Unidentified Sound Object has announced plans to live blog the event, which sounds like it will be a great event for Kyma users.

A copy of the preliminary schedule is included below. See the erutufon forum for the latest details.

Kyma Symposium in Barcelona 8-10 October 2009
Preliminary Program (as of 31 August 2009)
———————————————

THURS (8 October 2009)
18:00 meet & greet
w/ DJ Pacarana: installation created by Cristian Vogel with participation of the international Kyma user community
21:00 Dinner at nearby restaurant (no host)

FRI TALKS
11:00 Welcome
11:30 Carla Scaletti & Kurt Hebel: “Recombinance Makes Us Human”: Philosophy of Kyma
Demo of Recently Added Features
14:00 —Lunch at Bharma
16:00 Camille Troillard: New Developments in OSCulator (1 hour)
17:00 Hector Bravo-Benard: Using the AC Toolbox with Kyma (30′ lecture + 10′ piece)
17:45—-Coffee Break—-
18:00 Cristian Vogel: The Black Swan: Composing with Kyma for Dance (1 hour)
19:00 Eckard Vossas: Improvising with Kyma: Miniaturen X, Cecil Variations B, Lehnade 2: (30′)
19:45—Break for concert setup–

FRI CONCERT at Niu
20:00 Franz Danksagmüller: Kökarlen: Silent film + voice +live Kyma & voice (~2 hrs)
22:00 tear down, Dinner together nearby (no host)

SAT TALKS
11:00 Carla Scaletti & Kurt Hebel: Composing with Kyma: Vector spaces, Timeless nonlinear timelines, sequencing
CapyTalk, Smalltalk, Tools
14:00 —Lunch at Bharma
16:00 Bruno Liberda: siebenmal gefärbt: Addicted to Kyma (1 hour)
17:00 Cristian Vogel: Kyma in the Club: The Never Engine (1 hour)
18:00 —break— (set up and sound checks for concert)

19:00 SAT CONCERT at Niu
* Carla Scaletti: SlipStick for Continuum and Kyma (~10′)
* Marin Vrbica: Tiger in the Jungle: Video + Live Performer (~10′)
* Hector Bravo-Benard: Styrotron: Live Kyma performance (~10′)

—INTERMISSION—

* Franz Danksagmüller: Frtiz Lang’s Metropolis: Silent film + Live Kyma accompaniment (~30′)
21:00 Tear down
22:00 Celebratory Dinner together
———
1:30 AM * Cristian Vogel: Never Engine (Live Kyma!)
The Moog

SUN
Informal breakfast and lunch, consulting, meetings, demos, sightseeing, travel day

To the Kyma software, a network of Paca(rana)s appears as a single sound computation engine with multiple processors. Kyma automatically detects the number of available processors and schedules the execution of DSP-intensive signal processing and synthesis algorithms across multiple processors.

Pricing & Availability

The Paca, Pacarana, and “orange wires” for connecting two or more of them together are now available at the Symbolic Sound store. Current multiple-Paca(rana) owners can request a free set of cables from Symbolic Sound.

Every Paca or Pacarana comes with Symbolic Sound’s Kyma X environment, featuring its unique set of sound synthesis and processing algorithms.

Details on Paca(rana) chaining below.

If you’re a Kyma user, leave a comment with your thoughts on Symbolic Sounds’ infinitely expandable synthesizer!

How it works

Two or more Pacas, Pacaranas, or combinations of both can be connected by plugging the orange cables, provided by Symbolic Sound, into the Expansion A and B ports on the backs of the units. A combination of audio and control signals is transmitted over the orange wires from each Paca(rana) to its neighbor.

One of the Paca(rana)s is connected to a Macintosh or Windows computer (running the Kyma sound design software) via FireWire 800 (or 400). A single FireWire audio interface on the same bus handles all of the analog and digital audio inputs and outputs and, depending on the audio interface, MIDI. (A list of compatible converters can be found here.

The composite super-Pacarana shows up in Kyma as a single sound computation engine with extra processors. To the sound designer or musician, the expansion is completely transparent; Kyma automatically takes advantage of the additional real-time processing power and memory.

