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!

Here’s a case study for you - the M1 modular synth, built in Reaktor which is arguably a modular synth in itself. So why build a modular synth in a modular synth? Patch cables!

Yes, using Reaktor’s Multi Display, along with a lot of frighteningly clever programming, Herwig Krass has built what looks like a rack of hardware synth modules that you program by clicking connection  points between the modules right on the front panel of the GUI. Granted, they’re not physically modeled cables that flex and sway in a lifelike manner, but they do give you an immediate visual indication of how a patch is structured.

So is this a gimmicky ensemble whose only strong point is the cabled GUI? Not at all. Listen to some of the snapshots, especially the random snaps in bank 3 and the pseudo random snaps in bank 4 (did I mention it comes with 6 banks of snaps?). These are sounds I usually associate with hardware modular systems (cue sound of purists clucking their tongues that nothing can ever replace a hardware modular).

This is not an ensemble for old or underpowered systems. It takes a few extra seconds to load and eats a fair bit of CPU. Two near-effortless things you can do to reduce CPU consumption are to reduce the voice count from the default of 8, and turn off the nice sounding but processor hungry internal reverb module. Reducing the voice count, incidentally, also increases the volume of each voice.

An instrument this complex needs documentation and Herwig has provided it, in English and German PDF flavors. It’s not only a guide to this particular instrument, but an introduction to modular synthesis itself. Additionally, the first bank of snaps is devoted to simpler tutorial snapshots designed to illustrate a particular feature or concept. In the epilogue to the manual, Herwig says:

Dear Modular-infected user, I know that reading the tutorial is one of the most annoying duties of a software user. Some of what I’ve explained in these basic tutorials, might also seem trivial to some hardware users. But my aim was to make modular synthesis accessible for “green” users as well. The modular has reached a high level of complexity through the last years and cannot be grasped by just a quick look at the surface.

There’s certainly a lot going on beneath the surface of this ensemble, and I’ll be digging into it for some time to come.

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.

I’ve been using the Winamp-VST Bridge plug-in on PC to browse and preview large collections of sample source material. (Ed.: Winamp is the fantastic music player software for Windows, predating — and arguably, better than — iTunes. -PK) It’s great for testing out how things will sound when run through an effect without having to laboriously convert, slice and import files into a sample map.

Here it is running some audio, which I recorded on a Zoom H4 handheld recorder, into the granular delay we’ve been constructing here at Noisepages. If you’re like me and you have folder after folder of field recordings and vinyl samples, this is a super fast way to sift through them to find those golden moments where a combination of a sample and an effect become something new and exciting. Throw things against the wall and see what sticks, quickly and easily - primarily because of things like right clicking on a folder and choosing “enqueue/play in Winamp”, being able to skip around in a file quickly, navigate a playlist, save a playlist of favorites - all without having to worry about file formats. A “real” host is for later, once you have a goal or direction in mind. You can even browse shoutcast mp3 radio streams through your VST effects.

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.

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:

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!

Sleen’s Toolpack has a terrific live looper / recorder / sampler for audio, but it records to precious RAM and only up to 260 seconds. For those of us who like to use Kore stand-alone, there needs to be a better way to record longer pieces of audio.

There are ways to make the tapedeck module record to disk but a quicker, dirtier, easier way is to use the recorderbox built into Reaktor.

When trying out the Kontakt ambient looper patch I created for a previous screencast in Kore 2, I was surprised that there was no easy way to automate its parameters with the Kore controllers. Actually, it was pretty easy in the end, but doing it took a few minutes of exploring, so I’ll share that with you now.

First off, the Kore controllers can receive but not send midi, so I inserted a third script: look under preset -> factory -> utilities -> 6 midi controllers.