GearWire’s Bill Holland gets lost in the sounds of some Reaktor instruments in a couple of videos. Worth watching, in case you haven’t explored some of the Reaktor library yet – or for showing to non-believers, if you prefer. Thought I’d put them here to bring in a perspective beyond our own videos:

Click through to high-quality versions on YouTube, or check out the original GearWire posts:

Native Instruments Reaktor Equinox: Bill Holland In A Padded Room

Native Instruments Reaktor Gaugear: Bill Holland Checks His Gaug-Reflex

Gaugear in particular is a real favorite of mine – another creation of the insanely-talented Lazyfish (who is evidently neither fish, nor lazy).

Also interesting: as I was looking for these videos, I see an interview with Cliff Taylor of The Plan (Submerge label). Cliff uses both SynthEdit and Reaktor for his creations. That should answer confused users who ask, what should I use? The answer, invariably: whatever you want, or even all of the above. Different tools do yield different ways of working.

Ugo Audio has released a set of 15 free presets for Massive. There are a couple of very nice physically modeled bowed and plucked sounds in there making use of Massive’s comb filters, and two representative examples of the atmospheric and sequenced patches that Massive excels at:

I’ll be posting some more material on Massive shortly. Stay tuned!

It’s hard for me to describe, but there’s something really inspiring about pulling up Kore and using it to design some different instrumental sounds.

I do a lot of music for modern dance. What’s nice about it is that dancers tend to be up for anything. I finished a new score for a long-time collaborator here in New York named Kathy Westwater. Kathy wanted some evocative soundscapes for a new piece. And then, "oh, yeah, I’m suddenly thinking electric guitar."

Fortunately, this leads to a couple of tricks I like to use. And I really like the ability to design for an instrument and not just do some sound effect. That way, I can actually just play live, like composing with sound in real-time. These techniques could certainly be applied to other projects, so here’s a look. This isn’t really a tutorial so much as some hands-on experience that happened to work for me.