Kyma is a visual programming language for sound design used by musicians, researchers, and sound designers. In Kyma, a user programs a multiprocessor DSP by graphically connecting modules on the screen of a

Macintosh The Mac (known as Macintosh until 1999) is a family of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc. Macs are known for their ease of use and minimalist designs, and are popular among students, creative professionals, and software en ...

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ...

computer.

Background

Kyma has characteristics of both object-oriented and functional programming languages. The basic unit in Kyma is the "Sound" object, not the "note" of traditional music notation. A Sound is defined as: i) a Sound atom
ii) a unary transform T(s) where s is a Sound
iii) an n-ary transform T(s₁, s₂,.., s_n), where s₁,s₂,..s_n are Sounds A Sound atom is a source of audio (like a microphone input or a noise generator), a unary transform modifies its argument (for example, a LowpassFilter might take a running average of its input), and an n-ary transform combines two or more Sounds (a Mixer, for example, is defined as the sum of its inputs).

History

The first version of Kyma, which computed digital audio samples on a Macintosh 512K was written in the

Smalltalk Smalltalk is an object-oriented, dynamically typed reflective programming language. It was designed and created in part for educational use, specifically for constructionist learning, at the Learning Research Group (LRG) of Xerox PARC by ...

programming language in 1986 by

Carla Scaletti Carla Scaletti (born April 28, 1956) is an American harpist, composer, music technologist and the inventor of the Kyma Sound Design Environment as well as president of Symbolic Sound. Biography Carla Scaletti was born in Ithaca, New York. She ...

Champaign, Illinois Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metrop ...

. In May 1987, Scaletti had partitioned Kyma into graphics and sound generation engines and ported the sound generation code to a digital signal processor called the Platypus designed by Lippold Haken and

Kurt J. Hebel Kurt is a male given name of Germanic or Turkish origin. ''Kurt'' or ''Curt'' originated as short forms of the Germanic Conrad, depending on geographical usage, with meanings including counselor or advisor. In Turkish, Kurt means "Wolf" and is ...

of the CERL Sound Group. In 1987, Scaletti presented a paper on Kyma and demonstrated live digital sound generation on the Platypus at the International Computer Music Conference where it was identified by electronic synthesis pioneer

Bob Moog Robert Arthur Moog ( ; May 23, 1934 – August 21, 2005) was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthesi ...

as a technology to watch in his conference report for

Keyboard Magazine ''Keyboard'' is a magazine that originally covered electronic keyboard instruments and keyboardists, though with the advent of computer-based recording and audio technology, they have added digital music technology to their regular coverage, inc ...

''One new language that acknowledges no distinction between sound synthesis and composition is Kyma, a music composition language for the Macintosh that views all elements in a piece of music, from the structure of a single sound to the structure of the entire composition, as objects to be composed.''

When the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Uni ...

eliminated the funding for the

PLATO Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institutio ...

laboratory in 1989, Scaletti and Hebel formed

Symbolic Sound Corporation Symbolic Sound Corporation was founded by Carla Scaletti and Kurt J. Hebel in 1989 as a spinoff of the CERL Sound Group at the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Originally named ''K ...

in order to continue developing Kyma and digital audio signal processing hardware.

Selected filmography

* ''

Wall-E ''WALL-E'' (stylized with an interpunct as ''WALL·E'') is a 2008 American computer animation, computer-animated science fiction film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed and co-written by ...

'' * ''War of the Worlds'' (2005) * ''

Finding Nemo ''Finding Nemo'' is a 2003 American computer-animated comedy-drama adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Andrew Stanton with co-direction by Lee Unkrich, the screenplay was w ...

'' * '' Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones'' * '' Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith'' * '' Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World''

Selected discography

* '' Zooma'' (1999) by

John Paul Jones John Paul Jones (born John Paul; July 6, 1747 July 18, 1792) was a Scottish-American naval captain who was the United States' first well-known naval commander in the American Revolutionary War. He made many friends among U.S political elites ( ...

* '' Movement in Still Life'' (1999) by BT * '' The Thunderthief'' (2001) by John Paul Jones * '' Emotional Technology'' (2003) by BT * '' On An Island'' (2006) by David Gilmour * '' Today'' (2006) by

Junkie XL Tom Holkenborg (born 8 December 1967), also known by his stage name Junkie XL or occasionally JXL, is a Dutch composer, multi-instrumentalist, DJ, producer, and engineer. Originally known for his trance productions, he has moved to producing ...

* ''Unidentified Sound Object'' (2006) by U.S.O. Project * ''Recombinant Art 01'' * ''Black Swan'' (2009) by '' Cristian Vogel'' * '' ISAM'' (2011) by Amon Tobin *'' The Creation of the Universe'' by Metal Machine Trio (played by Sarth Calhoun) *''GRUIS'' (2016) by '' Roland Emile Kuit''
at PROSTUDIOMASTERS *Bella's Lullaby Critical Mass Remix (2008) composed by Carter Burwell, prod. by Jason Bentley & Tobias Enhus

References

External links

Symbolic Sound Corporation
{{Computer music Audio programming languages Acoustics software Software synthesizers Visual programming languages