Native Instruments announced today some new pricing for Kore and related products. The existing Kore product (hardware with software) is now cheaper, you can get just the software without the hardware for a lot less, and you can now buy a whole bunch of Koresound packs bundled together at once. I’ll break it down for you:

• You don’t own Kore, and you want the hardware and software. Kore 2 is now US$449 / EUR399 with the controller, down from $499 / EUR449.
• You don’t own Kore, and you want just the software. The “Kore 2 Software Edition” does everything the software does, but leaves out the controller if you don’t want it. Result: it costs about half as much, at US$229 / EUR199.
• You own Kore 1, and you want to upgrade to Kore 2 sans controller. That’s now US$119/EUR99 to migrate from Kore 1 to Kore 2 Software Edition — keeping in mind, Kore 2 Software Edition will still support your existing Kore controller / audio interface if you prefer that.
• You want more Koresounds. Now you don’t have to piece together the sound bundles you want a la carte. The new Kore Electronic Experience bundles together seven of the Kore soundpacks into one bundle, priced at US$229 / EUR199. And of course this is on top of what ships with Kore 2 in the other editions. Note that if you just want the sounds and not the custom sound editing and hosting capabilities of the full Kore software, this pack is all you need — it ships with the free Kore Player.

What would you most want to know about Kore? What would you most want to see on Kore if you had just a few minutes? (Beer and drinks would be available.) What would you want to show other people?

I’m putting together a short workshop for the Warper Party in New York, a (roughly) monthly get-together of laptop musicians of all types in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Now, NI has done an official workshop tour, but well-done as it was, that was a sales event. I’m talking to fellow musicians, and even some non-musicians.

I’ve got some ideas for what to put together, but I’m equally interested in what you think. And in addition to doing this event live in Brooklyn (I’ll post info for those of you in the area), I think a short, all-encompassing workshop would be ideal to add to this site.

We’ve already got some stuff in our “101″ thread:
101 tag @kore.noisepages
…and of course, on Kore in general:
Kore tag @kore.noisepages

But there’s plenty more to talk about. So let’s have it: what would you most want to know?

My focus will be on using Kore as the hub of a live performance rig, in conjunction with Reaktor, and using it for really playing electronics live.

Photo at top: me playing Boston’s Beat Research, all in Kore, as part of the Mind Meld get-together earlier this summer. Photo by Todd Thille.

On NI forums: Since some of you like to chat there, I’ve also opened a thread on the NI forum. What I may do, as well, is get the outline and some content for this workshop up and allow people to comment on it, so in the end we’ll have collected some community wisdom (and questions!) for the results.

From the how not to use Reaktor, some lovely finds:

I love the creative abuse of tools, and the warping of software for expressive ends. sonictwist on the Reaktor forum has posted a wild gallery of images made entirely with Reaktor. Reaktor, of course, isn’t remotely intended for this kind of generative visuals, but the results are gorgeous. The gallery of Reaktor interfaces we got going was simply to be focused on UIs – in this case, apparently partially inspired by that effort, the results are purely aesthetic. sonictwist explains:

After some years playing with multi/poly displays, I decided that it might be interesting to make a gallery with visual stuff made ONLY with R5. Ofcourse its very far from Jitter or vvvv, but we all understand that r5 wasnt designed for such purposes at all, and its even kinda fun when you realise it and try to make some decent pictures.

So, just tell what you think about this idea, post your own stuff etc… Please note that the idea is not a duplicate of Peter Kirn’s gallery, so try to post only artworks made with md/pd and maybe xy modules…

I attached some generative artworks made with multidisplay based on a pseudorandom sets of rules to showcase what I’m talking about.

Reaktor based Visual Art [NI User Forums > REAKTOR]

While these are simply for visual effect, I could imagine them being used in a strange musical interface, too. I’ll be sure to post when sonictwist uploads an ensemble.

Peter Dines adds, No one should be surprised that he’s come up with that given his skill at creating polished GUI interfaces like this:

I also enjoy the glitched-out image at right. It’s actually not intentional – it’s occurs when you import 16-color BMP files into Reaktor – but since I’m always looking for sources for digitally-distorted images, I may even use this trick. (Hmmm… cheap way of making an interface for your glitch effects Ensemble, perhaps?)

Back to using Reaktor as a sound tool, as intended, Suryummy assembled this fantastic, sci-fi cooking motion graphic with a brilliant soundtrack. Suryummy did both visuals and sound. No, that’s not Reaktor generating the visuals; that would be Maya and Particular, lest you thought he got his hands on a very different Reaktor 6. But the wonderful soundscape comes courtesy of Reaktor and Absynth, generating the distinctive timbres you hear in the track. It’s really inspiring to me to see people working across sonic and visual media in this way – and may suggest that your next Reaktor/Absynth track really needs accompanying visuals for the full effect. As seen on our sister site, Create Digital Motion.

