Tag Archives: Brent Kallmer

Let There Be Loops

If it’s Thursday then there must be another excellent Reaktor video tutorial from Brent Kallmer at BluewaterVST. This time around, Brent looks at rendering loops from Reaktor grooveboxes, which sounds simple at first blush but Brent takes you deeper into some of the tools and options available to you when hosting Reaktor in Ableton Live.

Says Brent:

In this tutorial, let’s take a look at how to bounce individual parts of a groove from Aerobic and SineBeats—two stunning REAKTOR grooveboxes. Both are drum synths (they synthesize drum hits rather than playing samples) and their penetrating, glossy sounds are ideal for techno and glitch (or anything else that needs a synthetic touch).

Great stuff! I think the grooveboxes in Reaktor 5 are some of the most under-appreciated and under-used tools out there, mainly because people just don’t know what to do with them, and as Brent says, sometimes there are just too many options. Rendering loops this way is a great strategy to narrow things down and get something going.

Ambient Loop Generation in REAKTOR

Brent Kallmer comes through again with a fantastic video and tutorial post on combining two Reaktor factory library instruments into a sum that is greater than its parts:

REAKTOR‘s Sound Generators (think Metaphysical Function, Skrewell, and Space Drone) produce complex, evolving walls of sound that need no accompaniment. But perhaps you’ve wondered—given Sound Generators’ inclination to do their own thing—how you would use this strange sonic magic in one of your own, rhythmically minded productions. The answer is offered by our good friend Fast FX. By teaming up Fast FX with one of REAKTOR’s Sound Generators (this time it’s Metaphysical Function), we can create an ambient loop generation machine the likes of which the world has never seen…

Brent is a machine… he just moved house last week and already he’s delivering quality material like this. When you’re done checking this out, explore the rest of Brent’s site which is chock full of valuableReaktor information.

REAKTOR’s Scenario and “Operation Limitation”

In this video, Brent Kallmer discusses the benefits of limiting your options by using the classic Reaktor ensemble Scenario. I can relate to this, as can anyone with a well stocked plugin folder, especially us Reaktor users – it’s easy to get trapped in what the writer Douglas Coupland called options paralysis.

Brent offers some further thoughts on his blog at Bluewater VST.

Get Metaphysical with REAKTOR

In this video, Brent Kallmer investigates a Reaktor factory library ensemble that is in my top 5 ensembles of all time – Metaphysical Function. This is an instrument that completely changed my approach to music by taking it off the grid – the timeline – and teaching me a more freeform approach. If you’ve never dug deep into Metaphysical Function, now’s the time.

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