by Per Vilez

Joker Nies lives and works in Cologne, Germany, as a musician, sound-designer and sound-engineer. He has many commercial and broadcast credits. HIs main tools include the Kyma Capybara and The Nord Modular system. In the following interview Joker explains the nature of the Kyma system

What is it about the Kyma Capybarra that just oozes quality and power?

From my point of view it is unique. It's specs include: Scalable DSP-power (up to 28 Motorola 56309 DSPs). It has an easy to use modular interface (on both platforms, Mac + PC with ISA, PCI, PCMCIA or Firewire), which is open to programmers who maybe familiar with the Smalltalk 88 programming language. It can be combined with up to 8 high end 24/96 balanced in and outs.

What are Kyma's strong features with regards to composition?

Well I'm not the expert to answer this question, as I'm mostly an improviser, but I would say that one is the Timeline, a new feature of the Kyma 5.0 version, which allows the easily arrangement and control of performance or composition. There are also a lot of "Sounds" (the Kyma term for a module), like cellular automaton, conditional and logical Sounds, definable event sequencers, and many other tools a composer would find of use.

Whose develops the Kyma?

The Kyma (software) Capybara (hardware) system was developed and is marketed by Carla Scaletti and Kurt Hebel. The first Kyma system was delivered in January 1991, and since that time, there have been six major software upgrades, three hardware upgrades and ports from the original 680xx Macintosh platform to Windows machines, PowerMacs and to laptop PCs and Macintoshes.

Many Systems require a substancial learning curve at the beginning. What is your experience of this with regards the Kyma?

Like other software there is a learning curve, but Kyma is different, it divides into three phases:

Phase 1: Is very easy to get started, pure joy!

Phase 2: Can be a bit frustrating sometimes, as one might feel overwhelmed by the endless possibilities and different approaches how to create a sound (and of course your lack of knowledge). Hold on, learn from the plentiful examples and the sounds provided by others in the online Kyma forum.

Phase 3: You mastered it! No more questions native Smalltalk speaker.

Being a hardware and software environment, how does it compare to something like the Nord Modular system?

The Nord Modular is a WYSIWYG system. You feel at home immediately if you are used to traditional modular synthesizers. The Capybara is different. The only thing that it compares to in some ways would be Max/MSP, as it has similar qualities and is also highly modular (I would even say molecular), but it lacks the stableness of a DSP based system.

Who uses the system?

Let me cite the Symbolic Sound homepage here: Kyma is being used in live performances and by sound designers in music, advertising, film, computer games, television, toys, radio, theatre and other immerse environments to design and perform custom sounds that would be difficult or impossible to obtain in any other way.