Building instruments and effects in Reaktor is a lot like building your own hardware. But ever wished those fabulous UIs you’ve seen could be used via something other than … ugh … your mouse? View Reaktor with a touchscreen or touch-controlled projection, and it’s an entirely different game. We already knew Tim Exile was a fan of touchscreens, but here’s what it can do in the hands of another Reaktor master.

Above are videos of Metrognome a.k.a Karl White getting down with a custom ensemble on a touchscreen. Karl reveals on the NI forums:

That was a huge undertaking and is one very complex Reaktor mod. I’ll be making more stuff public on the user library once I get the documentation lined up.

In other words, new goodies on the horizon! Here’s a better look at the Intelectualist ensemble (click for the full-sized version):

Live performance granular drum machine. My inspiration was the intelekt in the NI user library and various works by Clist, Program Child, etc.

I like the use of recordable touch-faders in the upper left – looks like an implementation similar to my own Freshmaker macro. If this isn’t exciting enough, here’s a video of Karl working with his ensemble on a wiimote whiteboard – I’ll be keeping an eye out for his work in the user library.

Native Instruments has posted a teaser video of something new called Spiral. It’s a sequencing instrument, and as you can see modulation is represented by swirling squares. It looks fantastic, it sounds wonderful and fluid – it’s, naturally, the creation of Reaktor maestro Lazyfish, who brought us ensembles like the cellular automata-powered Newschool and the brilliantly inscrutable Gaugear in Reaktor 5.1. Lazyfish is the kind of person who can make you believe the future of software instruments is unlimited.

I’m humbled again in my Reaktor building chops. This is really wonderful.

Now, as it happens, I know that there’s more to this story than Spiral, and as you know, generally I’m always eager to talk more about design and instruments. Stay tuned.

(Incidentally, potentially an obvious tip, but if you use Reaktor in Ableton Live, Ableton will automatically show the active plug-in user interface based on which channel is selected. That means you can easily switch between lots of funky-looking Reaktor UIs in Live without having to open and close windows. And of course, that’s really important when you have fantastic, strange UIs you actually want to use live, like this one. I’ll do a short screencast this week or next. Thanks to Owen Vallis, our friend and talented Reaktor user, for the idea. I’m finding having Live with Reaktor and Kore all running at once is a wonderful surge of sonic power.)

Updated: Reaktor 5 users will get this as a free download; see Thomas’ announcement on the NI forum.

Wondering how to use this thing? Don’t miss our how-to screencast video.