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Name: Carla Scaletti
Title: President
Company: Symbolic Sound Corporation
Contact Info: http://www.symbolicsound.com
How I arrived at my present job (academic and other influences): I have always been interested in science and music. When I discovered electronic and computer music, I saw a way to combine the two. I studied music composition and computer science in graduate school.
How I organize my day: I try to set aside the mornings and the evenings for creative work (writing software, creating new sounds or music). In the afternoons, I do administrative work, marketing, and answer email.
Amount of time spent working daily (at home and office): Usually around 10-12 hours. Sometimes more just before a big trade show or demo tour.
What I do to get myself thinking creatively: Take a walk, get away from the computer and imagine what the software *should* be like (not just what is possible to program). Reflect on things by writing in my journal. Also, talking to our customers about their work and, especially, observing them at work gives me lots of ideas. Reading articles in _Science_ magazine about biology or something else completely outside of what I usually do is also stimulating.
My problem-solving strategy: If the straight ahead solution doesn't work, I start trying oblique solutions. It usually turns into a game, trying to find a tricky or unexpected solution to a problem everyone else has given up on.
What I do to relieve stress: I have a little Celtic harp with a contact microphone on it, and I amplify and process the sounds through Kyma. People have described the results as "primal" (in other words, it's not what you might expect harp music to sound like)
My hero, mentor, or person I most admire and why: I have always been a little allergic to the idea of heroes; I think it's dangerous. I admire a wide variety of people who share a sincere interest in what they are doing and who follow their intellectual curiosity.
What I do to mentor those who work for me: When it comes up, I try to encourage people to continue their self-education. If asked, I give encouragement to people to go ahead and try doing what they really love doing (and reassure them that if they do that, the rest will fall into place).
How a negative event changed my life in a positive way: For political reasons (the director had made a lot of enemies), the university closed down a research lab where I was working. It was completely arbitrary. But it forced my decision about what I wanted to do next, and I chose to make Symbolic Sound Corporation.
One event or decision in my life I wish I could go back and change: None of them. Even the "bad" things (or things that I thought were bad at the time) were part of what lead me to what I am doing now. Anything you do that shows respect for yourself and respect for other people, no matter what it is, won't be something that you will regret in the future.
What values are the most important to me and what I value in others: Loyalty to friends, sincerity, independent thinking, dedication to an ideal, intelligence, respect for other people. The less you depend on outside affirmations of your worth, the less people can have control over you.
What inspires, motivates, or gets me excited about my job on a daily basis: I get CDs and videos in the mail every day from people who used my software to create music and sound! I feel lucky to be able be able to create things as my job (software, sound, music, and the company itself). And I feel lucky to be associated with our customers-- musicians, sound designers and scientists--on a daily basis.
Biography: Carla Scaletti is the designer of the Kyma language and the president of Symbolic Sound. A composer and computer scientist, her music is available under the Centaur and Opus One labels and her research is described in several book chapters and papers published in Computer Music Journal, Proceedings of the OOPSLA and SPIE conferences, Perspectives of New Music, and elsewhere. Dr. Scaletti is the founder and chair of SIGSound, a special interest group on sound computation in the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a member of the advisory board for the Electronic Music Foundation, a member of the executive committee for the IEEE Task Force on Computer Music, and was for three years an editor of the International Computer Music Association newsletter ARRAY. Her doctorate is in music composition (with a minor in psychoacoustics), and she holds a master's of computer science (both degrees are from the University of Illinois). In a former life, i.e. during the 70's, she worked as a symphony harpist and wrote music for acoustic instruments...but that was before she first stumbled across an ARP2600...
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Location: www.acm.org/crossroads/dayinlife/bios/carla_scaletti.html