Fixed Filter Bank

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I’ve been meaning to make a fixed filter bank in Reaktor ever since I saw a few videos on Youtube of what they could do. They’re a blast for messing with filtered white noise, especially with some modulation and delay effects later in the chain, but they can also add some real character and dimension to instrumental sounds, bringing out tones that a plain old single band filter can’t match.

In this next one the filter bank action starts at around 2:20 –

My version adds one refinement – you can sweep the overall range of the filter up and down to better match your source material and project. Taking a look inside, you can see that there are only two filter modules, but they’re polyphonic, with each voice accounting for one filter band. This makes a neater structure, and one that’s easier to modify.

Front panel controls are tool-tipped and should be self explanatory.

It’s free, and you can get it here:

By the way, please use a real email address not “mrstinky@qwertyuiop.com” because this and Ghost Shift are going to receive updates and I want to notify users when that happens. Apologies to mrstinky if that is in fact a real address.

Using Snap Isolate on Reaktor Panel Controls

Quick tip: you can use the snap isolate option in the properties of Reaktor panel controls to keep a parameter from changing when you change snapshots.

The above screenshot is from the “B” view of the Steam Pipe 2 front panel. I was getting sick of the godawful reverb slathered over every snapshot in the ensemble, so I turned off the reverb with its power control and set that control to snap isolate so it would stay off when I changed snapshots.

I’ll often do this when auditioning snaps in an ens, but not save a modified version of the ensemble… turns out that many of the snaps in Steam Pipe 2 are more sonically interesting when you hear them dry. 🙂

Microtuning in Reaktor – with Instrument Download

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About a year ago I fell under the spell of Aleksi Perälä’s album MU3. I listened to it whenever I could, and heard it in my head when I couldn’t play it. It was subtly, maddeningly different, and stood out from the other new electronic music I was hearing around that time. It sounded pleasantly detuned, but not randomly so. What was he doing?

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Basic Sequencer for Anything in Reaktor: The Roux, Part 1

This is part of a set of tutorials I did for Peter Kirn’s Kore site back in 2008 – we were creating materials that highlighted Native Instruments products and how they could be used in Kore. Well, the product is defunct and the old site is down, so here is the first in a series on the Roux sequencer macro, showing how it can be used to manipulate the read position in a basic grain delay. Also see here where I’ve built an updated version of the Roux macro that is used in this tutorial.

Update: hey, this is back online now at kore.noisepages.com! Awesome!

Here is an index to the series:

In French cooking, there’s a sauce base called a roux (pronounced “roo”) that is the foundation of bechamel and other sauces. This is a sequencer macro that is the equivalent for programming sequenced instruments in Reaktor – you can take it in any direction from here. In its most basic form it can send velocity information to trigger percussion, or modulate instrument parameters like cutoff and resonance. With a few simple changes it becomes a pitch sequencer.

I decided to teach how to use the roux step sequencer before diving into the guts of the Frankenloop because understanding this will make that much easier to untangle. Besides, this is a more modular-ready macro, easily popped into anything else you happen to be building or toying with – anything that could use some sauce, really.

I decided to teach how to use the roux step sequencer in a practical way before diving into the guts because understanding this will make that much easier to untangle. Besides, this is a more modular-ready macro, easily popped into anything else you happen to be building or toying with – like the granular delay we’ve been working on. Anything that could use some sauce, really.

In part one, we look at two uses of this versatile basic ingredient. Download the ensemble and follow along with the video tutorial.

Roux Sequencer Macro for Reaktor from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Video: The Difference Between Reaktor Instruments And Ensembles

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Here’s a tutorial video from NI that was posted about a month ago and has a comically low number of views. 342 views? Ridiculous! This is a great introduction to the differences between instruments, ensembles and Reaktor Player instruments, which they refer to as Komplete instruments.