The Kyma Language for Sound Design, Version 4.5

Output MIDI
Getting Wired
MIDI Notes Off
These examples illustrate how you can generate MIDI events in Kyma and send them out to control external
MIDI devices like synthesizers and samplers. You can use this to synchronize external devices to
Kyma Sounds, to extract parameters from audio signals and send them out as MIDI events, or to algorithmically
generate and process MIDI events in Kyma before sending them to your other sound
modules.
If you don’t have any MIDI-controlled sound modules other than Kyma, then you can skip this section. If
you do have a synthesizer/sampler, then hook everything up as follows:
♦ Capybara MIDI output connected to synthesizer MIDI input
♦ If you have a mixer, mix the outputs of the Capybara and the synthesizer
♦ If you do not have a mixer, then patch synthesizer audio output into Capybara audio input
♦ If your synthesizer/sampler has pitch bend, set it to ±12 semitones
The quickest way to send an “all MIDI notes off” command in Kyma is to use Ctrl+M or else to choose
MIDI notes off from the DSP menu.
Sending Out MIDI Note Events
Double-click simple MIDI out to see its structure and parameters:
Then double-click output MIDI events. This is a MIDIOutputEvent. You supply the three elements of a
MIDI note event: a frequency, a gate, and an amplitude, and this Sound puts together a MIDI note event
and sends it to the MIDI output of the Capybara. In this instance, we have set these parameters to come
from the corresponding values from the MIDI input: Frequency to !Pitch, Gate to !KeyDown, and
Amplitude to !KeyVelocity. So this Sound is performing the redundant but illustrative task of reading
note events sent to the Capybara’s MIDI input, splitting them into !Pitch, !KeyDown and
!KeyVelocity, and then giving them to the MIDIOutputEvent Sound which puts them back together
into a MIDI note-on event which it sends to the Capybara’s MIDI output. Obviously you didn’t need
Kyma to do that; you could have just connected the keyboard to the synthesizer directly. But wait, there’s
more…
But first just a quick note about the structure of this Sound: notice that external MIDI device and output
MIDI events are both feeding into a Mixer. This is not a Mixer in the usual sense, but in the broader,
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