The Kyma Language for Sound Design, Version 4.5

Audio Demonstrations
These examples are set up as mini-laboratories to demonstrate different synthesis techniques or psychoacoustic
phenomena. Use them to demonstrate these concepts to your students and/or to yourself!
Using the Additive Synthesis Lab
For example, use Ctrl+Space Bar to compile, load, start the Sound called Additive. In the virtual control
surface, you can increase or decrease the amplitude of 16 sine wave harmonics, and see the effect this has
on the waveform in the small oscilloscope display.
Click in the numeric field above the F02 fader; this should select the contents of that field. Type in a 0 to
set the fader value to its smallest value. Then press the Tab key. This selects the next fader to the right.
Type in a 0 here as well. Continue to tab over and enter zeroes, observing the change in the waveform as
you remove each harmonic up through F16 and you only hear (and see) the first harmonic or the fundamental.
Now go back and add a very small amount of each harmonic back in. If you see the waveform clipping or
hear it distorting, you may have to reduce the !Volume.
How the Additive Synthesis Lab Works
Close the virtual control surface, and double-click on the icon called Additive to see how this Sound was
put together.
The rightmost sound is a Preset. Double-click on it so that its parameters are displayed in the lower half
of the Sound editor. The Preset is used to set all the Event Values to reasonable values when you first
play the Sound. For example, you would not want the initial value of !Volume to be zero, because it
might confuse the person using the virtual control surface if they don’t hear any sound.
Position your cursor over the line dividing the signal flow graph from the parameter fields. When you see
it change to an up/down arrow, click down and drag the dividing line up, until you can see all of the settings
in the Event Values parameter field. You cannot edit these values, but you can reset them to the
current settings of your virtual control surface by clicking on the button labeled Set to current event values.
Drag the dividing line back down so you can see the signal flow graph again.
Double-click on the next module, the one called explanation. An Annotation does not affect the sound at
all; it is more like a comment in a program — you can read it, but it doesn’t affect the result (other than to
make you feel extremely happy to find it there if you are trying to understand the program!) Whatever is
written in an Annotation anywhere within the signal flow graph will be displayed in the virtual control
surface when you play the Sound. This comes in handy when you want to include a word or two of explanation
for the person using the virtual control surface.
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