Interstellar Sugar - Suryummy from Suryummy on Vimeo.

Fans of the tracker/music production tool Renoise wanted to make use of Gustavo Bravetti’s free FM drum kit on their tool of choice, too. Renoise is a unique environment for music making, a modern take on an alternative generation of sequencing applications called “trackers,” as can be seen from the interface above. It should be a lovely match for some FM8 synthesized drum sounds. Torben, a reader of this site and member of the Renoise forum, went ahead and did the work of porting Gustavo’s instruments to Renoise:

Free Fm8 Drumkit For Renoise, Gustavo Bravetti Exclusive Drumkit for FM8 [Renoise forum]

Being such a friendly guy, I copied the arrangement from Live into Renoise - setting up the 9 instances of FM8 with the drum-patches and the example drumloop.
For info on the drumkit check this link: http://kore.noisepages.com/2008/07/24/free…stavo-bravetti/
For downloading my Renoise-file, get it here: http://vibrants.scene.org/gustavo_bravetti…_1_renoise.xrns
And here’s how the drumkit sounds (in Ableton Live). http://media.createdigitalmedia.net/kore/s…ries/fm8kit.mp3
FM is lovely indeed
Cheers,
- Torben.

Thanks, Torben! Hope this is of use to some people. (And maybe it’ll give you an excuse to try out Renoise.)

Part of the appeal of Kore, of course, is to be able to move a sound setup from one host to another, so you could easily switch between Ableton Live and Renoise.I’ll be getting the Koresound version and straight FM8 preset out this week — I promise. And I’m especially curious to try pairing up Kore with Renoise as a host. That said, there are also times when some my prefer to drop an instrument directly into their host, minus Kore. Gustavo’s choice of Live was entirely personal; he likes dropping the different FM8’s directly into Live tracks for assembling beats. So, when I release that Koresound, perhaps we’ll compare how these different workflows function.

Got another host to request? Say so in comments. (Obviously, FM8 presets will work in any host, but I’m curious to know how you like to work.)

Samplers like Kontakt are capable of streaming from disk, but when it comes to loading from (faster) RAM, standard 32-bit memory addressing on Mac and Windows restricts them to about 2-4 GB of memory. That’s about to change for Kontakt users, with the free update to Kontakt 3.1 with 64-bit support in the works. You’ll need Mac OS X Leopard or 64-bit Windows to run it, but if you choose to put more gigs of RAM, Kontakt will be able to use a lot more memory. In case you missed the announcement, I covered this yesterday for CDM:

Kontakt 3 Free 64-bit Upgrade Soon on Mac, Windows

I’m working on getting some other details. For instance, at the moment, no hosts on Mac support 64-bit, so presumably you’d have to either wait for that to change or run Kontakt standalone. On Windows, you have to boot the 64-bit operating system, you need 64-bit drivers, and you again need a 64-bit host, like Cakewalk’s SONAR.

That said, let me ask it another way — show of hands. Who here wants more RAM? Do you use big sample libraries that require it? Anyone already running 64-bit SONAR / Windows?

I’m also talking to NI and wrapping up a story I’ve been working on regarding 64-bit and memory. Got questions you want answered? Stuff that confuses you? I’m happy to pass it along and share what I learn!

(Geek-only side note: I’m also curious if the Windows emulation that allows Kontakt to run on Linux, as it does on the Muse Receptor, will do 64-bit. The ASIO drivers for the WINE compatibility layer on Linux is presently 32-bit only.)

Ready to inject some more sonic goodness into Kore, Kontakt, and Reaktor? You’ve got nothing if not some choices.

The terrific Rekkerd.org has a couple of reviews, covering two of the more powerful add-ons released of late.

KONTAKT

From May, Ronnie covered Soniccouture’s Scriptorium, a collection of powerful scripts for the script engine in Kontakt 3:

Review: Soniccouture Scriptorium [Rekkerd.org]

Some of his favorite gems: helpful sample instruments, faux analog drift, melody generators, and digital glitching and randomization (similar to what Peter Dines did in a video tutorial here).

KORE

Perhaps of still greater interest to readers here, Ronnie offers a frank look at NI’s new Deep Transformations soundpack for Kore, with a nice sound sample of a modified beat loop. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say it’s the Kore pack we’ve been most excited by – even if we long for still more sonic mangling via Reaktor – but let’s see what Ronnie says:

Deep Transformations can do things I haven’t heard in any other plug-in before, and I’ve seen many. I’d say it’s perfectly suitable for anyone who is looking for something more than a simple effect.

