Category Archives: Practical Reaktor

Very Simple Grainer

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All right, enough piddling about with theory and math and such. Let’s get down to making some noisemakers. I’m going to do things a little differently this time. I have constructed a dirt simple four voice granular synth – it is cut to the bone but still usable. Here it is.

When I was a Reaktor newbie I hated the complexity of granular instruments in the factory library and the user library. I had to cut through great tangled swaths of cruft to get down to the essence. So why not start with the essence?

Play with it, mess with it and figure out what the controls do. It should be perfectly self explanatory. Dig in and have a look at the structure. Add some of your own samples. Short 10 to 30 second snippets work well. The root note should be zero – see the last post on constructing sample maps for more information.

Ask questions. Let me know what you’re not sure about, and how you think it can be improved. I have some plans for this instrument and I’ll be posting about the changes as I make them.

Above all, play the instrument. I love the sound of a naked granular synth, with no extra reverb and chorus and filtering and other extraneous glop. Hold down a couple of notes and play with the speed and grain size controls. Pitch a harmonically complex sample down or just play it in a low register and hear the details that emerge. Not too shabby for a dirt simple instrument that barely even registers on the ol’ CPU meter.

Scaling Values

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Oh, I’m not going to let this place die off and go dormant. Hello again. šŸ˜‰

Sometimes you’re going to want to create a control with a nonlinear taper. This can be handy for controlling the frequencies of an LFO, for adjusting the smoothness of a granular sampler, and lots of other applications where you want to taper off to very fine values without cursing at your mouse and getting wrist strain.

Here, I’ve created a macro that scales the output of a knob that goes from zero to one, and connected the output to a numeric display. I’ve duplicated the macro a few times so you see how it handles values:

And what is the magical mechanism that produces this effect? It’s a simple multiplier module:

So the output is merely the input multiplied by itself, or squared. Don’t go all math phobic on me now. This is easy stuff. You’re looking at Y = X² which is a formula that creates a parabolic curve:

That’s what it looks like in an XY scope. Here’s the guts of the XY scope displaying the pretty curve:

Fire up Reaktor and build the scope mechanism yourself. It’s pretty straightforward. Make sure the settings on the XY module are as follows:

Object type should be “scope”, you don’t want any cursor, and the fade time should be 80 or thereabouts. Set the XY control to “always active” on the gears tab. So what happens if you multiply the value by itself three times instead of twice – cubing it? Try it and see what happens to the curve.

Converting Pitch to Hz

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A reader asks:

I was wondering if you knew of a way within Reaktor to display pitch, and other frequencies, in Hz instead of the arbitrary units that most macros use. I can’t for the life of me figure out why Native Instruments didn’t include the option to view these parameters in Hz.

Good question! Actually, they did, but it’s not an option in a checkbox somewhere – you use a P to F math module. Here’s how you’d use it:

The Numeric display module shows the frequency in Hz.

There’s a complementary module that does the opposite conversion, from Hz to the (generally speaking) 0 to 127 pitch range used by Reaktor’s primary level oscillators.

LFO Gator

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This is a tutorial on using a few simple LFOs and a clock oscillator to gate an audio stream, creating semi-random and interesting percussive effects. Have fun with it – it won’t compose classical music for you but I hope it will liven up your music and teach you a few things about Reaktor. Remember, you have to noodle before you can fugue. Download Here.