Guiliano Cantini sends this patch he’s put together with Kore Player and Pd. He uses transient detection in Pd to trigger randomized parameter changes in Kore Player. That rig is entirely free (as in beer), but the same ideas could apply to Kore, too - and if you’re not into the clap metaphor, you could find other audio-reactive or controller-reactive approaches. (You can also just slap the mic on your laptop.)
From the description:
Instantly tweak NI Kore Player’s sound controls with a clap. Pure Data detects your clap and uses it to randomize all 8 controls. Download pd patch @ jkant.altervista.org
Native Instruments has released Compilation Volume 1, a completely free Kore Soundpack with 100 sounds and 800 variations. In fact, you don’t even need Kore to use it: the free Kore Player will work. (I believe that means if you don’t own Kore but do, for instance, own Massive, you could open up Massive-created presets and edit them in the full synth.)
There’s lots in there:
Percussive sounds from Tension
Synth sounds from Absynth, Massive, FM8, Reaktor
The fantastic Reaktor Animated Circuits pack
Synthetic Drums
Kits and grooves
Multi-effects from Deep Transformations
Notably absent is one of our favorites from all year, Spark by NI founder and Reaktor “mastermind” Stephan Schmitt (see our interview). But there’s enough in here to give you a good preview of what’s contained in these packs – and to pass along to your friends if you want to show them a little of what Kore is about.
If you do own Kore, it can be a good way to look at what you can do with Kore controller assignments and variations in sound design, so well worth the download even if you’re not a big preset fan.
Update: Here is a fixed version of the performance and ensemble I originally linked. Since Kore saves absolute path references in its performances, you will have to locate the BlackBox ensemble wherever you unzipped it and load it into the instance of Reaktor in the second channel. This time, doing that will fix the controller mappings. Sorry for the mix up! Hat tip to Sowari for alerting us to the problem.
The new Spark instrument for Reaktor evolved through many iterations out of Stephan Schmitt’s desire for an instrument that responds to the player in a performance situation. It’s aimed at realtime manipulation by a skilled player, and keeps the built-in LFOs and envelopes to a bare minimum.
As I played with Spark over the weekend, I noticed that some of the richest sonic possibilities emerged from using it in Kore for hands-on control, especially when morphing between sound variations. I started thinking about ways to add motion to the sound while still respecting Stephan’s vision of a performance oriented instrument. This is what I came up with:
It’s a Reaktor motion recorder designed especially for use in Kore in conjunction with Spark. The three knobs are mapped to the three macro controls in Spark, and record your movements, then play them back. Since the motion comes from you, from your reactions and musical intuition as you play, it’s a live and human kind of modulation source - but it also gives you three extra hands to perform.
Here’s how it works: the three upper left knobs on the Kore controller are mapped to the BlackBox knobs, and the three buttons above them enable recording. It’s easy to hold down the record button with a middle finger and move a knob with your thumb and index. When you release the record button, the automation begins playing back and looping automatically. The three leftmost buttons on the bottom row enable or disable the automation.
Since the lengths of the recorded sequences aren’t quantized, they phase-shift against each other and against the tempo of your music. It creates an organic push and pull that I like. Here’s what it sounds like:
Last time we looked at Kontakt I showed you how to import and slice up a sample, and create new music out of an old melody. Now let’s pick up where we left off by exploring the scripts and performance views in some Kontakt and Kontakt-based Kore library instruments.
The Urban Beats collection that ships with Kontakt includes 49 instruments, each with a different set of percussion loops and samples. I’ll show you how to use the sequencing and effects scripts to create endless variation in each instrument. As well, we’ll have a look at creating and managing zone envelopes to repitch and pan loops.
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:
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.
In this video I load up Massive in Kore again for hands-on control and take a look at some creative signal routing and modulation possibilities in Massive. Feedback is something people primarily associate with rock, heaviness and sludge, but there’s something here for the meditator as well as the rockist. How about some harp feedback? Eat your heart out, Joanna Newsom.
I have extented the macro of the roux step/event sequencer with a snapshot macro.
The snapshot macro will switch between sequences on beats or triggers (like how ableton live switches between parts…), so it’s even better than using multiple Y tablerows (I used to use multiple Y rows as well but this is much better I think.. thanx..
Yup, I do something similar. Interested builders should check look in the factory ensembles under new additions / sequencers and load the “Snapper Macros” ensemble. That example will show you how to use the Snapper instrument to change snaps in a slave instrument in a synchronized manner.
Got an evening to get deeper into sound? Want to get a project started? We’ve been covering all aspects of using Kore in music, bit by bit. Here’s the overview of what we’ve done, which we’re expanding on an ongoing basis.
When you’re working in the studio or designing sounds, navigating complex parameters with a mouse makes some sense. But when you want to focus on sounds — while playing an instrument in private or (especially) live — you really want hardware control.
Kore 2’s controller does let you do this. The trick is to learn how to navigate different levels of sounds, since you may have different instruments in a performance you want to control. Here’s a quick reference guide to how to do it.
This comes off a little like those old text adventure games. (You’re in a dark dungeon. There are entrances to the LEFT and RIGHT. There are SOUNDS. You can hit the CONTROL button.) But walk through these steps with a performance open, and it’ll make sense — and with a little practice, you can do this quite quickly.
Got an evening to get deeper into sound? Want to get a project started? We’ve been covering all aspects of using Kore in music, bit by bit. Here’s the overview of what we’ve done, which we’re expanding on an ongoing basis.
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