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 Kyma Forum
 Confabulation
 Musicality of Kyma
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| Author | Topic: Musicality of Kyma |
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cristian_vogel Member |
posted 25 March 2006 07:33
 
Apart from the science and study of sound, what about the musicality of Kyma X - do you think its lacking? - I mean, just the feeling of being to sit down and play an instrument, or create the first inspiring harmonic or timbral steps towards the creation of a larger scale piece of music that other poeple might actually want to listen to. And I don't mean sitting there tripping out to loops. Other instruments I have, electronic and acoustic, make you want to create music, and play.. to jam with other musicians, and to compose - does anybody use their system in this way? IP: Logged |
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rlainhart Member |
posted 25 March 2006 08:38
I think the Kyma with a Continuum is a very expressive and musical instrument, especially when used with an expressive Sound like any of Ed Eagan's Continuum examples. IP: Logged |
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Scot_Solida Member |
posted 25 March 2006 09:30
I think Kyma can be and is as inspirational and expressive as any other instrument. It is also so very much more. It is easy to overlook the more obvious musical applications available in Kyma, simply because they are only one part of the entire Kyma experience. I have done entire pieces of music with Kyma as the sole source of sounds. Sure, it can be a virtual analogue/FM/additive instrument like so many other softsynths, but let's face it there are tons of those out there (though you'd be hard pressed to find an additive resynthesizer that comes anywhere near Kyma's quality). When I first got my Kyma system, I hard to dig pretty deeply to find "musical" instruments. Many of the preset Sounds are designed for sound design or to perform one job (i.e. a filtered sawtooth instrument, or an FM plucked instrument). There are very few "complete" synths or samplers in there like you will find in Reaktor or the Nord modular. That takes some getting used to. However, nothing can prevent you from rolling your own dream synth, sampler, effects device or even DAW using Kyma. The flexibility of the system leaves it up to you to create the instrument you want, with the expressive control best suited to your own compositional and performance styles. For instance, I don't have a Continuum Fingerboard (yet!), but I can easily adapt and expand on the included Sounds to make them work with the Wacom tablet. I've always said that Kyma is a commitment, not a purchase. It is the system you buy into when you are weary of developers and manufacturers making the decisions for you ("let's see, let's have six oscillators, a multimode filter, two envelopes and 64 voices. We can load it with Trance presets!" (I'm not knocking the genre, btw, just the fact that too many modern synths come with the same sorts of presets)). Trouble is that its very nature is not condusive to instant "out of the box" performance. Yet you yourself can design such things. In time, you will find that you will have your own performance devices that are configured to your own studio and methods. Those devices will grow and adapt to the changes you make to your studio and preferences. Kyma is not exactly "immediate" when you get it. You will make it so over time. Stick with it, and you will be rewarded with the most adaptable, customized and intuitive pallette you could ever hope for. I have no doubt that you could do some nice work with it! But be prepared to get more expansion cards...I now have seven and I don't ever hit the wall...mind you, I am exploring the Timeline a lot, so the extra cards are a real boon. For playable synths,s amplers, etc, you won't need a bunch (I had two extra cards for a year or longer before I added the rest). [This message has been edited by Scot_Solida (edited 25 March 2006).] IP: Logged |
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jesges Member |
posted 25 March 2006 20:19
>I've always said that Kyma is a commitment, not a purchase. I agree 100000% >Stick with it, and you will be rewarded with the most adaptable, customized and intuitive pallette you could ever hope for. Jesus IP: Logged |
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cristian_vogel Member |
posted 26 March 2006 05:49
Thanks for the responses. I guess, you need to view Kyma as a DSP programming environment, the sort of system developers use to make the myriad of DSP plugs and synths out there, but giving you the power of the developer - thats why there is a serious of amount of vertigo if you are trying to make the leap from musician to developer/musician. Do you really find that playing music with a pen and tablet, is better than a synth keyboard controller? - the Continuum, sadly, is a luxury that most hard working musicians will find difficult to afford, take it from me... ! - it does look like a wonderful instrument in iteslf... IP: Logged |
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Scot_Solida Member |
posted 26 March 2006 09:53
Do I find that the pen and tablet are better than the keys? No. I am a keyboardist first, so it is easier for me to play standard musical passages on keys. However, the pen and tablet are a different approach that inspire different results. And that's what Kyma is all about. If I wanted to play, say, a moogy kinda lead solo, I'd probably turn to my left and play it from my modular with a standard keyboard, or one of the squillion other analogs in my studio. However, once recorded, if I wanted to morph that moogy lead into a screaming hyena, I would turn to Kyma and the tablet. I think you are right on the money by comparing Kyma to a programming environment for music, sound or studio production. I think we naturally imagine limitations when describing musical instruments or studio devices. It can be quite difficult to adjust to a completely open-ended tool kit like Kyma. Often it is easier to reach for the more immediate solution when you are in the heat of inspiration, but eventually you will have a collection of customized tools in Kyma that could replace things you already use. I can't count all of the synths and effects and such that I have sold or given away since getting Kyma. Some of them quite nice, but they eventually simply didn't get used...Roland V-Synth, Nord G2 (good grief I loved that synth! But after I realized that I was using it only as a controller, it was ousted), lots of effects...the list grows everyday. IP: Logged |
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Phi Curtis Member |
posted 03 April 2006 02:10
quote: Yeah - for me, it is really about having one system that I know well and for which I have built up my own customized library, rather than having a huge collection of instruments, all of which have their own idiosyncratic interfaces, which I have to continually update and keep up on the new features. After awhile, you just want to deal with one thing, if that one thing can cover most of what you really need. Haven't sold so much stuff yet, though I should. But not updating much for now. IP: Logged |
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cristian_vogel Member |
posted 09 May 2017 05:47
Looking back from where I am now in 2017 - by the end of 2006 I was so convinced by Kyma that I never used anything else since. Only in the last year, I have got back into analogue synths, for sound designing things that are difficult to model in code, such as certain filter behaviours and non-linearities that come from unique analogue circuits. I felt became a composer in the most holistic sense about a year after getting into Kyma - I learned how to code and my compositional thinking reach amazing new levels. I felt like my consciousness had expanded, much like JesusGestoso says in this thread! I can never imagine using MaxMSP or the other other stuff out there - I reached new levels of expression with Kyma, that I didn't even know about 10 years ago, thats why I was confused! Any of you new to Kyma and looking for encouragement - definitely stick at it - its healthy and hugely rewarding to commit fully to this system. Besides that Kyma 7 is really a masterpiece and quite significantly easier to learn that Kyma X which I was studying when I made this post back in the day. IP: Logged |
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