posted 15 July 2006 20:39            

Thanks in advance, any info would be greatly appreciated.

posted 16 July 2006 10:23            

* Consider taking an introduction to programming course at a nearby high school, community college, or university. It doesn't matter which computer language they are using; the important part is just getting familiar with the concepts of software and computer languages in a systematic way and with an instructor for help and guidance. This suggestion may be overkill but on the other hand, knowledge of computer programming is pretty useful and more importantly, you would probably have a lot of fun!

* Instead of this (or in combination with this), go back to the beginning of section three and start reading again. As soon as you run into the *first* question, post it here on the forum for your fellow Kyma users. Even if you think that the question is "too simple" don't hesitate to ask it here (sometimes it's the simple questions that are the most insightful and profound). Chances are, if *you* have a question about something, 100 other people do too but they were too shy to ask. So they will thank you. There are a lot of programmers who read the forum, and they would probably enjoy answering a few of the questions themselves.

* In parallel with the previous three suggestions, you could try tackling it from a different angle. Put the book away and think about specific things that you want to do: music and sound design projects. Think through how you would solve the problem Start up Kyma and try out some of your solutions. If you run into roadblocks or questions, post the problem and your idea for a solution here and ask the rest of us for input. If you look back through some of the older posts, you'll see that about 90% of the questions are like this. Someone has a specific sound design goal in mind, they try to achieve it but run into something puzzling so they post the idea and the Sound here so some other people can cast their eyes over it and maybe help come up with a solution.

posted 18 July 2006 00:32            

I would second SSC's suggestions - particularly the one about tackling some specific things you want to do and posting questions as you run into problems. Try to break down your larger project down into smaller units and work on these units one at a time. Ask yourself very specific questions about how you want your program to work - often I find that something I'm trying to do isn't working right because I had not been clear enough in my mind about what exactly it should do.

Here's my suggestion (for a long-term project, since you probably feel like you have your hands full with Kyma already): look at other music programming environments.

Max/MSP, for example, has a great set of tutorials that it comes with. Pure Data (PD) is a free, open source alternative to Max/MSP, created by one of the creaters of Max/MSP, Miller Puckette, and he has an online book for it in progress (http://www.crca.ucsd.edu/~msp/techniques/latest/book-html/node1.html).

SuperCollider is free, and is based on Smalltalk (it's syntax is a little different than the more standard Smalltalk that Kyma uses). It's powerful and I think quite similar in some ways to Kyma. The documentation/help files are a little spotty, but there are some good resources online: try http://www.colorado.edu/music/Courses/musc4111/SCText.pdf (email the author directly for more recent updates to this book) and http://www.create.ucsb.edu/pipermail/sc-users/2005-July/019699.html. The program itself can be found at http://sourceforge.net/projects/supercollider (Mac and Linux only, I believe).

CSound would also be good to look at, though I haven't yet...

I'm far, far from an expert at any of these, or programming in general, but seeing how things are done in different languages I think gives a better perspective. All of these tutorials (not to mention the excellent Kyma X Revealed) approach some of the same issues from different angles, and it can be helpful to read the same basic thing explained again and again by different people :-). It's also stuff you can do when you're away from the Capybara.

You also might find some uses for these programs - of course, all have strengths and weaknesses. You also might find creative ways to use them together (I often use Max to process midi that then goes to Kyma, for example). It's endless.

Also, don't forget that wikipedia is a great resource for looking up synthesis techniques, programming languages (like any of the above), mathematics, etc.

Finally, www.dspguide.com is a great online book about DSP in general (I'm on chapter 3, I think).

Good luck,
Phil

posted 19 July 2006 01:05            

I will definitely check out the programs mentioned above.

I think my plans are to revert back to page one of "Revealed" and go through it slowly. I realize that Part 3 I will have to approach g e n t l y, I will admit.. the contents there "seem" intimidating as well as some of the post's that I have read here on this forum (everyone is talking in this strange language
Kyma (I'm realizing) is not something that happens over night and even though I have generated some interesting crazy (and dreamy) sounds already.... knowing that I can take that further by learning that "strange language" is exciting and.... liberating.

Thanks again for the advice and info.

posted 19 July 2006 15:16            

To me the best method to learn is to start to make things right now. I like to think the theory like a consequence of the practice.

posted 29 July 2006 07:23            

keep the kyma revealed pdf open while you work. pages 479-490 tend to get referred to a lot, especially in the early days. the kyma prototype pdf is also very useful.

after about a month, read the manual again. all of a sudden it there are details you'll pull out that you wouldn't have before. then go back to work. the pdf is are your friends so keep them open (i still regularly refer to the pdfs and I've had a system for 7 years now).

i think a manual read every few months to a year is well worth it. you always find things you forgot about or trigger an idea you want to delve more into.

i've found it is easy to become really knowledgeable about one aspect of kyma and completely clueless about others. that isn't a bad thing at all, it shows the power and depth of kyma.

more than anything, play around. you can't break anything. there will be periods where you will feel that you are more or less creating at random or doing things you don't quite understand, but magic can come from that as well sooner or later it will make sense.

posted 29 July 2006 10:21            

I've been using Kyma for over ten years now and I've written Kyma code in DSP assembly and posted many new modules. I am what some would call a power user but (here's a secret) I still don't know cappy talk or small talk and I have never written a script from scratch (I've made amendments to scripts when I needed to). I find that I can only fully learn something when the need arises and cappy talk and small talk is just like that. You can get by with the bear minimum knowledge of cappy and small talk and it's so much easier to understand something when you have have a specific need. Without the need it's hard to understand why it's done the way it's done. What I would suggest is to study the available prototypes and what features they offer as it's easy to use the wrong ones only to find out that another module would have done the job in hand much so much easier. For example what module would you use if you wanted to playback a sample in a non linear way under direct control of another sounds output ?

You need to keep the PDFs at hand all the time as Keph said. The Kyma manuel is for life not just for christmas.

posted 09 August 2006 18:09            

I'm currently learning a spoken and written language now that is totally different in almost everyway than my native language of English. I learned awhile ago that you have to accept learning how to say "thank you" "hello" "I like it" "I want one" "how many" "what time is it" first. If the first thing you try to learn is "I'm sorry, that won't do as I must take my wife to her folks place, as she's a bit under the weather at this moment" it's just not gonna work and the language is gonna seem impossible. But if you learn the simple things, then learn how to string them together to make more complex things out of simple things, then slowly but surely you'll learn the language.

So take it one step at a time. Learn the basics first before you try to write code that allows you to modulate FIR filter coefficients by the vibrations of the filaments in your teeth.