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!

If you read this site, you’re probably also on NI’s mailing list, but I just wanted to point out a great feature on Radiohead’s onstage setup. NI interviews Radiohead’s keyboard tech Alan Russell:

Radiohead On Stage with Kontakt

The setup is really interesting: one Mac laptop (with one backup) runs a single instance of Kontakt. Kontakt then simultaneously plays instruments from the two keyboards onstage.

They use Kontakt in order to fill in with sampled sounds and to replace a lot of the hardware that would otherwise need to be hauled around. (I’ve been talking to a lot of artists, famous and less-so, who are using samplers to lighten their load on the road.) There’s even a Crumar Orchestrator preset in the library. Russ’s and Jonny’s laptops fill out still more computer-based sounds with Max and Pro-53, and you’ll see in the image above Kontakt is hosted in Live.

Well worth reading the whole story. It’s written by our friend at NI, Florian Grote, who is an accomplished computer musician himself. (I’ve noted his Pure Data workshop on CDM.) It makes a real difference having the person doing the interview knowledgeable enough to ask the questions you’d ask.

But, while this is obviously good advertising for NI, I think it’s equally nice to note that this is a setup you could duplicate, at least on some level. A lot of us even have an extra laptop we could run as a backup. That’s rarely been the case with tours as big as the Radiohead tour. Yet you could now set up a really sophisticated rig running computer software, with the kinds of timbral changes that previously required massive rigs of outboard gear and technical crews. That’s very good news for those of us who have to be our own tech!

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

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

Kontakt 3 has fantastic MIDI transform scripting abilities, and they’re not limited to triggering internal samples. If you take a look at the MIDI dropdown menu on the engine tab of Kontakt 3’s main options, you’ll see settings for what MIDI events will be sent out when triggered or generated.

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.

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:

Nils Liberg maintains a fantastic resource of Kontakt scripts, a tutorial and even a free/donationware programmer-oriented script editor that comes in Windows and OS X flavors.

Nils is behind the script that powers the Scarbee Black Bass instrument, and his scripts are mainly geared towards creating realistic instrument emulations. If that’s not your cup of tea, a few of the scripts look ripe for experimentation, like the MIDI filter and the FX morph.

These were written for Kontakt 2 - I haven’t tested them all but the MIDI filter and FX morph load up fine in K3. I think they’d be great starting points for taking things even further… hmmm, I wonder if I could hack the FX morph to use four instead of two presets and fade between them with a 2D control surface…

Peter Dines’ tutorial on scripting and modulation in Kontakt 3 from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

I’m always on the lookout for a really sick sampler - something that can scratch my itch, and keep scratching when the itch migrates. I think I’ve found that sick sampler in Kontakt. I usually hit the wall with a sampler half an hour into exploring it. There will be some inflexible feature that shows me the developer had one way of making music in mind, and didn’t foresee how someone might want to creatively abuse the product.

Kontakt, on the other hand, invites creative abuse. It’s easy to do simple things and possible to do complex things. Here’s a video of a simple but offbeat thing I like to do with a sampler. I’ve also provided a Kontakt instrument for you to download. It has a different sample than the one in the video, for copyright reasons, but everything else is the same.

Let me know what you think, and maybe we can explore ways to take this further. One thing I’d like to do is get it integrated in Kore, and another is to fancy up the panning script a bit. Any other ideas out there?

Kontakt preset files download