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.

Sleen’s Toolpack has a terrific live looper / recorder / sampler for audio, but it records to precious RAM and only up to 260 seconds. For those of us who like to use Kore stand-alone, there needs to be a better way to record longer pieces of audio.

There are ways to make the tapedeck module record to disk but a quicker, dirtier, easier way is to use the recorderbox built into Reaktor.

Jonathan Adams Leonard has been hard at work preparing Interpol for their Kore-powered tour, but he’s still managed to get out yet another update to his must-have, free set of power tools for Kore, built in Reaktor:

Hi guys, I updated the toolpack to include Midi FilterX8. This provides dynamic recall of 8 midi filters per instance for each performance preset, with 8 user pages.

Now we’re talking — that gives you some seriously powerful MIDI assignments for presets. See our previous run-down on the toolpack if you haven’t already:

Free, Modular Power Tools for Kore 2: A Guide to the Reaktor Toolpack

As we’ve noted previously, you do need to own Reaktor to take advantage of these, though I think the combination of Reaktor and Kore is powerful enough that it could be a more-than-worthy upgrade for existing Kore users. Stay tuned — I’ve got some of my own crazy setups using Jonathan’s work and some patches of my own. And we’ll be talking more to Jonathan about what he’s doing and how that Interpol setup came together — we had to postpone a little bit so he could finish working with the setup and the band!

Just a quick (and overdue) update to say that Jonathan Leonard aka Sleen has updated his Kore 2 Reaktor Tool Pack with improvements to Kore2Midi, the Midi Filter and Bank/Program Change tools. From comments:

The Kore2MidiX8Learn is simply a version where all the controls send unique numbers for universal midi learn. This is the same version as mentioned in this thread previously but is now included in the zip.

The Midifilter ens and ksd are new and allow for general or specific midi event filtering.

The Bank ens and ksd have been extended to include bank msb and lsb values, with delays set on recall to make sure msb, lsb and program change are sent in the right order. MSB was added to support external modules like Roland.

To get more information and obtain the software:

Kore 2 Reaktor Toolpack

Thank you,

Jonathan Adams Leonard

If you’re using the Toolpack in ways we haven’t covered let us know. What tools would you most like to see in Kore?

If you’re a Kore user who owns Reaktor, you’ve probably heard of the Kore 2 Reaktor Toolpack. If not, now’s a good time to check out it out – this collection of Reaktor ensembles provides a set of tools useful in the Kore environment. It’s the creation of Reaktor programmer and musician Jonathan Adams Leonard, aka Sleen. (He’s also a composer, a vocalist and keyboardist, and the touring keyboard/MIDI technician for Interpol.) Some of the tools are more specialized, like an ensemble that adds the ability to send MIDI data with the Kore hardware controls, or one that emulates the Guitar Rig 1 Control hardware. But even if you don’t need those, you’re likely to find something that will improve the way you work with Kore.

Jonathan’s impetus for building the toolpack was his sense that Kore 2 was missing some modular MIDI capabilities he felt were essential:

Kore 2 was an ambitious release for any software team, so instead of complaining, I did what any enlightened engineer would do and built something. In some ways, there was no choice. NI created a semi modular matrix into which audio and midi objects can live simultaneously.

… The toolpack represents my preference to communicate where possible with solutions rather than suggestions or complaints.

It’s one heck of a “feature request,” then — a powerful set of MIDI and audio utilities, available for free. Because they’re Reaktor ensembles, you can also modify them for your own purposes — meaning, even if some of this functionality is added to Kore down the road, the Toolpack could remain a powerful custom utility belt.

Note that you do need to have a copy of Reaktor 5 to use the Reaktor Toolpack. (Anyone who owns a recent version of Komplete already has it; the standalone works, as well.) Over the coming weeks, we’ll be looking at ways in which the combination of Reaktor and Kore can be useful. But if you don’t need or want Reaktor, we’ll list a few free/cheap alternatives and complementary tools.

Here’s what’s in the pack: