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!

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!

In a previous post, I linked you up with a Native Instruments tutorial on DSP in the Core level of Reaktor 5. Ed.: That’s “Core,” as in the powerful low-level sound engine inside Reaktor, not Kore with a “K” as in the Kore product.-PK That may have been a little… challenging, shall we say… for average Reaktor users, as it involved some skull shattering mathematics.

Now Stefan Schmitt has posted Vadim’s Core structures in the user library so the rest of us mere mortals can make some use of these algorithms. Stephan explains in plain English -

In a nutshell: it’s a way to get high-quality filters without oversampling.

Ah! Well then, we shall have to try to work these into an instrument.

Now that we’re off and rolling for a few weeks, I wanted to step back and ask you: how do you use Kore in your work? How might you want to use Kore? (That is, what would you want to know from us to make it work, , even if you don’t currently own it?)

Is it a way of finding sounds? A way of cataloging and designing your own sounds? Something you want to use for live performance? Or do you still have questions about how you might use it?

While hanging out with Richard Devine over the weekend, I asked how he handled similar questions back at the original Kore launch parties (which I wasn’t able to attend). He told attendees at one of those events that one major appeal was to take his somewhat ridiculous selection of plug-ins and use it in a different way. By assigning the Kore knobs to parameters in the plug-ins, he could try affecting multiple parameters at once, producing sounds he might not have otherwise discovered. I’m having a similar experience, though strangely with my Reaktor ensembles.

Kore has been tricky for people to wrap their heads around, so we’d love to hear from you. (And yes, while abusive comments aren’t allowed, this is an open forum.)

For anyone interested, here are some of my musical creations for choreographer Kathy Westwater, the sound design I described in our “sound design for imaginary instruments” series. Kathy’s work is Macho, named for the astrological body, as seen at right. (This qualifies as experimental music, so download only if you’re into that sort of thing.) This is a seven-minute version of the score, free for you to download.

Macho MP3

The work was designed and performed almost entirely in Kore, using Ableton Live as my host. As a result, I was able to play most of it live, then do some smaller tweaks and arrangements in Live in real-time. The very end includes some samples generated from an earlier section of the piece. Everything else is some extreme sound design, liberally using the Grain Shifter and guitar effects engine from Guitar Rig.

Photo from the Hubble telescope, by ESA/NASA.

I always loved fiddling with the insides of piano, back to when I was a kid. I’ve had the opportunity to play the occasional John Cage piece, and have done other prepared piano music. Prepared techniques include adding obstructions to strings and other modifications. There’s nothing like a real instrument, so I won’t even try to propose digital work as a substitute. But, on the other hand, mimicking real-world sounds with digital techniques gives you an entirely new perspective on sound.

In the last installment of “sound design for imaginary instruments,” we saw some experiments with guitar sounds. This time, I’ll talk about how nice it is to be able to throw together sampled sounds and effects quickly in Kore.

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.

Peter Dines’ tutorial on scripting and modulation in Kontakt 3 from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

I’m always on the lookout for a really sick sampler - something that can scratch my itch, and keep scratching when the itch migrates. I think I’ve found that sick sampler in Kontakt. I usually hit the wall with a sampler half an hour into exploring it. There will be some inflexible feature that shows me the developer had one way of making music in mind, and didn’t foresee how someone might want to creatively abuse the product.

Kontakt, on the other hand, invites creative abuse. It’s easy to do simple things and possible to do complex things. Here’s a video of a simple but offbeat thing I like to do with a sampler. I’ve also provided a Kontakt instrument for you to download. It has a different sample than the one in the video, for copyright reasons, but everything else is the same.

Let me know what you think, and maybe we can explore ways to take this further. One thing I’d like to do is get it integrated in Kore, and another is to fancy up the panning script a bit. Any other ideas out there?

Kontakt preset files download

Ed.: I’ve been wanting to take advantage of Reaktor’s Core DSP engine for some time — allowing you to get your hands dirty with hard-core DSP work — but I have to admit, I wasn’t even sure to start. So this gives me some serious geeky satisfaction. Normally, the point is that I’m supposed to be teaching this stuff, but I may have to blog my progress through the Core DSP stuff. Anyone with me? -PK

Reaktor users are always hungry for news and instructional material regarding their favorite weapon, and NI head honcho Stephan Schmitt has come through with two DSP tutorials by Vadim Zavalishin, creator of the Core DSP engine that was introduced in Reaktor 5.

This is not for the faint of heart. According to Stephan:

The articles are in a very condensed scientific style. They definitely require some academic education and DSP knowledge. They are accompanied by two tutorials helping you to implement and to try out the discussed methods in Reaktor Core. Those who dive into this material will be rewarded by some deep insights into the design of filters.

If you’re up to it, the DSP articles are available on the NI site: http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=dsparticles&L=1

At the very least, I’d recommend a refresher read of the excellent Core tutorial that shipped with Reaktor 5 before tackling Vadim’s articles: http://www.native-instruments.com/fileadmin/redaktion_upload/pdf/NI_REAKTOR5_Core_Manual_EN.pdf

Remember, drink plenty of fluids and do not operate heavy equipment while studying DSP.

Feedback, as viewed on an oscilloscope. Photo (CC) Audin, via Flickr.

Ed.: Feedback loops usually fall into the “things to avoid” category, but cleverly used, they can be a powerful creative technique. Part of what Kore is about is being able to create unusual routings easily, so where better to start than a loop? Eoin walks us through sound design with feedback here, using an external input (like a mic) or plug-in as a source, or even self-oscillating (crank up the gain, and the setup itself will produce its own sound). -PK

If you’ve read the Kore 2 manual, you might have seen mention of the possibility of feedback loops, but there are no instructions for how to safely set this up. Today we’re going to do this step by step, and hopefully by the end you’ll have an idea of how easy this is and the kind of wild sounds you can get.

If you don’t have access to Kore, you can still hear the end results; the audio examples below demonstrate some of the sounds that can be obtained with just a few simple routings.

You can use the Kore demo to complete tutorials; sessions shut down every 30 minutes, and saving is disabled, but there are no other limitations. The examples included work with Kore 2’s internal engines and effects.