Plugged In: Amon Tobin on Kyma

Plugged In: Amon Tobin on Kyma

26 May, 2011 | 4.40AM

• Written by: Beatportal
• Filed under: Music News: amon tobin, kyma, plugged in, tech

Amon Tobin‘s new album for Ninja Tune, ISAM, is a masterpiece of sound design, with real-world acoustics sampled and re-synthesized into alien, mind-bending sonics. Tobin describes his sonic approach as “re-ordering the things around me”; it’s a process that involves extensive field and foley recording combined with a degree of digital processing that would leave your average CPU a melted hunk of plastic.

To find out more about how he does it, we asked Tobin to tell us about his software of choice: Kyma.

What is it, and what does it do?

Kyma is a visual programming language for sound design used by musicians, researchers and sound designers. In Kyma, you program a multiprocessor DSP by graphically connecting modules. The modules themselves have extremely flexible internal parameters and can be structured in infinite ways to other modules before being grouped into a patch or “sound” through which then any input can be applied, should you choose to set in up that way. People familiar with MAX or Reaktor might see it as part of that family of modular tools.

It provides a range synthesis types from additive to spectral and allows for unusual ways to combine them. More than anything, it’s very open-ended, in the sense that you can really do anything from building your own compressor or granular reverb to synthesizing and morphing between your own audio sources.

The system was designed by Carla Scaletti, who is a composer and music technologist in her own right. She is currently a guest on my website, and I’d encourage anyone to find out more about her and hear her works.

The Pacarana is the most recent incarnation of the processor Kyma runs on.

When was it first made?

The language was first put together by Carla at the University of Illinois in 1986 and then went on to be developed through Symbolic Sound, co-founded between Carla and Kurt Hebel in 1989. It’s since undergone several updates and overhauls—most recently, Kyma X, which is itself regularly undergoing useful changes.

Is it commonplace, rare, vintage, custom, etc.?

It’s quite specialized, so not a commonplace thing. It does get around, though, particularly in film sound design, with appearances in everything from Wall-E to the Star Wars prequels. My guess is Ben Burtt is a fan, which is quite an endorsement. 

How do you use it in your own music?

I used it in ISAM for a range of things from sound processing to sound synthesis. I’m still very much a student of the language and learning more all the time. It’s by no means the only thing I use, but it’s been getting more and more frequent as time goes on.

One way I’ve been using it is to make playable instruments from field and foley recordings. An audio source is analyzed into its spectral properties using the TAU editor, then assigned various morphing, pitch and timbre properties that react to MIDI CC events. Again, I have a video of some early experiments with this on my website.

Could you pinpoint a place in your music where we could hear it?

Well, it’s all over the record, really, but you can hear it very clearly as a sine wave morphs into particles on the beat at the start on “Night Swim” and also as the strange engine sounds that wrap around the beats in “Goto 10.”

Amon Tobin, “Night Swim” [Ninja Tune]

Amon Tobin, “Goto 10” [Ninja Tune]

Photograph of Amon Tobin by Nathan Seabrook, courtesy Ninja Tune.

• (1) Comments
• (2277) Views
• Get Amon Tobin's ISAM on Beatport