Who can use it

Anyone, from large sound design studios (which may set up a rack of Pacaranas as an audio compute-farm for intensive sound modelling operations) to friends getting together and temporarily hooking their Pacas together for some sound tweaking fun, can enjoy the benefits of the newly enabled expansion ports and orange connector cables. Audio engineers or sound designers managing complex signal processing and sound design requirements for live shows or theatre productions can assemble a rack of Pacaranas, all controlled and sequenced from a single computer. Supercomputing centers can offer scalable real-time sound computation and data sonification as an adjunct to the computer graphics rendering and dynamic simulation modelling already being offered to researchers and artists. Game design studios can set up a sound-design rendering farm for creating special sound effects for cinematics and voice processing for game characters. Anyone who ever finds themselves running out of real-time sound computation power could benefit from this new technology.

Early adopters

Beta testers for the new technology include Hollywood film composer Tobias Enhus, who has already been using his rack of three interconnected Pacaranas to generate disturbingly bizarre sound tracks for Alan Rifkin’s upcoming Showtime series Look, and organist/composer Franz Danksagmüller, who recently used his 2-Pacarana system to accurately simulate the sounds of a cathedral organ on a portable keyboard to accompany a showing of Fritz Lang’s silent film masterpiece Metropolis at the Göteborg International Film Festival.

The First International Kyma User Symposium is scheduled to be held from the 8-11 October 2009 at the Niu Espai Artistic Contemporani in Poble Nou, Barcelona.

Current and potential Kyma practitioners are invited to attend an in-depth 3 day interactive conclave devoted to the technical and artistic aspects of the Kyma sound design language.

The preliminary program includes master classes presented by Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel, the creators of Kyma, papers and demos presented by Kyma practitioners and professional users , plus a program of concerts, installations and performances in the Niu art space of Poble Nou.

Cost: €80 for the workshops and concerts.

Symbolic Sound Corporation’s Kyma X is a powerful visual programming language for music and sound, originally created in 1987 and still going strong today. The Kyma sound design environment is used by composers, researchers and sound designers for realtime sound generation and manipulation.

Organisers: Station 55 Productions in co-operation with Niu, Symbolic Sound, TC Electronic Spain and the LEM Festival

via USO

This video demos a variety of ways a Wiimote can be used along with Kyma X.

via inthegray

Music and passion are always in fashion with Symbolic Sounds’ new Kyma Pacarana - described as a supercomputer for sound.

The Pacarana is a powerful multiprocessor computer that runs alongside your Macintosh or PC. Like other computers, the function of the Pacarana is defined by its software. Unlike other computers, the Pacarana doesn’t have to run a huge general-purpose operating system with elaborate GUIs and multiple independent processes that can interrupt each other at any time. 

The entry-level Pacarana ($2790) costs less than a Basic Capybara-320, but the new entry-level model is 5 times more powerful. 

Control the Pacarana with any USB-MIDI device, FireWire-MIDI controller, or MIDI-generating software. Symbolic Sound has been working closely with Haken Audio to create seamless plug-and-play operation with the new MIDI-based Continuum fingerboard.

Other controllers with a high degree of Kyma integration include the Wacom tablet, the CM Labs MotorMix, and the controllers supported by Camille Troillard’s OSCulator (http://www.osculator.net) software, including the Nintendo Wiimote, the Jazz Mutant Lemur, the Logitech Space Navigator, and others.

The Pacarana offers the high-speed connectivity you need for digital audio production, including two FireWire 800 ports, 2 USB ports and 100-base T Ethernet jack.

The Pacarana communicates with the Kyma X software running under Mac OS or Windows via FireWire 800 (IEEE1394B) or an 800-to-400 adapter cable.

Audio and MIDI input and output is handled via an external FireWire or USB converter or, for current Kyma owners, through a Capybara-320 with Flame FireWire I/O. Connect additional USB MIDI controllers like keyboards or fader boxes via the second USB port.

