posted 28 June 2009 17:46            

I am using the compiled grid for laying out the sounds I want to use live, but there are some minor details that make the grid a bit inconvenient. I would like to discuss them and see if there is a better way to use the grid, or if some enhancements could be brought to that tool.

First of all, I would be curious to know how users of Kyma are preparing their sounds for live shows. There are many ways to use the Pacarana on stage, and I'm not sure if I have found yet the most efficient setup.

For the moment being, I have chosen to use the compiled grid since it gives me a nice layout of the sounds I want to use on stage, and I am able to change them more quickly than if they had to be compiled.

One annoyance is that the VCS window is not shown when the first sound is played: Open a grid (that has already been compiled), click the "On" checkbox, and click on a grid cell. That will play the sound, but not display the VCS. I could indeed display the VCS by clicking with the mouse trackpad on the menu File->VCS, but on stage I don't want to mess with the trackpad, I just want the VCS to be here like when I play the sound when it is located in a Sound file.

Assigning keyboard shortcuts to some basic but important actions would be great too. DSP Status, VCS, etc, many menu items lack a keyboard shortcut, and I'd love to be able to control menus with the keyboard on a Mac. On Windows, I can still do "Alt-F, V, Enter" to display the VCS window, but I find this terribly error prone.

Another problem is that when the VCS window is displayed and the sound is changed by clicking a cell in the compiled grid, the focus is not given back to the VCS window. That mean that another mouse click must be made to bring the VCS window frontmost. If I want to change the preset with the arrow keys of the computer, I have first to click on the VCS window title bar.

posted 29 June 2009 00:18            

Personally I find that anything that I can do on the CSG I can do on the Timeline better by using WaitUntil's and jumping around with MIDI program changes (unless you're using the CSG with a Tool). The Timeline is also faster, as the sounds are not just compiled but also already loaded.

As for having to click on the sounds if you're using the CSG, one way around it is to just send MIDI program changes there as well, from an external controller, to select the sounds, instead of clicking on them. I think that that way the VCS stays at the front.

All of these things might seem pretty obvious, but that's just how I do it when I'm using Kyma live.

BTW, is there a way to use OSCulator to send a Key Combo to Kyma to change VCS layouts from a MIDI message originated inside Kyma? How would you get the Kyma MIDI message into OSCulator? The advantage of this is that then you can get the Timeline to change VCS layouts by itself as it moves through different sections, which I would find really useful.

Cheers,