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.

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!

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

To me, it’s incredibly liberating to be able to perform live with something you’ve built – even if it’s crudely hacked from other parts. You can build some of your musical and compositional logic right into the ensemble. Likewise, it’s great to see the patches other people have built: even looking at their screen tells you something about the way they think and who they are.

You can see lots of incredible Reaktor ensembles on the User Library on Native Instruments’ site, and we strongly encourage you to upload some of your patching work there. But, of course, that’s just a small selection of the Reaktor patching going on out there. Some ensembles are too personal, or too archaic, or too messy for people to upload.

We want to see it all.

Yeah, you’re a beginner and you have knobs all over the place. Or you’ve got something so beautiful, that you want to show off your gorgeous UI to everyone.

While we’re collecting Live sets over on Create Digital Music, I might as well open the floodgates for the Reaktor community, too. (I know a lot of you use Reaktor with Live, so that makes this make even more sense.)

To share your ensembles – and really, don’t be shy, I enjoy the occasional messy ensemble as a musical artifact – send them to us one of two ways:

1. Email a screen grab to pictures (at) createdigitalmusic.com marked with subject header “Reaktor” OR

2. Add your image to our Reaktor ensembles Flickr group, at http://www.flickr.com/groups/reaktor/

If you do have your ensemble in the User Library, include a link. And yes, even commercial ensembles are welcome – I’d like to see a picture of the whole community. Note that we reserve the right to reproduce these images – but I’ve got some ideas for some visually interesting ways to do that, so I don’t think you’ll regret it. (I suggest using a Creative Commons license on Flickr if you know how.)

If you have hardware you use with your ensemble (especially if it’s custom-built hardware of some kind), include that, too.

Can’t wait to see these!

Updated: Most of the results are now on the Reaktor forum; I’ll be putting together a round-up soon!

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:

If you’re planning to pick up Kore 2 and don’t have a copy of Komplete, you may want to act in the next few days. Through 5/31, NI is throwing in their Massive instrument and Massive Expansion Vol. 1 soundpack for free when you purchase Kore. When you activate Kore between April 1 and May 31, you automatically get a download coupon to take advantage of the offer. (This is the full version only, not the upgrade.)

Massive is my favorite synth in the Komplete suite (well, unless you count Reaktor), so it’s quite a nice offer. See NI’s site for the offer details. Got a copy of Massive? We’re planning more on the instrument on this site, so it’d be great to know if a) you own it and b) if so, what you’d like to learn more about!