Reaktor Diary: March 2007

Making a glitchy pad sample instrument, part 9: filter, effects and having a play

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Notes

(1:35) The samples in this sample map don't have a huge amount of top end, so opening the filter up doesn't produce a huge burst of high harmonics. But use a brighter set of samples and this could change completely.
(3:00) This is all down to the resonance of the filter boosting a narrow band of frequencies in the sample. If your filter cutoff is at a frequency where the sample is very loud (for instance if the sample has been EQ'd to boost the mid-range somewhere), the resonance will boost these loud frequencies up even higher and you can get problems with levels. Depends on the quality and content of your samples.

Making a glitchy pad sample instrument, part 8: frequency modulation and the sampler loop module

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Notes

Making a glitchy pad sample instrument, part 7: refining the instrument layout

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Notes

OK, we're through the most panicked phase of the build now ;)
It's always a nice moment when the layout of your instrument settles down. I love generating components that feel re-useable.
(2:30) So however many voices you set up for the instrument, those voices are summed together by the audio voice combiners, then the volume mixer turns down the volume of the mix.

Making a glitchy pad sample instrument, part 6: using the separator module

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Notes

This isn't the first time I've found the separator module amazingly useful. I think it's worthwhile taking a bit of time to get to know little modules like this, because they're amazingly handy. The more I use Reaktor, the more I get into all the routing and event logic.
While this is a useful example of how to use a separator module, it's used in the context of a solution which I don't think is very elegant. Later in this sequence of videos I'll come back and improve the design of this part of the structure.

Making a glitchy pad sample instrument, part 5: hacking a way round an event loop... and more problems

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Notes

(0:31) This isn't a meaningful, logical approach to the problem, it's just a hack which happens to work in this instance. Later in the sequence I'll investigate further, because I'm not sure that this is even a genuine event loop... need to do some reading.
(1:50) The sampler's being re-triggered purely by the Geiger module now, the MIDI Gate has nothing to do with it.
(2:32) Ah, more ad hoc problem solving. If anyone's got any more elegant solutions to this problem, let me know.

Making a glitchy pad sample instrument, part 4: event loop and envelope macro

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Notes

(0:43) Maybe my right-brain will come up with a solution to the event loop problem while I'm taking control of the volume.
(1:14) I know Reaktor comes with lots of helpful macros, including envelopes, but I like ridiculously fast envelopes and a particular "feel" to my controls, so I've started to write my own.

Making a glitchy pad sample instrument, part 3: Geiger module

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Notes

(0:49) Oh, hang on. If you pause the video here, you'll see the pop-up which says that if the value of the gate signal is between 0 and 1, then that's mapped to the velocity range 0 ... 127 in the Map Editor. What this means is that, if you've got different samples layered to trigger at different velocities (loud drum samples and quiet drum samples), the value of the G input is very important to you indeed. When I say I'm not worried what that value is, that's because my sample map is very simple (never more than one sample per note)
(2:05) Event and audio signals are very different things, so it's not surprising that the Geiger's two outputs behave differently... it's just that I'm not sure I've ever been able to get the Geiger event output doing anything meaningful...
(2:59) Yawn... I'm not bored. This was recorded late at night.

Making a glitchy pad sample instrument, part 2: sampler loop module: triggering the sample at a random point in the loop

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Notes

(0:36) Here's the macro if you want to have a play with it. Incidentally, I'm not 100% happy with the design - it works, but it's not elegant, and usually when I put it into an instrument I tweak the design for efficiency or to work with the rest of the instrument. If you have any thoughts about how to improve it, let me know.
(1:27) This step introduces an event loop into the instrument design, which is a bug; and at the moment I don't know how to fix this kind of problem properly. I'm sure I'll do some research into it over the following months but if anyone knows any resources on event loops, or has any ideas, I'd love to hear them.
(2:10) "Looping back to the beginning"... when you import samples into the sample map of a sample module, if you want the sample to loop at all, you need to highlight the relevant sample and click the Loop button in the sample map window. The first time I built a sampler I spent about an hour trying to wire the module's inputs this way and that, before I realised that the sample map window seems to default to no looping for imported samples.

Making a glitching pad instrument, part 1: sampler loop module

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Notes

This instrument uses a map of pad samples - the sound of the instrument would be radically different if different samples were used.
(2:55) This is another example of a Reaktor module not behaving because it's missing a required input.

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