Digital software instruments give you opportunities to explore new sounds and timbres, so why not add tuning to the list? Kore@CDM contributor and sound designer Eoin Rossney helps us navigate the potentially intimidating world of microtuning. Microtonal sound simply refers, generally, to tunings beyond the now-standard 12-Tone Equal Temperament we find on modern pianos. First off, microtuning doesn’t have to sound dissonant or “out of tune” - like other choices with synthesis, it can simply give you some new sonic abilities. Native Instruments’ synths are well-suited to the task, as many having tuning capabilities built-in. If you’re using plug-ins to assist your microtonal voyage, Kore is a natural with its plug-in hosting capabilities. But the most important thing is just to dive in somewhere and see what happens - with no physical instrument to retune, it’s something anyone can do.

We’ve got a massive set of resources here to get started. It’s a bit stream-of-consciousness, but take a browse; there’s surely something in here to get you started. We’ll follow up with some specific microtuned instrument examples. Enjoy! -PK

Introducing Microtonal Sound

Before we begin, there are one or two things you should know:

Forcing incoming midi to a scale isn’t necessarily microtuning. Ableton Live’s Scale plugin, for example, maps incoming notes to a scale, but that scale will still have only 12 intervals per octave: Microtonal scales have notes between the western 12 note-per-octave pitches.

Microtonal doesn’t necessarily mean dissonant. In fact, in classical music, some ’subtle’ or meantone tunings can sound more “in tune” than conventional tunings. Ed.: That’s because composers in previous centuries didn’t use the 12-Tone Equal Tempered tuning we generally use on pianos today - on the contrary, many of them would likely think your Steinway grand sounds out of tune. -PK Depending on how you play the scale, some harmonies can sound beautifully pure, but hit a wrong note and things get nasty.

Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. Going through some of the available tunings out there, results can vary from making sound almost inaudible to making your instrument sound quite “alive”, with pitches changing depending on what notes are held.

Quick Tip: Instant Microtuning on PC

To get started, here’s a quick hack for trying out microtonal sound. The easiest way by far to retune your Windows synths is to grab Tobybear’s MicroTuner.  This basic VST allows you to load Scala .scl tunings by drag and drop and then imposes them on your synth. (Scala is the standard format for tuning tables.) This is more of a hack than a proper retuning, but it works.

Here’s how it’s done:
Step 1: Download/install the Tobybear Midibag plugins
Step 2: Download/extract the Scala scale library
Step 3: Place Microtuner in front of your instrument
Step 4: Drag the .scl file onto the GUI
Step 4: Olé!

Jonathan Adams Leonard is back with yet another update to the Reaktor Toolpack for Kore. Jonathan really earns credit for having made Kore itself doubly useful when combined with Reaktor and his custom patches, and this adds one really cool addition and another improvement to a nice existing feature:

AudioTrigger is a new addition that converts a mono audio input to a midi note event with velocity. Features include a learn button for automatically setting the trigger threshold and numerous controls for adjusting sensitivity including a bandpass filter to reject unwanted frequencies.

Scale was redesigned using a reaktor event table to handle the randomization of polyphonic input which fixed a problem with hung notes.

Update info on the NI forum
Kore 2 Reaktor Toolpack site

And, Kore + Reaktor users, see our own Eoin Rossney take an in-depth look at the toolpack (minus these new modules):
Free, Modular Power Tools for Kore 2: A Guide to the Reaktor Toolpack

Who will be the first person to upload a video featuring the audio trigger in Kore? (I’ll see if I can’t make that me!) I’m kind of interested to hook it up to one of the beat-making apps now on my PSP, DS, and iPod touch.

Reaktor user Joshua Kern has built and uploaded the first third-party instrument made with the Roux sequencer macro we’re discussing and dissecting here at Noisepages. It’s an ambitious drum machine project and eats a fair bit of CPU but he’s working on that. As with most programming, the thing to do is get something working, then worry about efficiency later - as the saying goes, premature optimization is the root of all evil.

As well as my Roux macro, Joshua has leveraged work by Rachmiel, Clist, and RC3, and had help from Sowari (Phil Durrant). As such, I think it’s an excellent example of the kind of code reuse and sense of community that makes the Reaktor user library great.

When I assigned “homework” for readers I don’t know someone would create something this elaborate! It makes me wonder what else is lurking out there. If you’ve cooked up something interesting, let us know here or leave a comment below.

