September 20, 2002 Champaign, IL - Software and hardware developers from Symbolic Sound Corporation, Carla Scaletti and Kurt J. Hebel, will be presenting several lecture/demonstrations and concerts in the UK and France in early October 2002. Sound designers and musicians will have an opportunity to see/hear Kyma firsthand and to ask questions of the software and hardware developers directly. Symbolic Sound will also be demonstrating the use of a new controller — the Continuum Fingerboard, developed by Lippold Haken (http://www.cerlsoundgroup.org/Continuum/) — and showing how this cross between a keyboard and a fretless fingerboard can be used to perform Kyma synthesis and processing algorithms.

In London, sound designers, composers, students, and musicians can participate in a full day workshop on Kyma — the sounds, the algorithms, and the philosophy behind this award-winning sound design workstation. In Leicester, they can attend a concert featuring live electronic music and an open discussion with the composers.

Public events include:

Workshop in London (Ealing), UK

To book a place for this event, please call +020 8231 2567. Admission: £10 (£7.50 concessions). For instructions on how to get to TVU in Ealing, visit http://www.tvu.ac.uk/about/travel/ealing.html.

The Kyma sound design workstation, a visual sound design language, is an environment for sound design for music, film, advertising, television, virtual environments, speech and hearing research, computer games, and other virtual environments. Designer of the Kyma language, composer and computer scientist Dr. Carla Scaletti presents a one-day Kyma lecture/demonstration at LCMM giving an overview of Kyma, its sound synthesis and processing algorithms, and its parameter expression language.

Concert in Leicester, UK

To book a place for this event, please call (0116) 254 0595. (Locate The City Gallery on a map.) The concert is being presented by the Music, Technology and Innovation Group, De Montfort University and the City Gallery.

A concert featuring real time synthesis of sound and processing of acoustic instruments (voice, harp, violin, percussion) using Kyma, a piece for the newly developed Continuum fingerboard and Kyma, and a piece for live acoustic space and Kyma. Featuring new music by Carla Scaletti, Joel Chadabe, Agostino Di Scipio, and Brian Belet, and performers from the London Philharmonia.

Other Events

In addition to these public events, there will also be several other lectures and concerts including:

An afternoon lecture / concert including live multichannel electronic music by Bruno Liberda, Gerard Pape, Lawrence Fritts, Carla Scaletti, Joel Chadabe, and Agostino Di Scipio.

A week of Kyma-related lectures presented by guest lecturer Carla Scaletti, part of a year long course of study titled Composition and the Structure of Sound, taught by Gerard Pape.

An afternoon lecture describing the philosophy of the Kyma language and detailing some of its unique sound synthesis and processing algorithms.

For more information

Contact Symbolic Sound Corporation:

Kyma Background

Two-time winner of the Electronic Musician magazine Editors' Choice Award (2001 and 1998) and featured in the March 1998 Wall Street Journal Entertainment Technology insert, Kyma is a modular, software-based audio synthesis and processing environment accelerated by DSP hardware. Sound designers use a graphical signal flow editor on the screen of either a Macintosh or PC to specify how to synthesize and process sound. The signal flow diagram is turned into a program for the multiple-DSP Capybara hardware (which connects to the host computer via Firewire, or PCI card).

Kyma provides modules for aggregate synthesis, granular synthesis, sample granulation, analog-style synthesis and sequencing, cross-synthesis, alternate tunings, true spectral morphing (not to be confused with simple parameter crossfading), highly intelligible vocoding, live spectral analysis & resynthesis, additive synthesis (synthetic spectra or spectra from analysis), Shepard's tones (the endlessly rising glissando illusion), and more. (For additional information see www.symbolicsound.com).

The Capybara-320 Sound Computation Engine is a multi-processor hardware accelerator for the Kyma software sound design environment. The Capybara 320 provides a minimum of four DSPs (expandable to 28) with multi-channel I/O, synchronization to external clocks, and 96 MB of sample RAM (expandable to 672 MB) in a low-noise, rack-mountable package connected to a desktop or laptop Macintosh or Windows PC.

Sound designers for music, games, film, and advertising have been using the Kyma software environment (commercially available since 1991) to design unique sound synthesis and processing algorithms that they can then fine-tune or perform in real time using the Capybara hardware accelerator (without having to rely upon the memory or processing resources of the host computer for sound generation.)

For up-to-the minute Kyma user news, visit the Eighth Nerve online newsletter.

Symbolic Sound

The Symbolic Sound Corporation designs, produces, and markets hardware and software for digital audio. The first Kyma system was delivered in January 1991, and since that time, there have been seven major software upgrades, three hardware upgrades and ports from the original 680xx Macintosh platform to Windows machines, PowerMacs and to laptop PCs and Macintoshes.

Summary

Sound designers and musicians in Europe will have an opportunity to see/hear Kyma and speak with the hardware and software developers in early October 2002.

For additional information:
Symbolic Sound Corporation / P.O. Box 2549 / Champaign IL 61825-2549 / USA
Voice: +1-217-355-6273 Fax: +1-217-355-6562 Toll free in the US: 1-800-972-1749
Email: info-kyma@symbolicSound.com URL: http://www.SymbolicSound.com