The Kyma Language for Sound Design, Version 4.5

Analog
Dissection
Start by choosing Open… from the File menu, make sure the file type is Sound file, and open the file
called analog from the Examples folder which you should find in the Kyma folder.
Select and play RomeTaxiRadio to get an idea of the kinds of Sounds contained in this file. These are all
emulations of the kinds of sounds you could get from the old modular analog synthesizers. Use the virtual
control surface to change !Rate from 1 to 0 and back to 1 again. Change !NN8 and !NN7 to modify
the last two pitches in the sequence. Experiment with the other faders and take note of what effect each of
them has on the sound. To set a fader to a precise value, click in the small text box at the top of the fader,
type in the value you want, and press Enter or Return. The fader will jump to that new value. When you
have had enough, use Ctrl+K to stop the Sound.
Select and play the Sound named delayed saws. Play the MIDI keyboard and experiment with each of the
faders in the virtual control surface, listening to how each affects the sound.
Double-click on delayed saws to take a look at how the Sound is put together. Let’s dissect this Sound,
starting with the leftmost module (the output) and moving rightwards.
The rightmost module is a StereoMix2. Double-click it so you can see its parameters displayed in the
lower half of the Sound editor. There are two inputs to the mixer: 3 filtered saws and delayed filtered
saws. Pan1 is set to zero, meaning that it is panned hard left, and Pan2 is set to one meaning that In2 is
entirely in the right channel. In1 is attenuated a little bit, since Scale1 is set to 0.75. In2 is at full amplitude
since Scale2 is set to one.
Following the lower branch first, double-click on delayed filtered saws to view its parameters. This
branch takes 3 filtered saws as its input and delays it by one second.
Now double-click 3 filtered saws. This is called a Preset Sound. It gives you a way to save the current
settings of faders in the virtual control surface so that the next time you play the Sound, they will start out
at those settings. Notice that the EventValues parameter has a setting for each of the faders you saw in
the virtual control surface:
!Atk channel: 1; initialValue: 1.0.
!CutOff channel: 1; initialValue: 0.75.
!Detune1 channel: 1; initialValue: 0.0750853.
!Detune2 channel: 1; initialValue: 0.0511945.
!Feedback channel: 1; initialValue: 0.665529.
!Rel channel: 1; initialValue: 1.0.
!Volume channel: 1; initialValue: 0.156997.
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