posted 01 November 2008 19:39            

I've been configuring Kyma for use live, in my keyboard rig. The rig is not very complicated -- an AX-7 (keytar); an RD-700 (digital piano and MIDI controller); the Capybara; and a Virus TI.

I'm putting the Kyma in between the controllers and the Virus. All MIDI events coming out of the controllers are merged and go into Kyma, and they are either echoed or filtered or transformed by Kyma before being sent to one of the parts on the (multi-timbral) Virus. Unless of course the MIDI events are being sent to a sound running on Kyma, but there's nothing special in that case.

Kyma is running a timeline that corresponds to the entire show, so it knows what parts are playing on what channels of the Virus at all times. I've set things up so that I never have to change patches on the controllers during the show. Each controller transmits on its own channel, and transmits its controllers (buttons, knobs, etc.) on that channel as CC events or channel pressure or whatever, and Kyma does the rest. According to the timeline position, the events coming from the various controllers are sent to the appropriate channels on the Virus. CC/pitch bend/pressure events coming from the controllers are transformed into whatever CC events I want to send to the Virus parts. I've create my own 'note-on/note-off' events that remember the channel that a note-on was sent on, so that if the transmission channel changes halfway through the note duration, the note-off event is sent on the right channel (the one that the note-on event was sent to) anyway. This is something that the bare controllers cannot do on their own, not to mention what a nuisance it is to rapidly change patches on the controller at section boundaries in a song. Splits and transpositions are easy to implement too, of course. At present, I'm using only the Virus as an outboard sound module, but I could add one or two more to this scheme with no difficulty.

I'm even building in a bunch of safety features, like turning off the routing after end of each song, sending All Sounds Off and Reset Controller messages at appropriate points during the timeline, etc.

At some point, I'm going to get fancy and start sending MMC to my HD24 (which is sending time code from a stripe track back to the Capybara), so I can skip more freely around the timeline.

In brief, I'm finding Kyma to be a wonderfully powerful MIDI router and processor. I'm wondering if anyone else is using it in this way? (I wish it had another couple of MIDI ins and outs .)

posted 06 November 2008 06:16            

What sort of MIDI processing are you doing? Note transformations? Generative harmonies? Rhythmic jitter? stuff like that?

I think its a great idea to work with sound modules , because then Kyma's DSP becomes massive source of power , when used as controller and data manipulation rather than realtime sound generation...

posted 06 November 2008 08:14            

The manipulations I'm doing are not very fancy:
-changing channels
-filtering
-converting notes into control events
-arpeggiating notes
-sending sysex and other control stuff according to timeline position

The thing is, the simple stuff is in some ways the most remarkable. Someone I showed it to the other day said, "oh, you mean you never have to STOMP on anything", haha. I never have to change patches on my controllers; I can just play notes and turn knobs, doing musical things but never things related to patches, MIDI channels, etc; the Capybara does all that. So, in a show with lots of songs each of which uses several different sounds and has lots of section changes, it's a wonderful burden-lifting thing. I just have to remember the music, roughly speaking, I can forget the keyboard settings.

I still use Kyma for lots of sound manipulation in the same timeline. It's running vocal effects, synthesizer sounds, and it's doing the mixing of the live sounds, in fact! I think it really shines for this kind of live stuff, where you can use all of its features at the same time.

I was also slow getting into timelines. But for live stuff they are the cat's pajamas. I am sending LTC into the Capybara from a separate hard drive recorder. I allocate each song in our show to a section of time code, say, each song starting on an even 10-minute boundary. Then the hard drive recorder can cause Kyma to jump all around the timeline by sending it the appropriate timecode. I create the timecode stripes in software; it's a simple matter to generate them. The advantage is that I can change the order of songs in the show, or play just a subset of the songs, without changing the Kyma timeline.

You ask whether Kyma has to remember the settings of all the controllers, but if all the MIDI data is routed through Kyma (controller -> Kyma -> sound module) then Kyma knows the state of all the controllers. Maybe you are thinking of a case in which a keyboard can make 'local' changes to its controllers, but I would turn the local switch off on such a keyboard and send it's MIDI output to Kyma, then back to the keyboard. I would do things like splits and layers using Kyma rather than the built-in provisions of the keyboard.

I'm still relatively early in the process of testing the MIDI stuff, but so far it is working well. I hope that I don't run into too many glitches concerning MIDI transmission out of Kyma, that's the only part that worries me a little bit, because my sense is that it is less well tested and exercised than the MIDI input side of Kyma. I have run into a few devices for example that don't seem to like SysEx messages when transmitted by Kyma. Others are fine however. I suspect that Kyma might be sending them out faster than some devices would like. I'm not sure though, it might actually be a problem with the receiving devices.

Fun stuff!

posted 07 November 2008 02:01            

quote:

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Originally posted by Luddy:
...
At some point, I'm going to get fancy and start sending MMC to my HD24 (which is sending time code from a stripe track back to the Capybara), so I can skip more freely around the timeline.
...
-Luddy

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I'd be more into the TimeLine if I could sync it / move around it via MMC from another sequencer. I haven't tried this for a while, is this possible? Does the TimeLine respond to MMC commands? My problem has often been trying to keep the TimeLine synced to an external sequencer.

posted 07 November 2008 04:46            

But there are two good ways to sync the Kyma timeline to an external master. One is using LTC and the other is using MTC. MTC you probably already know about; you just ask your sequencer to transmit it, send it into the Capy's MIDI IN, turn the timeline on to 'timecode' mode, and you're done.

LTC is my favorite though, because it leaves the MIDI port free for other stuff. To use LTC, you need something that can generate LTC (duh). Which your sequencer might not do. But I have a program, that I'm happy to share if anyone else is interested, that creates LTC in the form of WAVE or AIFF files. If your sequencer can play an audio track, then you can put the generated LTC into that audio track, send it into the Capy's LTC input, and you're golden.

The third way to skip around the timeline is with program changes, but this doesn't lock the timeline to an external master, it just sets the current timecode position of the timeline.