I’ve really been enjoying playing with patches based on Peter Dines’ Grain Delay tutorial. If you haven’t yet checked out that tutorial, it’s a terrific way to get started with a built-in Reaktor module that’s essential to all kinds of effects. The ensemble itself doesn’t get too fancy, meaning it’s friendlier to beginners than some of the polished-but-complex ensembles you find in the Reaktor examples and User Library. And that’s part of the point — the way most people are likely to use Reaktor in their own ensembles is to start small and basic, not necessarily with elaborate custom skins and complex features.

Peter’s example works really nicely for navigating an ambient sound. But I started thinking about using this for rhythmic ideas, so I could build a custom grain delay effect set up for easy live performance in Kore. To get beat-synced, sequenced effects, you need to work with clock information. The clock will act as a kind of metronome for your beat-based effects. That means turning to a previous Peter Dines tutorial:

Revving up Reaktor: A Refresher on Clocks and Events

We had a refreshingly frank comment from reader armachian:

“after reading I now realise that Reaktor is not for me!! Compared to something like the Clavia G2 this seems like a lot of steps (and hidden tricks) for a simple sequencer/clock demo. Life is too short!”

Actually, that’s right – life is too short! But I think armachian misunderstood. The whole point of having a modular system is you don’t have to repeat the same steps over and over again. You can simply re-use basic macros, like the SeqDriver macro Peter created, shown top right. You don’t have to even know how it works (though it couldn’t hurt); you can instead focus on what you want to do. In fact, even if you’re using macros you’ve created yourself, this can keep you focused on your musical aims rather than getting hung up on the mechanics underneath.

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!

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!

My main interest in Reaktor is implementing lateral thinking and “musical leverage”, you might call it. Like what Steve Jobs called computers - bicycles for the mind. So I built this bicycle for your music.

It’s a step sequencer with a twist. Each step has a probability that it will trigger. This can create never ending variations on a synth line or percussion pattern. Here, I have it sending midi to a simple subtractive synth, the SimpleXore. It has some neat features too, including filter feedback and a set of recordable XY controllers that add some movement and variation to the sound. Plus, it uses the great sounding Core oscillators and filters that were introduced with Reaktor 5.

Introduction to Frankenloop from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Have fun with it and stay tuned - coming soon we’re going to look at using Frankenloop to control synths and percussion in Kore, and also continue learning about Reaktor internals by modifying and dissecting it.

Download Frankenloop

Also available at the Reaktor user library. Vote up the instrument if you like it!

Frankenloop by Peter Dines is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.