posted 11 June 2001 22:56            

quote:

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Originally posted by giantbrain:
I was wondering if any Kyma users in Texas would be interested in starting a user's group or something similar.

Thanks,
Scott Holden

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Absolutely! I just got my Kyma in about three weeks ago, with two upgrade cards coming in last Friday.

Where are you located? I'm in Arlington, TX.

This machine never ceases to amaze me - it makes all the sounds I dream about. It is taking me a while to get my head around it since I don't have formal training in signal processing/electronic composition.

Can anybody recommend some good books to me to get me up to speed? I have some calculus under my belt, but no diff eq. I ordered the Computer Music Tutorial from Amazon a few days back, and I'm looking for more of a theoretical knowledge of the concepts behind what the Kyma is doing - for instance, knowing that a comb filter can be made out of a delayed signal being added back to the original, etc... I've made some pretty cool Sounds by modifying some presets, but I'd like to have a more solid understanding of what all is going on with some of the sounds.

I feel that I have a good handle on traditional analog synthesis, and all the potential of the spectral morphing, live analysis and resynthesis, etc... have me weak in the knees, even if I don't necessarilly understand what's going on behind the scenes.

posted 12 June 2001 02:54            

quote:

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Originally posted by e-smiley:
Where are you located? I'm in Arlington, TX.

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I'm in San Antonio. My sister & her family live in Ft. Worth. I go up there several times a year. I'm actually going to be there in a couple of weeks on my way to my first immersion weekend at SSC. (woohoo!!)

It might be cool to get together with some Kyma users from time to time and see what we could create in the way of sounds.

You can email me privately at
gbrain@gvcs.com

Thanks
Scott Holden

posted 12 June 2001 08:49            

Yes! IMHO, the Kyma is about the most awesome device around. It is so incredible!

Regarding book recommendations - Although its out of print, I think "Digital Audio Signal Processing" by J. Strawn is well-written and concise. You should be able to find a used copy. It uses sort of a "math as needed" approach.

I'm still working my way through my copy of "Computer Music Tutorial." I like it for its broad coverage but find it skimpy on details.

The Kyma manual gives a good book list in the Background Material section on page 550. Also, I'll bet David McClain could make some great suggestions. He's contributed a lot of great Sounds and info to the Forum. Actually, I think he posted some suggestions/reviews in "Confabulation" dated October 19, 2000. (You'll need to pick "Show all topics" from the drop-down box to find it.)

posted 04 July 2001 12:54            

A Texas user's group sounds like a fine idea. I'm up in the Dallas area and have been the proud pappy of a Capy for about two years now.

Any interest in doing a once-a-year all-Kyma concert somewhere in Texas, kinda like what the Oberheim Xpander users in San Francisco do? It'd be an excuse to start knocking out some collaborative stuff.

posted 05 July 2001 11:23            

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Originally posted by B.D. Smith:
Yee-Doggy! (ask Kurt and Carla about that expletive).

A Texas user's group sounds like a fine idea. I'm up in the Dallas area and have been the proud pappy of a Capy for about two years now.

Any interest in doing a once-a-year all-Kyma concert somewhere in Texas, kinda like what the Oberheim Xpander users in San Francisco do? It'd be an excuse to start knocking out some collaborative stuff.

-Bryan

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You could count me in for that, too. I live outside of Austin, and have used Kyma about three years.

posted 05 July 2001 12:35            

Probably one of the best books I can recommend is

"A Digital Signal Processing Primer", by Ken Steiglitz, Addison-Wesley, 1996.

Ken is a pioneer in the use of digital techniques for audio processing, and is a professor at Princeton. He developed this book from course notes for a class on DSP taught to music majors.

It covers the math quite well using intuitive developments to help you relate to the techniques. Some light calculus, no DE's. He does a good job of motivating an understanding of combs, FIR's, IIR's, convolutions, and so on.

Once you graduate from that book, then you might be ready for the "bible",

"Discrete-Time Signal Processing", by Oppenheim and Schafer, Prentice-Hall, 1989.

Cheers!

posted 07 July 2001 00:23            

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Originally posted by Bill Meadows:
You could count me in for that, too. I live outside of Austin, and have used Kyma about three years.

-Bill

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I think that 4 people are enough to get started, so let's do it!

posted 20 July 2001 01:22            

I would definitely be interested in working with everybody else as well, although I must admit that I'm in crunch mode to come up to speed with the capabilities of the Kyma Capy. It's amazing to me to have a machine that can do eveything to sound that I dreamed a piece of hardware could do, as well as many, many things I haven't even considered yet - I'm just in the stage of figuring out how to make it happen :^)

I'm the ethnic percussionist for a goa/psytrance group called Initialization String (http://www.initializationstring.com) - my personal project is called astrolabe (http://astrolabe.iuma.com) and runs more towards melodic goa.

I'm working through Computer Music Synthesis, Composition, and Performance (Charles Doge, Thomas A. Jerse), The Computer Music Tutorial (Curtis Roads), and Compter Sound Synthesis for the Electronic Musician (Eduardo Reck Miranda). I haven't even gotten to the DSP books yet.

Lots of cramming, but let me just say that I'm loving every minute of it, even if I'm having to blow some of the dust off of my College Calculus Books ;^) I love the fact that the Kyma is so hands on, and that you can learn so much with it from either the theoretical direction or the intuitive, experimental direction.