I began writing this post to discuss Kore 2’s performance preset system. If you’re not familiar with this, the quick lowdown is: you can store banks of settings and change between them, or automate changing between them, in a master performance. I touched on this in my last post about Reaktor.

A funny thing happened on the way to the blog. I discovered that, when using a given synth and trying to store different patches in performance presets, not all the parameters were stored and changed with the preset. On the other hand, storing patches as Koresounds does save all the parameter settings. I’m thinking this difference is because the performance presets save on the basis of host automation of the controls, so non-automatable controls won’t have their state saved. (will have to doublecheck with the NI programmers on this to be 100% sure!)

Of course I started looking for workarounds. I loaded up Massive (my go-to synth for mad fun these days) and started trying to save different Massive sounds in the sound variation grid.

In retrospect this was a dumb move, because the sound variation grid is meant to hold variations in a sound, not multiple sounds. So like the performance preset, not all parameters save. Wrong level of abstraction. What I ended up with is a single sound with unusual, in some cases meaningless, parameter settings for that sound in eight variations. You might think this would be undesirable, but my goodness, I’ve never heard anything quite like this:

Unwholesome Sound Design from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

A sound such as this can only be called Quacking Robomultiverse, and I have named it accordingly. Notice the tuning settings of the oscillators on the left - they’re morphing in between settings that made sense in their original sound, but in this mutant superposition of sounds, things have become singularly Lovecraftian; abnormal, non-Euclidean, and loathsomely redolent of spheres and dimensions apart from ours. Incidentally, I’m using the Kore knobs to morph between sound variations here, but a mouse is fine too.

Download kore performance and massive sound

Building instruments and effects in Reaktor is a lot like building your own hardware. But ever wished those fabulous UIs you’ve seen could be used via something other than … ugh … your mouse? View Reaktor with a touchscreen or touch-controlled projection, and it’s an entirely different game. We already knew Tim Exile was a fan of touchscreens, but here’s what it can do in the hands of another Reaktor master.

Above are videos of Metrognome a.k.a Karl White getting down with a custom ensemble on a touchscreen. Karl reveals on the NI forums:

That was a huge undertaking and is one very complex Reaktor mod. I’ll be making more stuff public on the user library once I get the documentation lined up.

In other words, new goodies on the horizon! Here’s a better look at the Intelectualist ensemble (click for the full-sized version):

Live performance granular drum machine. My inspiration was the intelekt in the NI user library and various works by Clist, Program Child, etc.

I like the use of recordable touch-faders in the upper left - looks like an implementation similar to my own Freshmaker macro. If this isn’t exciting enough, here’s a video of Karl working with his ensemble on a wiimote whiteboard - I’ll be keeping an eye out for his work in the user library.

Native Instruments has posted a teaser video of something new called Spiral. It’s a sequencing instrument, and as you can see modulation is represented by swirling squares. It looks fantastic, it sounds wonderful and fluid – it’s, naturally, the creation of Reaktor maestro Lazyfish, who brought us ensembles like the cellular automata-powered Newschool and the brilliantly inscrutable Gaugear in Reaktor 5.1. Lazyfish is the kind of person who can make you believe the future of software instruments is unlimited.

I’m humbled again in my Reaktor building chops. This is really wonderful.

Now, as it happens, I know that there’s more to this story than Spiral, and as you know, generally I’m always eager to talk more about design and instruments. Stay tuned.

(Incidentally, potentially an obvious tip, but if you use Reaktor in Ableton Live, Ableton will automatically show the active plug-in user interface based on which channel is selected. That means you can easily switch between lots of funky-looking Reaktor UIs in Live without having to open and close windows. And of course, that’s really important when you have fantastic, strange UIs you actually want to use live, like this one. I’ll do a short screencast this week or next. Thanks to Owen Vallis, our friend and talented Reaktor user, for the idea. I’m finding having Live with Reaktor and Kore all running at once is a wonderful surge of sonic power.)

Updated: Reaktor 5 users will get this as a free download; see Thomas’ announcement on the NI forum.

Wondering how to use this thing? Don’t miss our how-to screencast video.

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.

Speedy J, aka techno/minimal pioneer Jochem Paap, has made a sort of software version of himself in Kontakt player form, with 4 GB of sounds and one of the crazier-looking Kontakt skins I’ve seen. I love the idea of making a software externalization of your musical ideas. (See also: Richard Devine’s recent loop collections for Sony, which I need to write up one of these days; Richard’s another Kontakt and Reaktor guru and can regularly be found among the NI presets.)

In the library:

• kits
• hits/tones
• loops
• sequencer-based instruments (using Kontakt’s sequencer capabilities)
• FX, Konstrukt scripting instruments