The Kyma Language for Sound Design, Version 4.5

MIDIFileInterpreter
Events
With a MIDIFileInterpreter, you can read information from a MIDI file and process or reinterpret it using
Smalltalk before mapping it to the parameters of Kyma Sounds.
Assigning Start Times
Each input of a Script forms the basis of an instrument. An instrument is not strictly a Sound; it is a template
that can be used to create any number of instances of its basis Sound.
Each event in the Script corresponds to an instantiation (i.e., the scheduling of a specific instance) of one
of the instruments. The simplest event is the name of an instrument followed by a start time. For example,
if you had an instrument named anInstr, and you wanted an instance of it to start at time 0, you would
type
anInstr start: 0 s.
Suppose anInstr is based on a Sound whose duration is 5 seconds. Then the following Script
anInstr start: 0 s.
anInstr start: 6 s.
specifies that you will hear anInstr followed by 1 second of silence followed by anInstr. You can also
make the instances of anInstr overlap, for example,
anInstr start: 0 s.
anInstr start: 1 s.
anInstr start: 2 s.
anInstr start: 3 s.
Beats and Metronome Indications
To specify times in beats instead of seconds, indicate the number of beats per minute at the beginning of
the Script. For example,
MM := 90.
specifies that one beat is equivalent to 1/90 of a minute in subsequent events. You can redefine MM any
number of times within a script. If you don’t specify a value for MM in a top level Script, it will default to a
value of 60, or one beat per second.
If you are using multiple Scripts or FileInterpreter Sounds within a shared top Sound, you should explicitly
specify the desired value for MM in each script.
Setting Parameters
Parameter:Value Pairs
You can do more than simply assign start times to instruments; if the inputs have variables in them, each
event in the script can also supply parameter values to the variables in the instrument. Any variable parameter
can be set from the script.
To set parameters from the script, type the name of the input, the start time, and then a list of parameter-
Name:value pairs. Each pair consists of the name of a variable in the input and a value for that variable.
(To see a list of the variables in the selected Sound, choose Get info from the Info menu.)
For example, suppose a Sound named anInstr has some variable parameters in it named
?centerFreq, ?dur, and ?bandwidth. Here is an example Script for setting the parameters of an-
Instr.
anInstr
start: 0 s
dur: 2 s
centerFreq: 1000 hz
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