Kyma users include BT, Joel Chadabe, Otto Laske, Laurie Spiegel and Frank Serafine.

via AudioNewsRoom

Want to try controlling your music software with something new?

OSCulator may be the solution. It’s a Mac program that you can use to allow alternative controllers, like the Wiimote, to control MIDI sequencers, your favorite console emulator or Kyma sound design workstation.

Here’s a video demonstrating using the Wiimote in Kyma:

OSCulator is a free download.

New Features in 2.6:

• French, Italian and Spanish translations
• added the possibility to generate a single MIDI note
• added a simple event logger system (use Console.app to see results)
• preset management system (also preset changing from osc, and wiimote led follows preset #)
• OSC routing editor: forge custom messages or change incoming OSC messages with a graphical editor
• added support for two virtual HID joysticks
• input lock: avoid to make any changes to the document when the lock is on
• added preliminary support for the TUIO protocol
• rewrote event triggering system
• start and stop Wiimote discovery using OSC messages (send /osculator/discovery/start and /osculator/discovery/stop)
• wii guitar hero controller preliminary support
• added the ability to edit multiple lines at once
• added the ability to “split” an input in two (from 0 to 0.5 and 0.5 to 1) in order to get two events from that range from 0 to 1. for example, you can use it with a joystick and assign an event for both directions of an axis.
• added the ability to “demux” a message based on the value of an argument (useful for TUIO protocol and Iannix software)

You can read more about OSCulator creator Camille Troillard and the future of OSCulator in an article (pdf) written by Kenneth Stewart for the SEAMUS newsletter.

via CDM

This Tenori-On Meets Kyma video is sort of sexed up – in fact it sort of hypnotized me into thinking I need one of these things.

Anyway – here’s the scoop on the video:

In order to tap the real power of Yamaha’s new Tenori-on, it helps to pair it with external equipment capable of producing more satisfying sounds than the somewhat lackluster soundset included with the Tenori-on itself. In this video, no internal Tenori-on sounds were used whatsoever. Tenori-on is functioning purely as a sequencer with external equipment, including advanced sound-shaping from Kyma and analog synthesis from Alesis Andromeda and Dave Smith’s Prophet ‘08. Sequencer data coming from Tenori-on is processed in Ableton Live (utilizing midi scale and chord filters, as well as injecting some generative randomness) before reaching Kyma, Andromeda, and Prophet ‘08.

I like the track and the video. But does the Tenori-On really need $10,000 worth of gear to sound good?

Symbolic has posted a page of audio samples. Don’t miss the Planet of Intelligent Dogs.

The Tau Editor

Sound designers can use the new Tau Editor to push, pull, and tweak the timing, amplitude, frequency, and formant envelopes of one or more sounds while listening to the results in real time. Mix, morph, or cross-synthesize sounds with the touch of a button. Use the mouse or a Wacom tablet pen to graphically warp any parameter of the sound.

Press the Record button to capture your real time transformations on disk for later editing. Or press the Galleries button to instantly create an entire sound library of Kyma patches based on the sounds in the editor—ideal for quickly exploring the world of possibilities inherent in each combination of files or for creating multi-way keymapped morphs for your MIDI keyboard, Wacom tablet, or Continuum fingerboard.

List of features

In the Tau Editor you can:

• Time-align multiple files
• Match or transform the frequency, amplitude, and formant envelopes of files
• Morph across two, three or more sounds
• Record your real time transformations on disk for later editing
• Create an entire library of synthesis patches at the touch of a button (Galleries)
• Test the mix and morphing combinations in real time as you are editing
• Analyze a new sound by simply dragging it and dropping it into the editor
• Morph without time-smearing or “robotic” comb filtering effects
• Edit with complete freedom, knowing that you have unlimited undos

Symbolic Sound’s Kyma sound design software is known for its sound morphing capabilities. Now Kyma users have even more options and tools to assist them in as they go out in search of the perfect audio morph.

Pricing & availability

The Tau is included in Kyma X.3, the latest update to the world’s most advanced sound design environment. Kyma X.3 is now available free to registered Kyma X owners.

