The Kyma Language for Sound Design, Version 4.5

Sampling
Sampling to Disk
Kyma is not a “sampler” per se, but it does provide several ways for you to use samples and digital audio
tracks as raw material for further processing and modification.
If you haven’t already read Disk Recording, Playback on page 112, you should read through it at this
point, because it details several ways in which you can record your own samples to disk. It also covers
some techniques for playing back recordings from the disk, including how you can trigger disk playbacks
with MIDI events.
Playing Back Samples from Disk
Suppose you have a large number of sound effects and you need a quick way to synchronize them to
picture. Or suppose that you have a piece for live performers and “tape”, but you would like one of the
performers to have control over when to trigger different sections of the pre-recorded sounds so the performers
are not slaved to the tape. The KeyMappedMultisample could be used in either of these
situations to make it possible for you to trigger long disk tracks or a large number of smaller disk recordings
directly from your MIDI keyboard.
For example, try playing sound fx from disk, and triggering the animal sounds from a MIDI keyboard.
Open it up to see what it is — a MIDIVoice on a KeyMappedMultiSample. The KeyMappedMultiSample
takes the samples within a folder and maps them to MIDI key numbers or ranges of key numbers.
Notice that in this example, the FirstSample is flamingos — meaning that all samples in the same
folder as flamingos are to be mapped to MIDI key numbers. Notice also that FromDisk is checked,
meaning that these samples will be triggered directly from disk and not read into the Capybara RAM
first.
The list of options under the Mapping are the different policies you can choose for mapping samples to
key numbers. In this case, the mapping policy is OnePerHalfStep, meaning that the first sample is
mapped to key number 1, the next sample is mapped to key number 2, and so on. The pattern repeats if
there are fewer samples than there are MIDI keys.
Finally, notice that the NoTransposition box is also checked. This lets you use different keys to trigger
different recordings without changing the pitch of those recordings.
Click on the disk button next to the FirstSample field and find another folder containing samples files
(for example, the Water folder in the Samples folder of the More wavetables folder). Play sound fx
from disk again, and trigger this different set of samples from your MIDI keyboard.
For an example of a different mapping policy, take a look at trb from disk. This one maps samples § to
ranges of key numbers based upon the base pitch stored in the header of an AIFF sample. Compile, load,
start trb from disk and try playing some idiomatically trombone-like passages on the MIDI keyboard.
You can hear where it switches over from one sample to the next.
Playing samples directly from disk is especially useful when any one of your samples is too long to fit
into the sample RAM of one Capybara card (about 20 seconds at 44.1 khz if you have 3 megabytes per
card, and about 90 seconds if you have 12 megabytes per card), and when you do not require more than
four-voice polyphony (the current limit on simultaneous, random-access disk tracks).
§ These samples were contributed by fellow Kyma user Lippold Haken, who is working with trombonist and electrical
engineering student Patrick Wolf to do spectral analyses of trombone and cello tones using Lemur. These
analyses are then resynthesized in real time using Kyma and controlled and performed using the Continuum — a
multidimensional controller that Lippold is developing. Patrick Wolf played the trombone and the recordings were
made at Pogo Records in Champaign, Illinois.
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