Carla Scaletti

American experimental composer, harpist, and computer music researcher (b. 28 April 1956, Ithaca, New York). Carla Scaletti is best known as the inventor of the Kyma digital sound technology and co-founder and president of the Symbolic Sound Corporation. She taught at the University of Illinois from the early 1980s till the mid-90s and has given numerous visiting lectures and workshops internationally since then, including annual lecture cycles at CCMIX in Paris, France, between 2000 and 2007. Scaletti has published articles in Computer Music Journal (also serving on CMJ's editorial advisory board since 2016), Perspectives of New Music, AES Convention Proceedings, and Proceedings of ICMC. Carla is a member of IEEE (since 1993) and holds several professional accolades, including the Texas Tech University's Distinguished Alumnae Award (2003) and SEAMUS Award (2017) for "important contributions to the field of electroacoustic music." Carla Scaletti grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, graduating magna cum laude with her Bachelor's from the University of New Mexico in 1977. She attended Texas Tech University, receiving a Master's in 1979 (Carla wrote Waves: Concerto for Harp and Percussion Ensemble as her thesis under Mary Jeanne Van Appledorn's advisory). Between 1978 and 79, Carla served as a principal harpist at Lubbock Symphony Orchestra and The New Mexico Symphony Orchestra (touring across the state and premiering Dave Brubeck's La Fiesta De La Posada). In the early 80s, after stumbling across the ARP 2600 synthesizer, Carla Scaletti became captivated by electronic music. She joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1981 for doctorate studies, soon becoming a graduate assistant at the University's Experimental Music Studios. Scaletti studied composition with Herbert Brün, Salvatore Martirano, John Melby, and Scott Wyatt, earning her Ph.D. in Music Arts in 1984. She continued teaching at Illinois as an adjunct assistant professor, soon joining the CERL (Computer-based Education Research Laboratory) Sound Group as a research associate. In 1986, Scaletti wrote the first version of Kyma for Macintosh 512K in Smalltalk-80 programming language. The system quickly evolved, and Carla soon ported it to a dedicated DSP hardware unit, Platypus, which was designed by Lippold Haken and her CERL's colleague, Kurt J. Hebel. Scaletti presented Kyma at the International Computer Music Conference, where it was noted as an important emerging technology by Robert Moog in his Keyboard Magazine conference report. In 1988, Carla earned her second Master's in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, with Kyma as a thesis; her advisor was a future "Gang of Four" Ralph E. Johnson (one of the authors of Design Patterns, a highly-influential '94 book on object-oriented programming). In 1989, as the University of Illinois eliminated the CERL's "Sound Group" funding, Scaletti and Hebel formed Symbolic Sound Corporation to continue developing Kyma and its DSP hardware. Many popular musicians and composers utilized Kyma in their recordings and productions, from John Paul Jones, David Gilmour, and Metal Machine Trio to BT, Junkie XL, and Cristian Vogel. Several prominent Hollywood film composers used Kyma technology, including John Williams (on blockbuster soundtracks for War of the Worlds and Star Wars: Episode II and Episode III), Thomas Newman (on Finding Nemo and WALL•E), and Hans Zimmer (on The Dark Knight soundtrack created in collaboration with James Newton Howard). It's also featured in various video game soundtracks, such as Quake II, World of Warcraft, and Mirror's Edge.