Carla Scaletti


Carla Scaletti is an American harpist, composer, music technologist and the inventor of the Kyma Sound Design Environment as well as president of Symbolic Sound.

Biography

Carla Scaletti was born in Ithaca, New York. She graduated from the public schools in Albuquerque, New Mexico, then completed a Bachelor of Music from the University of New Mexico, a Master of Music from Texas Tech University, a master's in computer science from the University of Illinois and a doctorate in music composition from the same school. In the 1970s, she worked as principal harpist in the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and Lubbock Symphony Orchestra, and composed for acoustic instruments, but later she developed an interest in computer generated music. After completing her education, she worked as a researcher at the CERL Sound Group, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and later as a visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois before leaving the university to launch the Symbolic Sound Corporation.
Scaletti designed the Kyma sound generation computer language and co-founded Symbolic Sound Corporation with Kurt J. Hebel in 1989 as a spinoff of the CERL Sound Group.
Scaletti has published professional articles in the Computer Music Journal, proceedings of the OOPSLA and SPIE conferences, Perspectives of New Music, and as book chapters. In 2003 she received the Distinguished Alumnae Award for contributions in the field of music from Texas Tech University. From 2000 to 2007, she lectured at the Center for the Creation of Music Iannis Xenakis in Paris.
Scaletti was a member of the executive committee for the IEEE Task Force on Computer Music, a member of the advisory board for the Electronic Music Foundation, and the founder and chair of SIGSound, a special interest group within the Association for Computing Machinery. Scaletti also serves as the president of the Salvatore Martirano Foundation.
In 2017, she was awarded the SEAMUS Award.

Works

Scaletti composes computer-generated music. Selected works include:
Scaletti's works have been issued on CD, including:
Kyma language has been used to prepare the soundtracks of films including:
Kyma language has been used to prepare the soundtracks of video games including: