It's a trip!
Kaleidoscope is the ultimate sound-design tool and creative effects toy! It is an entirely new class of visual audio effects processors and is one of the most unique generative signal processing tools to come to market in recent history. Technically speaking, Kaleidoscope is a massively parallel bank of physically modeled resonators that can be tuned completely arbitrarily with scientific precision and dynamically modulated over time by over two million points of automation. In simplistic terms, Kaleidoscope uses pictures to control sound!
Applications and Uses
Kaleidoscope is a tool for intrepid sonic explorers who seek to help tell humanity's biggest narratives. It is designed with one goal in mind: to inspire and invigorate composers, sound-designers, and artists to push the boundaries of what is possible in cutting edge sound-design. Many products claim to offer never-before heard sounds. Kaleidoscope actually delivers them - in unfathomable abundance and ultimate fidelity. If you work in any of the following areas you owe it to yourself to check out Kaleidoscope!
Sound-Design for Film, Television & Games Scoring for Film, Television & Games Ambient Music Electronic Music Academic & Scientific Research into Sound and New Music.
Kaleidoscope represents literally an entire universe of sonic possibilities and is limited only by your imagination and willingness to think differently. Some of its most common applications are:
Custom Sound Design Special Effects Processing & Generation Algorithmic Composition & Inspiration Ambient Music Generation Dynamic Filter Effects Extreme Nano Textural Effects Rhythmic Filtering & Synth Patterns Dynamic Resonator Effects Additive Synthesis Vocoder-like Effects Morphing Delay Effects Extreme Spatialization & FIRs Automated Volume & Panning Harmonic & Tonal Reverb Granular Effects.
The Numbers
There are two different sets of content for Kaleidoscope, plus two additional optional add-ons. Let's run the stats:
Kaleidoscope Retail contains: 2,477 Total Files 1,166 Presets 945 Images 254 Scales 92 Waveforms
Architecture Volume 01 KS contains: 14,059 Total Files 7,696 Images 4,545 Scales 1,818 Waveforms
Architecture Waveforms 2010 contains: 25,724 Waveforms
Architecture Volume 01
Music theory for the information age...
Galbanum Architecture Vol 01 KS is an add-on that provides over 14,000 resource files to Kaleidoscope. It is highly recomended, and therefore we make it possible to include with your Kaleidoscope order at a substantially discounted price. It can be added at a later date for the normal price as well.
Concept Overview:
Possibilities
Connect the dots of possibility and create new forms...
Kaleidoscope is both an effects processor as well as a content generator, meaning that it is possible to synthesize completely new sounds without any input sound or MIDI performance data as well as to transform incoming audio signals in other-worldly manners.
Music is organized sound. The organization occurs in two axes: time and frequency. Kaleidoscope is a tool that offers ultimate control over musical organization in both of these domains. In music we call organization in time rhythm, and we call organization in frequency tonality. Tonality includes things such as tuning systems, musical scales, and harmony. Rhythm includes things such as tempo, meter, syncopation and groove. Kaleidoscope seeks to vastly expand our understanding of these definitions, rewrite music theory for the information age, and explore the areas in which time and frequency converge -- that is to say where tonality becomes rhythm and where rhythm becomes tonality. Additionally, Kaleidoscope offers unique control over the dynamic spatialization of the sound at each point in time a frequency and thus adds a third axis of creative control to the musical organization of sound: spatial choreography.
Kaleidoscope uses pictures to control sound. It scans an image from left to right where the horizontal access represents time, and the vertical access represents frequency. The brightness of a particular pixel in the image determines how loud the sound will be at that particular point in time and frequency. This is similar in some ways to a spectrogram or even to piano-roll notation in standard musical sequencers. The difference is in scope and the unprecedented level of control and flexibility offered by Kaleidoscope.
A single Kaleidoscope instance uses up to two pictures that can provide over two million points of stereo automation data to create incredibly intricate performances that evolve in time, frequency and space. These performances can be set to have any desired duration: an image could represent a one measure loop, providing 1/1024th note timing resolution, or it could represent an entire ten minute song. A single pixel could represent anything from one audio sample to one minute, one hour, one day, or more in duration, giving unprecedented control over performance time structures. Timing is sample-accurate for all cases and any tempo. Finally the timing of each Image Map performance can be independently set to establish evolving patterns and polyrhythmic structures that generate incredibly novel and interesting results that are guaranteed to keep the listener engaged with new surprises.
Vertically each row in the Image Map represents a different voice or note. Technically each row represents an independant resonator that can be tuned with scientific precision to any possible frequency to create any conceivable composite tonality. A resonator is a type of highly selective filter that drastically augments certain frequencies and drastically attenuates others. All sound in the universe is created by one form of resonance or another and every musical instrument has resonators! Kaleidoscope offers two primary types of resonators: Strings and Springs.
A String resonator mode could be used with a standard MIDI semitone scale to effectively create an 88, or more, note virtual string instrument that could be controlled by the incoming audio signal. An incoming drum loop could be tuned into something like an evolving Bach fugue in such manners for example.
Alternatively up to 512 Spring resonators could be used and tuned to match the measured resonant frequencies of some physical object for sound-design purposes, or tuned to a particular chord and all of its harmonics to create a moody drone suitable for ambient music or film scores. Kaleidoscope's Spring resonators produce exponentially decaying sine waves. Summing them together at different frequencies and time varying amounts can effectively model anything and everything via a special form of additive synthesis. Kaleidoscope's internal white noise generator can be feed into its resonators to synthesize completely new sounds in this manner. Kaleidoscope offers tens of thousands of different tonalities to choose from including allowing the use of Galbanum Architecture Waveforms to function as tuning maps. It offers the most extensive tonality system of any tool on the market that we are aware of.
In summary the sound Kaleidoscope produces is a complex interaction of the characteristics of the input signal, the resonator settings, the current tonality or tuning, the visual performance data in the Image Maps, and the timing settings. It offers the ultimate control over the organization of sound in time, frequency, and spatial position and can produce an entire universe of new forms of music and utterly unique sound-design.
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