Kyma X.3 runs under Macintosh OS X (on both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs), Windows XP, and Windows 98/ME/2000 and Macintosh OS 9.2.

More information is available at the Symbolic Sound site.

Symbolic Sound

Using a Wacom Tablet as a 3-D Sound Control Surface

Sound designers can use a Wacom pen and tablet to perform creature voices or match SFX to picture. Musicians can quickly and intuitively explore the parameter space of a patch or even perform the tablet as a new musical instrument.

“Our goal is for sound designers and musicians to be able to shape sounds with their own hands. The human hand is virtually a direct connection to the human brain,” said Symbolic Sound president Carla Scaletti. “Using your ear and your hand, you can explore and refine sound design patches with incredible speed.”

With the Wacom Intuos3 or Graphire3 pen tablets, sound designers and musicians can use the eraser-end of the pen to simultaneously control up to 8 sound parameters using pen position plus (on the Intuos) pen tilt. You can map any sound parameter to pen orientation by using the Pen Status window.

By flipping the pen over, musicians can use the tablet as a continuous microtonal musical keyboard, sending KeyDown, KeyPitch (left/right), KeyVelocity (up/down), plus an additional key event called KeyTimbre (front/back). Sounds designed for the Continuum Fingerboard are fully compatible with Sounds designed for the Wacom tablet in keyboard mode (and vice versa).

New Oscillator Flavors

The new Kyma Oscillator generates the full range of sound, from a single impulse, to a formant-shifted tone, to the classic continuous waveform oscillator. By giving you control over the duty-cycle of any waveform (independently of the fundamental frequency), this new oscillator can be used to synthesize anything from granular pops and pulses to the familiar continuous analog waveforms.

A new CrossFadingMulticycleOscillator allows you to smoothly interpolate between any two waveforms over the course of a single cycle.

Inspired by revolutionary composer/architect Iannis Xenakis, the XenOscillator lets you define a waveform by adjusting any number of “breakpoints” and interpolating between them with straight lines, curves, or if you prefer, “raw” with no interpolation at all. You can even use the Wacom pen to redraw the waveform of the oscillator while it is playing.

Sound Parameter Vector Spaces

Using the new PresetSpace module, you can define a 1, 2 or 3 dimensional subspace by placing the presets of a Sound on the vertices of a line, a square, or a cube. You can then move through that space by interpolating between those endpoints.

A related module, InterpolatePresets, treats any number of presets as points in an n-dimensional space and then allows you to travel along a line connecting those points. In effect, you are controlling any number of faders with a single master fader that interpolates between presets. Use this module to perform your patches live on stage, sequencing through them in order or jumping from one patch to another as you improvise with other performers.

Combining these spatial modules with the Wacom tablet control opens up a whole new way of performing, composing, and improvising with sound. The tablet can detect the pen through a sheet of paper, so you can even create your own 2-dimensional scores or maps for improvisation, lay them on the tablet, and perform them live.

Timeline Controller Overlays and other additions

In the Timeline you can now view multiple automated controllers from multiple Sounds, allowing you to more easily coordinate controllers with each other.

Pricing & Availability

Kyma X.1 is available as a free upgrade to registered Kyma X owners.

Wacom Graphire3 and Intuos3 tablets are available direct from Wacom and can also be found in most computer and electronics stores (both physical and on line). Registered Kyma X owners can purchase an Intuos3 4X5 pen tablet and wireless mouse directly from Symbolic Sound.

Tablets ordered from Symbolic Sound include a special plastic overlay providing an XYZ grid, polar coordinates, and the halfstep markers for a two octave continuous pitch keyboard.

If you already own a Graphire3 or Intuos3, you can print and laminate a copy of this template from PDF files supplied by Symbolic Sound (or use these templates as a starting point for designing your own personalized overlays and grids).

Kyma X.1 runs under Macintosh OS X, Windows XP, and Windows 98/ME/2000 and Macintosh OS 9.2. Wacom Graphire3 and Intuos3 USB versions are supported under OS X and Windows XP operating systems only (no support for OS 9 or Windows 98/ME/2000).

For more information, visit the Symbolic Sound site.