Connecting OSC Messages to Kyma Event Values

In Kyma, you can associate incoming OSC messages with Kyma Event Values in several ways:

  • remap individual VCS widgets to respond to specific OSC messages
  • use OSC Event Values in parameter fields of Sound
  • program an external OSC device to send messages that are automatically recognized
Learn or Map to an OSC message in the VCS

In the Virtual Control Surface (VCS):

  • right-click the widget
  • choose Learn from the pop-up menu
  • send OSC message from device

To map to any OSC message received in the past:

  • in the VCS, right-click the widget
  • choose Controller and then OSC from the pop-up menu
  • select the desired OSC message

If the incoming message is a vector, Kyma will “learn” the first element of the Vector. (The same is true for learning in parameter fields).

Learn or Enter an OSC message in a Parameter field

To control a Kyma Sound parameter with an OSC message, use the learn function in the parameter field:

  • click in the parameter field
  • press the escape (ESC) key on your computer keyboard
  • send the OSC message to Paca(rana)

If you “learn” an OSC message that is a vector, the first element of the vector will be captured.

You can also type the OSC Event Value name directly into the parameter field using a specially formatted OSC Event Value. To transform your OSC message into a Kyma OSC Event Value:

  • replace each slash in the address with underscore
  • use the prefix: !osc

Here are some examples of Kyma OSC Event Values and their corresponding OSC messages:

Event Value OSC message
!osc_1_fader1 /1/fader1
!osc_4_xy__1 /4/xy//1
Program OSC Source to send specific messages to Kyma

Instead of re-mapping each individual Kyma widget or parameter with an OSC message one-by-one, you can, alternatively, program your OSC device or application to send specific messages to control Kyma using the message address format:

/vcs/name/channel

Where name is the name of the Kyma Event Value, and channel is the MIDI channel of the controller. Even though you are sending OSC (and not MIDI), the channel identifiers are retained as a convenient way to organize controllers (for example, by default each track of the Timeline is associated with its own controller channel).

If your Sound had Event Values !Vol, !Amp, !Density, for example, you could program your device to send the OSC messages:

/vcs/Vol/1

/vcs/Amp/1

/vcs/Density/1

This automatically maps to Kyma Event Values !Vol, !Amp, !Density. (Note that you can still, optionally, remap individual VCS widgets to different control sources.)

For Software Developers

One of the advantages of OSC is that it is an open standard that invites you to write your own applications or translators for communicating between computers, devices, and applications and Kyma. Here is some information you will need for writing your own OSC application, translator, or device that can communicate bi-directionally with Kyma.

Finding the Paca(rana)

The Paca(rana) advertises its IP address and port via Bonjour (Zeroconf). The Paca(rana) OSC service is advertised as

_osc._udp

Program your device or application to send OSC messages to:

beslime-serial_nbr.local

where serial_nbr is the serial number of your Paca or Pacarana (note that some applications do not display the .local part of the name).

OSC Messages

The Paca(rana) responds to messages having from 1 to 256 arguments.

An OSC message should take the form:

address, argument type list, argument values

Address

The address of the message can be any string, but controllers typically send the name of widget that changed. The Paca(rana) responds automatically to a few, predefined addresses (for example, the names of the widgets in the currently active VCS in Kyma). Any other addresses can be arbitrarily re-mapped to event values in Kyma.

Argument type list

The type list may be floats: ‘,f’, ‘,ff’, ‘,fff’, … or integers: ‘,i’, ‘,ii’, ‘,iii’, ….

Arguments

For automatic mapping, each argument should be a float in the range of 0 to 1, but any 32-bit floating point or integer value can be used.

Multi-argument messages

Messages with 2 or more arguments are split within Kyma. Kyma associates each individual component with one control widget. For example:

/4/xy,ff

becomes

/4/xy//1,f

and

/4/xy//2,f

Miscellaneous random tidbits…
  • Kyma ignores the time tag of bundle messages.
  • Kyma performs case-insensitive address comparisons.
  • There is no pattern matching at this time.

Sending MIDI Streams Over OSC

Please see Sending MIDI Streams Over OSC

Kyma OSC Standard Protocol

You can write software that communicates bi-directionally with Kyma using OSC, including MIDI note events and graphics, by following the Kyma OSC Standard Protocol for communicating with Kyma via OSC.

Two-way OSC Communication Demonstration Software

Tool for debugging and demonstrating two-way OSC communication.