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!

Here’s a case study for you - the M1 modular synth, built in Reaktor which is arguably a modular synth in itself. So why build a modular synth in a modular synth? Patch cables!

Yes, using Reaktor’s Multi Display, along with a lot of frighteningly clever programming, Herwig Krass has built what looks like a rack of hardware synth modules that you program by clicking connection  points between the modules right on the front panel of the GUI. Granted, they’re not physically modeled cables that flex and sway in a lifelike manner, but they do give you an immediate visual indication of how a patch is structured.

So is this a gimmicky ensemble whose only strong point is the cabled GUI? Not at all. Listen to some of the snapshots, especially the random snaps in bank 3 and the pseudo random snaps in bank 4 (did I mention it comes with 6 banks of snaps?). These are sounds I usually associate with hardware modular systems (cue sound of purists clucking their tongues that nothing can ever replace a hardware modular).

This is not an ensemble for old or underpowered systems. It takes a few extra seconds to load and eats a fair bit of CPU. Two near-effortless things you can do to reduce CPU consumption are to reduce the voice count from the default of 8, and turn off the nice sounding but processor hungry internal reverb module. Reducing the voice count, incidentally, also increases the volume of each voice.

An instrument this complex needs documentation and Herwig has provided it, in English and German PDF flavors. It’s not only a guide to this particular instrument, but an introduction to modular synthesis itself. Additionally, the first bank of snaps is devoted to simpler tutorial snapshots designed to illustrate a particular feature or concept. In the epilogue to the manual, Herwig says:

Dear Modular-infected user, I know that reading the tutorial is one of the most annoying duties of a software user. Some of what I’ve explained in these basic tutorials, might also seem trivial to some hardware users. But my aim was to make modular synthesis accessible for “green” users as well. The modular has reached a high level of complexity through the last years and cannot be grasped by just a quick look at the surface.

There’s certainly a lot going on beneath the surface of this ensemble, and I’ll be digging into it for some time to come.

Let’s continue learning about the Roux sequencer macro. Last time we looked at the Event Table module in Reaktor and how a clock signal can read values from it. Since the Event Table has no memory associated with snapshots, builders typically use a Snap Value Array to store and recall sequences with snapshots.

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.

TRIO SOWARI
Uploaded by Ornitoto

Phil Durrant is familiar to most Reaktor users as Sowari on the NI messageboards, a helpful and knowledgeable presence there. He’s also a renowned experimental musician, having performed with, among others, Ticklish, Trio Sowari and MIMEO, the music in movement orchestra - a collective that includes Christian Fennesz, Peter Rehberg and Keith Rowe. Phil is currently working on his PhD dissertation, which involves building virtual instruments for improvised laptop performance. I interviewed Phil by email shortly after Trio Sowari performed a series of shows in France. Phil not only answered my questions but shared a screen shots of the Reaktor instruments he uses in live performance, with detailed explanations. Here’s what he had to say.

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.

Sequencers are, by definition, all about controlling sets of events. Having unlocked the mysteries of time — the clock and timing data you need to keep your sequencer in sync — Peter Dines now tackles how a table can organize a sequence of events or steps. Take it away, Chef! -PK

Here’s the next puzzle piece in our series dissecting the guts of the Roux step sequencer macro - the event table. As you might guess from the name, the event table receives and sends event rather than audio data.

By default, the event table holds values between zero and one, and I know I bang on about this lot, but that’s a super convenient range because it’s so easy to scale. Ed.: It’s what’s called a “normalized” range for this reason - and easy to scale, indeed. Want 0 to 127, for instance? Just multiply by 127.) -PK We dealt with scaling the output in the last post on the Roux sequencer.

Reaktor user Joshua Kern has built and uploaded the first third-party instrument made with the Roux sequencer macro we’re discussing and dissecting here at Noisepages. It’s an ambitious drum machine project and eats a fair bit of CPU but he’s working on that. As with most programming, the thing to do is get something working, then worry about efficiency later - as the saying goes, premature optimization is the root of all evil.

As well as my Roux macro, Joshua has leveraged work by Rachmiel, Clist, and RC3, and had help from Sowari (Phil Durrant). As such, I think it’s an excellent example of the kind of code reuse and sense of community that makes the Reaktor user library great.

When I assigned “homework” for readers I don’t know someone would create something this elaborate! It makes me wonder what else is lurking out there. If you’ve cooked up something interesting, let us know here or leave a comment below.

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.

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.)