1986 and he was appointed to the National Arts Council in 1993.
Tsao also left his mark in the professional field when he completed several milestone projects in radar technology. He was also appointed Adjunct Senior Lecturer in the Engineering Faculty of the National University of Singapore.
We have all lost a very special person today. Singapore has also lost a brilliant son. Tsao was a good man, incapable of any guile or evil. He pursued and enjoyed his artistic interests and hobbies very passionately. He always concentrated on the essentials of a problem and getting it right. Before the discovery of his cancer, he was working on musical compositions using computer generated sounds and had plans to write an opera based on the legend of Bukit Merah.
Goodbye, My Friend
Kazuo Uehara studied composition in Tokyo and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York. He is an associate professor of music at the Osaka University of Arts, where he gives courses on composition, computer music, soundscape studies and multi-media expression. His music has been performed in France, Germany, The United States and other countries and he is a prize winner of the Bourges International Electro-acoustic Music Competition. His CD, Cosmos1, ranked first for two weeks on Tokyo FM. He has been producing the International Festival for Contemporary Music in Japan since the 1980s and is a founder and representative of the Japan Computer Music Association (JACOM).
Dirk Veulemans is creating a living database with records which multiply themselves, die, eat, grow, etc. controlling sound parameters all the while. You can read a little about his past projects on his homepage: http://gallery.uunet.be/alver/elmuz.
For about 15 years Olf Wampke has been working on sound development, starting with self-made analogous modular systems and subtractive synthesis up to FM synthesis, sampling and additive synthesis based on software. With different kinds of software and sampling, Olaf developed sound cluster. During this time he also developed various CD-ROMs for Best Services in Munich. For Yamaha Europe, Olaf created some sound development with sampling.
Olaf and Matthias Schuste first CD album is DAS INSTITUT, (electro pop). It was produced without Kyma. However, they are currently working on their second CD, but this time they are using Kyma. Olaf wrote: "Thank you so much that you make it possible using such a great instrument!" Visit Olaf at http://www.electronoise.com.
Michael Webster is a composer/performer/producer/editor in Los Angeles where he recently used Kyma to realize a demo for Luke Stoneham's TV opera "Sugar" in hopes of obtaining funding to produce the full opera. He is currently working on an album of settings of contemporary poetry as pop music and is scheduled to make an album with Van Dyke Parks (check out his 1968 album "Song Cycle" or "Discover America" ). When not making music, Michael can usually be found doing editing for the television shows Xena and Hercules or watching over his two beautiful, curly-haired sons: Emmet and Guillermo.
Fred Weck is a composer in the Washington DC area (he was one of the last people to study with Nadia Boulanger) and an experimentalist who is constantly searching for new means of expression. His current explorations have led him to computer graphics with integrated computer music.
Bill Whitehouse is a composer and a research programmer at Microsoft. When not assisting astrophysicists in dealing with terabyte streams of data. Bill Whitehouse is most likely to be found ensconced in his home studio generating ambient music.
Erv Wilson is a microtonal theorist and designer of the UATH-72 generalized keyboard for microtonal music.
Phil Winsor is a composer, author, and professor at the University of North Texas. He primary interest is in algorithmic composition, and he has written several books on C-programming for musical applications.
David Worall is head of the Australian Centre for the Arts and Technology in Canberra, Australia.
Ting-Lien Wu is Director of the Computer Music Studio and professor of music at the National Chiao-Tung University in Taiwan ROC.
Composer Scott Wyatt is the head of the Experimental Music Studios and music professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign where he teaches several courses on electro-acoustic music. He is a former president of SEAMUS (the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the U. S.) and is active as a composer of both new music and music for commercials in Chicago and New York.
Yasushi Yoshida is a composer living in Osaka, Japan. He has written the title music for numerous television shows including "Walk Alone in Arktos," and most recently "Mr. Hyohichi Kohno Walked to the North Pole." Yasushi often cuts back on sleep just to have more time to have fun with Kyma. His favorite synth used to be the Oberheim Xpander. Now it's Kyma.
Jay Zerbe is a composer, artist, and "creative" computer software junkie. Day job: works with computers. Night/weekend avocation: explore software enhancements to creative processes. Focus: abstract art and music.