In French cooking, there’s a sauce base called a roux (pronounced “roo”) that is the foundation of bechamel and other sauces. This is a sequencer macro that is the equivalent for programming sequenced instruments in Reaktor - you can take it in any direction from here. In its most basic form it can send velocity information to trigger percussion, or modulate instrument parameters like cutoff and resonance. With a few simple changes it becomes a pitch sequencer, suitable for use in something like the Frankenloop device.

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.)

FM8 is a really brilliant tool for synthesizing electronic drum kits. And because it’s using live synthesis, you can make all kinds of variations in the sound easily in ways that don’t work with sampled kits. Our friend Gustavo Bravetti is a huge fan of FM8 and has added it to his workflow in Ableton Live.

Gustavo’s such a big FM8 fan, in fact, that he’s made up a special FM8 drum kit setup exclusively for CDM, to share with y’all. Because Gustavo works in Ableton Live, he’s set them up in that environment:

The sounds are contained on an Ableton Live dj set, also there is a demo clip for each instrument.
Instruments are copyright free, clips are only intended to preview the instruments.
Let me know your thoughts about the FM8 electronic drum kit 1

File download: (zipped Live ALS file with presets; we’ll have a Koresound soon)

bravetti_fm8drums_1_als.zip

Here’s what it sounds like:

fm8kit.mp3

And just to demonstrate how much change you can extract from synth parameters, here’s a quickie "messed-up" demo I made just by changing synth and effects options in FM8:

fm8kit_2.mp3

Be sure to check out Gustavo Bravetti himself, too. He did an interview for CDM in which he shares all his tricks for using unusual alternative controllers, gestural gloves, and gaming devices for music making. He also talks about the scene in his native Uruguay. Liz McLean Knight did the interview:

Interview: Gustavo Bravetti, Playing Music with Light and Interactive Gloves

How can you make the most of this FM8 kit? Here are some quick ideas, which I’ll follow up in the coming days:

Last time around, we had a look at creating a basic grain delay from scratch. It’s usable, but why stop there? Here are some improvements.

Ugo Audio has released a set of 15 free presets for Massive. There are a couple of very nice physically modeled bowed and plucked sounds in there making use of Massive’s comb filters, and two representative examples of the atmospheric and sequenced patches that Massive excels at:

I’ll be posting some more material on Massive shortly. Stay tuned!

Before we go any further in Reaktor construction, I’d be remiss in my tutorial duties if I didn’t point people towards Chris List’s event watcher. Ed.: Chris is here in NYC, too, so we’ll have to catch up with him in person soon!

Kore’s built-in effects are an essential part of the tool, but getting good with them requires fully understanding how they work – and appreciating how to make the most of the minimalist selection of parameters provided. We’ve got a download from Eoin showing off some of the power of the arpeggiator. Not only can it perform the usual vanilla tasks, but you can morph patterns, too. Some of the controls are definitely a little different than what you may be used to (“Force”, for instance), but the results can be something special – especially once you start chaining arpeggiators. –PK

Commenter apoclypse expressed interest in a tutorial for Kore’s arpeggiator, among other things.  We definitely hope to put the magnifying glass to Kore as much as possible, so let us know if there’s a section in particular that you’re struggling with.  With that in mind, here’s an arpeggiator tutorial for you to check out - don’t forget to load up the accompanying Koresound to play with while reading!

Arpeggiator Demo [KSD file, zipped]

While learning the Arpeggiator I recommend loading Kore up in your host sequencer and enabling the metronome (or set up the equivalent in Kore).  You’ll get an even better sense of what’s going on rhythmically if you loop a four-to-the-floor drumbeat in the background.

Kore’s arp isn’t immune to the power of morphing presets, so in the example Koresound provided, I’ve set up 8 morph presets starting with Init and moving from there to demonstrate the features as clearly as possible.  Try following through from A to H and follow the text to see what’s changing - all of the morph presets here are synced to the bar with the Hold (latch) button enabled so timing is locked to your sequencer and you can adjust parameters without having to keep your hand on the keyboard.  I also recommend loading up all of the factory Arpeggiator presets in one source channel so you can see what other effects are possible. 

Once you’ve got our file loaded, you can have a look at some of the capabilities of the Apreggiator by navigating the morph presets. Here’s a description of what’s going on with each one: