posted 09 April 2009 23:28            

I can soo relate to where you are with part three. I've been using synths and computers for almost 25 years and apart from a brief exposure to Basic in my teens (circa 1979) I had never done any kind of coding, a bit of Excel formulae and a little bit of SQL was as close as I got. I've done a fair bit of work with Reaktor and other virtual modulars but nothing really prepared me for Kyma

Kyma presented me with the first reason I had to delve into coding.

I also found (still find) part 3 of the manual difficult - it is very concise which is probably my biggest complaint as a newbie programmer - I would love to see a few more examples but I can also see that too many examples can 'blinker' a newbie and possibly hinder imagination and later development

Persistent nibbling away at it has been the only approach for me.

Regarding expressions - I can highly reccomend having a look at Dolphin Smalltalk (www.object-arts.com)
They offer free trial version of Dolphin Smalltalk and it has a SUPERB beginners guide tutorial that really helped me wrap my head around programming in Smalltalk.

The implementation of Smalltalk in Kyma is quite unique and although the beginner's guide was very useful, once I got through it the next steps of the Dolphin manual were firmly into Windows application and GUI programming which isn't what you need to know for Kyma. Nonetheless, very well worth the download and time spent working through the tutorials.

Another tip is to go through the back-topics here and browse around on the tweaky. (with the dolphin tute under my belt the posts here and on the tweaky made A LOT more sense)

I've had my Capy since December 07 - delivered on Christmas Eve, it was a fun (pure Kyma) christmas break - Sound and music is my leisure activity now not my day gig although I am saving up for a Pacarana - Ooh baby!
Are you a Capybara user or one of those lucky buggers with a Pacarana?
How long have you had it?
Chat soon
Sean

posted 10 April 2009 22:53            

When I first got the Capy, I was in our studio at every available opportunity I had actually making music mainly with other instruments. Yet I used it to create odd introductions for pieces,ambiences, vocal manipulations and using some of the KBD elements but never really understanding fully how to create new sounds... I then discovered the Kyma Revealed! I kept trying to find time to start the process seriously, yet trying to have a productive music session and learning kyma do not really mix. The Kyma remained elusive.
It actually took the unfortunate event of my music making buddy to go into hospital for some weeks to leave me in the studio with enough time to really have a crack at scaling the kyma.

I engaged myself with Kyma for about a week or so, I followed (fairly strictly) the first Chapter and felt empowered. I have since then over a period of a year or two been working through the second section. I now can create some fairly complex structures if I avoid anything DSP heavy, (I only have a basic unexpanded system, so I have to be creative with what I do & when... (hurrah for Cache).) I seem to get much milage out of the harmonic resonator, chopper, Granulator, memory writer, allpassdelay (comb mode) etc. My VCS layout skills are coming along,

I really need to conquer a few things next; arrays... I would like to make a LFO sound that has tempo divisions that can selected to make up a list, which can then be selected/cycled on a new note basic - I am sure this is simple, when you know how.....
I have not really had much time since to start it a-fresh and get expressions down as an art-form. However, I have just had a baby with my wife. (Joshua!) and now I am writing to you on the baby nightshift monitoring the little chap on a wireless baby monitor in my new 'Kyma Shed' at the bottom of the garden. The kyma has been mercilessly removed from the studio - leaving quite a big obvious hole. I will now be spending a hour or two a day (hopefully) studying chapter two until I am confident in all it's detail.

posted 11 April 2009 08:26            

Please forgive me if I speak out of turn but is suspect you have high expectations as to what knowing Smalltalk is going to give you in terms of empowerment. Smalltalk is mainly limited to doing things before the sound is even started (compiled) and the real of power over the kyma sounds and kyma in general really lies elsewhere.

One of the few reasons I would used Smalltalk was to make a sound with lots of repeated modules, without having to drag loads of modules into the graphical editor and then edit them all individually, but now with the replicater module I don't even have to use Smalltalk to do that any more.

The real power is in CapyTalk as this has the power to change and control things, and respond to things in real time while the sound is playing. You should jump straight to the appendices "CapyTalk Quick Reference". These are the six pages you should spend your efforts on, and play with in the studio with kyma in front of you. Also if you can add the new CapyTalk expressions that have been added since the manual was released, to the list, all the better. BTW If any one has a list of the additional CapyTalk expressions all in one place, I would love to have a copy.

If you have difficulty using the expressions or the expressions are getting so big that they become uncontrollable, thats the time to go into chapter 3 for the details of CapyTalk first and then the Smalltalk part if you want to tidy up your code. Chapter 3 will make a lot more sense when you have a purpose, other wise it can be just a jumble of seemingly pointless words.

Another powerful tool is to encapsulating your own sounds. This will give you a reason to understand the green variables. You could then look at the section on Parameter variables and it should make more sense, because you have a purpose.

I understand that this is just a way that works for me and that others may find reading the book from cover to cover or other techniques work for them.

Hope this makes sense

Pete

posted 11 April 2009 09:02            

Other News:
My fresh Kyma Installer and T-shirt arrived today! Thanks to the speedy Jean @ SS. The disk has all the updates and files to-date! My last one was supplied YEARS ago and took ages to get all the updates correctly in the right folders! This is great as I have a several machines I want to setup for my Capy!

posted 11 April 2009 12:07            

quote:

---

I would like to make a LFO sound that has tempo divisions that can selected to make up a list, which can then be selected/cycled on a new note

---

Let me take a stab at this (it probably won't be exactly what you are looking for but maybe it can serve as a start for further discussion).

OK first I'm going to make an array of values that could go into the Frequency field of the LFO. And I want them to be subdivisions of the basic tempo which I will control with !BPM.

code:

---

#({!BPM / 64} {!BPM / 32} {!BPM / 16} {!BPM / 8})

---

Note that I put the !BPM/64 within curly braces so the parser can recognize that this is one element of the array (otherwise it would think !BPM, /, and 64 were each elements).

Next, you said you'd like to cycle through the list of selections. The elements of this array are numbered 0, 1, 2, and 3. To select one element of the array you use the form:

<anIndex> of: <anArray>

So for example to get {!BPM / 32}, you would use

code:

---

(1 of: #({!BPM / 64} {!BPM / 32} {!BPM / 16} {!BPM / 8})

---

That is not very interesting yet, but it's just an example of how to access the second element in the array.

You specified that you would like to cycle through these values once per beat. So this brings to mind the metronome construct, for example:

1 bpm: !BPM

Gives you one tick per beat at !BPM beats per minute.

We need some way to count the beats and use those as the indexes into the array. For example, we could use:

(1 bpm: !BPM) countTriggers

This will count 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, ,,, to infinity or some reasonable approximation thereof...

So that would step through the four values and then stick on the last value.

Instead, you said the operative word here: CYCLE. To cycle through the values, it helps to imagine them as the numbers on an old-fashioned office clock, arranged around a circle (not in a straight line). To wrap around to the begin again, we can count the triggers MODULO the size of the array or

(1 bpm: !BPM) countTriggersMod: 4

This gives us the pattern:

0, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 2, 3, 0, etc

If you put it all together, you get the following expression:

code:

---

((1 bpm: !BPM) countTriggersMod: 4) of: #({!BPM / 64} {!BPM / 32} {!BPM / 16} {!BPM / 8})

---

On the first beat, the LFO cycles at a frequency of {!BPM/64} times per second, and so on.

posted 11 April 2009 18:00            

Thank-you for nurturing us numpties!