Review: Native Instruments Deep Transformations [Rekkerd.org]

Previously on kore@noisepages: New Soundpacks: Multi Effects, FM8 Synth Sounds

REAKTOR:

Musicrow, the boutique maker of Reaktor ensembles, have another massive pack of stuff with some 38 ensembles. Included in the pack:

• Full-blown synths, from the virtual analog subtractive to sample loop synthesis and an Oberheim emulations (and one with a big cobra on it, which is pretty badass)
• Various instruments, including a piano-synth hybrid and a virtual Theremin
• Effects, including filters, a tape delay, plate reverb, tube compressor, and some tasty-looking delays
• Granular goodies, with a delay and effects/synth unit

We’ll have a short review here of what’s in there. I’ll have to finish my own grain delay before I take a look at theirs!

US$159 / EUR119, but if you have the first version, an upgrade is just $25/€20.

Golden Ensembles II Product Page

To me, it’s incredibly liberating to be able to perform live with something you’ve built – even if it’s crudely hacked from other parts. You can build some of your musical and compositional logic right into the ensemble. Likewise, it’s great to see the patches other people have built: even looking at their screen tells you something about the way they think and who they are.

You can see lots of incredible Reaktor ensembles on the User Library on Native Instruments’ site, and we strongly encourage you to upload some of your patching work there. But, of course, that’s just a small selection of the Reaktor patching going on out there. Some ensembles are too personal, or too archaic, or too messy for people to upload.

We want to see it all.

Yeah, you’re a beginner and you have knobs all over the place. Or you’ve got something so beautiful, that you want to show off your gorgeous UI to everyone.

While we’re collecting Live sets over on Create Digital Music, I might as well open the floodgates for the Reaktor community, too. (I know a lot of you use Reaktor with Live, so that makes this make even more sense.)

To share your ensembles – and really, don’t be shy, I enjoy the occasional messy ensemble as a musical artifact – send them to us one of two ways:

1. Email a screen grab to pictures (at) createdigitalmusic.com marked with subject header “Reaktor” OR

2. Add your image to our Reaktor ensembles Flickr group, at http://www.flickr.com/groups/reaktor/

If you do have your ensemble in the User Library, include a link. And yes, even commercial ensembles are welcome – I’d like to see a picture of the whole community. Note that we reserve the right to reproduce these images – but I’ve got some ideas for some visually interesting ways to do that, so I don’t think you’ll regret it. (I suggest using a Creative Commons license on Flickr if you know how.)

If you have hardware you use with your ensemble (especially if it’s custom-built hardware of some kind), include that, too.

Can’t wait to see these!

Updated: Most of the results are now on the Reaktor forum; I’ll be putting together a round-up soon!

In a previous post, I linked you up with a Native Instruments tutorial on DSP in the Core level of Reaktor 5. Ed.: That’s “Core,” as in the powerful low-level sound engine inside Reaktor, not Kore with a “K” as in the Kore product.-PK That may have been a little… challenging, shall we say… for average Reaktor users, as it involved some skull shattering mathematics.

Now Stefan Schmitt has posted Vadim’s Core structures in the user library so the rest of us mere mortals can make some use of these algorithms. Stephan explains in plain English -

In a nutshell: it’s a way to get high-quality filters without oversampling.

Ah! Well then, we shall have to try to work these into an instrument.

To everyone who’s just discovering us via the Native Instruments newsletter, welcome! The idea of this site is to have a place to share techniques — not just how-to’s as far as the software, but how to make these tools work for music. It’s an open site, so those of you who don’t already know me from createdigitalmusic.com, please do get in touch and let us know what you think and what you’d like us to cover. We’re working with Kore, but also Reaktor, Kontakt, and the rest of the Komplete suite of instruments and effects.

To make sure you haven’t missed anything, here’s an overview of some of the highlights of our first few weeks:

Now that we’re off and rolling for a few weeks, I wanted to step back and ask you: how do you use Kore in your work? How might you want to use Kore? (That is, what would you want to know from us to make it work, , even if you don’t currently own it?)

Is it a way of finding sounds? A way of cataloging and designing your own sounds? Something you want to use for live performance? Or do you still have questions about how you might use it?

While hanging out with Richard Devine over the weekend, I asked how he handled similar questions back at the original Kore launch parties (which I wasn’t able to attend). He told attendees at one of those events that one major appeal was to take his somewhat ridiculous selection of plug-ins and use it in a different way. By assigning the Kore knobs to parameters in the plug-ins, he could try affecting multiple parameters at once, producing sounds he might not have otherwise discovered. I’m having a similar experience, though strangely with my Reaktor ensembles.

Kore has been tricky for people to wrap their heads around, so we’d love to hear from you. (And yes, while abusive comments aren’t allowed, this is an open forum.)