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!

Native Instruments announced today some new pricing for Kore and related products. The existing Kore product (hardware with software) is now cheaper, you can get just the software without the hardware for a lot less, and you can now buy a whole bunch of Koresound packs bundled together at once. I’ll break it down for you:

• You don’t own Kore, and you want the hardware and software. Kore 2 is now US$449 / EUR399 with the controller, down from $499 / EUR449.
• You don’t own Kore, and you want just the software. The “Kore 2 Software Edition” does everything the software does, but leaves out the controller if you don’t want it. Result: it costs about half as much, at US$229 / EUR199.
• You own Kore 1, and you want to upgrade to Kore 2 sans controller. That’s now US$119/EUR99 to migrate from Kore 1 to Kore 2 Software Edition — keeping in mind, Kore 2 Software Edition will still support your existing Kore controller / audio interface if you prefer that.
• You want more Koresounds. Now you don’t have to piece together the sound bundles you want a la carte. The new Kore Electronic Experience bundles together seven of the Kore soundpacks into one bundle, priced at US$229 / EUR199. And of course this is on top of what ships with Kore 2 in the other editions. Note that if you just want the sounds and not the custom sound editing and hosting capabilities of the full Kore software, this pack is all you need — it ships with the free Kore Player.

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.

What would you most want to know about Kore? What would you most want to see on Kore if you had just a few minutes? (Beer and drinks would be available.) What would you want to show other people?

I’m putting together a short workshop for the Warper Party in New York, a (roughly) monthly get-together of laptop musicians of all types in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Now, NI has done an official workshop tour, but well-done as it was, that was a sales event. I’m talking to fellow musicians, and even some non-musicians.

I’ve got some ideas for what to put together, but I’m equally interested in what you think. And in addition to doing this event live in Brooklyn (I’ll post info for those of you in the area), I think a short, all-encompassing workshop would be ideal to add to this site.

We’ve already got some stuff in our “101″ thread:
101 tag @kore.noisepages
…and of course, on Kore in general:
Kore tag @kore.noisepages

But there’s plenty more to talk about. So let’s have it: what would you most want to know?

My focus will be on using Kore as the hub of a live performance rig, in conjunction with Reaktor, and using it for really playing electronics live.

Photo at top: me playing Boston’s Beat Research, all in Kore, as part of the Mind Meld get-together earlier this summer. Photo by Todd Thille.

On NI forums: Since some of you like to chat there, I’ve also opened a thread on the NI forum. What I may do, as well, is get the outline and some content for this workshop up and allow people to comment on it, so in the end we’ll have collected some community wisdom (and questions!) for the results.

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.

Interpol, the superstar, New York-based band (not the international anti-crime organization) have been touring the world with an intensive, live rig, powered by Kore. Our friend Jonathan Adams Leonard aka sleen, a technological superstar himself, put together their current digital setup, and sends along copious notes on the hardware and software rig. Jonathan has plenty more to share as far as how to make Kore work for live players, but first let’s have a look at the details of the rig itself.

And yes, prepare yourself for some serious hardware and software pr0n from one of the world’s best live bands. No DJ sets here.

(For our previous chat with Jonathan, see Free, Modular Power Tools for Kore 2: A Guide to the Reaktor Toolpack, covering his must-download Reaktor ensembles for use with Kore.)

I’m putting together a setup to compose my hockey theme masterpiece (yeah right), and here’s how it’s shaping up; I’m using Reaper as my host, Kore 2 as a sub-host and Koresounds as instruments. Two things I like about Kore for this project - one, it has just about every sound I’d want ready to go, so I won’t spend too much time in the black hole of sound design. Two, my instrument setup is abstracted away from the DAW as a Kore performance so I can easily migrate it to another DAW if need be.

Why Reaper? I’ve used Cubase and other spendier DAWs in the past but I don’t have access to those at the moment, and having created a couple of mini projects in Reaper in the last little while, it looks like it has everything I need. BTW, there’s a beta available for Mac now, so don’t feel frozen out.

I want to keep all my sounds bundled together in a Kore performance so I’ve created just one instance of Kore - the multi-out plugin version that has 8 stereo channels of output. Then my plan was to create 8 separate audio tracks and route the channels to them… I noticed that the Reaper plugin wrapper has a function to do exactly that:

Bam! That was easy. It builds the routing and creates the tracks to send to - no mucking about with the routing dialogs and matrix. So now it’s a simple matter of configuring my sounds in Kore - choosing sounds and setting the MIDI in and plugin-out settings for each one:

Nice and simple - first sound takes input from MIDI channel one and goes to plugin output one, second is on channel two and goes to output two, and so on.

Now, what about MIDI channels routed to Kore? You probably noticed the “Build 16 channels of
MIDI routing to this track” entry in the Reaper plugin wrapper. Guess what? It works. Only thing left to do is set up the MIDI input sources for the MIDI tracks.

Here’s a zip file containing my preliminary Reaper setup and Kore 2 performance if anyone wants to have a look. It’s in a pretty raw stage but the routing works.

So readers, are any of you using Kore 2 in Reaper? Have you learned any interesting tricks or pitfalls doing so? Let me know… in the meantime, I have a theme to compose!

Maybe you’ve heard about the CBC’s contest to create a new Hockey Night in Canada theme… well, I’ve decided to take a kick at that can. $100,000 plus half the royalties is nothing to sneeze at.

I’m going to be using Kore 2 for the sounds - it has a lot of great sounding meat and potatoes sampled content for band and orchestral sounds, and it’s easy to find and change instruments as you compose. So far I’m in the planning stages - I have some sounds in my head and I’m making notes. I think I’ll be using Reaper as my DAW because of the flexible routings; I can use one instance of Kore and route its outputs to various tracks for mixing and creating stems. I’ll post some information on how that all fits together after I’ve got it sorted, and keep you up to date on my composing progress.

This is a huge challenge! I’m rewriting Canada’s second (some would say first) national anthem, and it’s iconic.

But maybe all this is a waste of time - how can I compete with this entry?

Be careful, Peter; as with hockey teams, rich American investors might decide to buy up this tune, import it to the US, and then discover Americans aren’t all that interested. Hmmm… maybe someone needs to write a song that helps us Yankees get hip to soccer, too. -PK

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

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: