The Kyma Language for Sound Design, Version 4.5

Part III: Exercises
Time/frequency Scaling using Additive Resynthesis and the Spectrum Editor
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The first section is a step-by-step example of how you can use spectral analysis and resynthesis to scale
the duration or frequency of your own voice.
Part I: Record your Voice
1. Use the Tape Recorder tool to record your own speaking voice. Come up with a short, meaningful or
humorous phrase (or grab the nearest book or magazine and read a few lines).
2. Use the Spectral Analysis tool to create two spectral analyses (both the straight and the harmonic version)
of your recorded speaking voice. The analysis tool also gives you a Sound for each analysis
which you can transfer into a Sound file window. Save the Sound file window to disk before proceeding.
Part II: Time/frequency Alterations
1. Double-click on one of the SumOfSines created by the spectral analysis tool. Change the Duration to
on. Set up the sound to be triggered by the MIDI keyboard. To do this, click in the Gate field, press
Escape, and play two keys simultaneously on the MIDI keyboard. Gate should now have
!KeyDown in it. Now play the sound (using Ctrl+Space Bar).
Try playing the MIDI keyboard to make sure the trigger works.
2. Time-stretch the resynthesis to ten times its original duration without changing its frequency. To do
this, multiply the value in the OnDuration field by 10, for example, it might look something like this
5 s * 10
Load the Sound using Ctrl+Space Bar and trigger it using the MIDI keyboard.
3. Experiment with different time-stretching factors. Then set the OnDuration back to what it was
originally in preparation for doing frequency scaling.
4. Control the frequency of the speech from the MIDI keyboard without changing its duration. To do
this, click in the Frequency field, press Escape, and play one key on the MIDI keyboard. This
should set Frequency to !Pitch. Load the Sound using Ctrl+Space Bar. Then play different keys
on the MIDI keyboard. Which one gives you the original recording back without frequency alterations?
Part III: Spectrum Editor
By opening a spectrum editor on an analysis, you can see a graphic representation of the spectrum, listen
to individual harmonics, and modify the frequency or amplitude of selected harmonics.
1. Open a spectrum editor on the harmonic analysis you did in the first part of this exercise. You can do
this in several ways:
♦ choose Open… from the File menu, set the file type to Spectrum file, and select the name of
the file in the file dialog
♦ double-click on the name of the spectrum file in the File Organizer
♦ edit the SumOfSines, then click the disk button next to Analysis0 while holding down the
Command or Control key.
2. Once the spectrum editor opens, use the leftmost button to play a resynthesis based on this analysis.
Then use the mouse to grab the yellow scrub bar and move it back and forth across the display. Next,
try controlling the scrub bar by using pitch bend on the MIDI keyboard.
3. Press 1 on the computer keyboard to select and play track 1, the fundamental. Then try track 2, 3, etc.
Click the selection criteria button (it is the fourth one from the right and looks like a bunch of tracks
with one selected). This lets you select several tracks at once according to some criteria. Try listening
to different selection criteria.