Sound from a Virtual Planet

We often think about technology in terms of new features, capabilities, or techniques. In electronic music that translates into the quest for products that offer new synthesis techniques or unique implementations of existing ones. It’s something I like to call the "secret weapon syndrome." (More on this in a later entry…) In all this, we often forget the user interface –how we work with a particular tool. This is probably the least sexy topic one could raise when considering a product, yet when you come right down to it, it’s probably one of the most important. It’s really what determines if you’re going to open something occasionally, or if you’re going to use it every day.

I always look forward to checking out new synths, and my interest in Circle from Future Audio Workshop started when it was first announced at Musikmesse this past spring. One of the big selling points for this synth was it’s user interface… so, what’s up with that? The basic premise here is that sound design is really an easy process and that the instruments you use should be easy to understand and use. FAW is a collective of programmers from across Europe led by Gavin Burke with headquarters in Ireland. While Circle uses a standard subtractive architecture, the instrument was designed from the ground up to clarify the workflow of using the instrument. There’s a great interview with Gavin on the Create Digital Music (CDM) website that provides some insight into the instrument’s design and the thinking behind it.

I use synthesizers to design sounds as well as to teach and learn about the techniques involved. Circle excels at both. One of the most confusing aspects of sound design can be modulation routings. In modular systems, this is done using patch cables. While these systems make a clear visual connection between a source and destination, things can get confusing when there are many routings, and the patch starts to look like a spaghetti dinner. Anyone who’s worked with the Nord Modular or done any patching on the back of the Reason rack can attest to this. There are five possible internal modulation sources in Circle, and any of these can be configured as an envelope, LFO, or a step sequencer. Each source is color coded, and to make a connection you simply drag a colored circle to the desired destination. In a fully formed patch, it’s very easy to see exactly what is controlling any destination.

A big part of interface design is consistency. Synthesizer controls generally fall under one of two categories, amounts and levels or durations. In Circle, you click and drag up to increase a level, drag down to decrease. Simple, yes? We most often see time values in setting the duration of an envelope segment. Here, it’s done by simply dragging to the right to make the duration longer, left makes it shorter. You can contrast this with the vertical sliders used for envelope controls in many hardware and software instruments such as Reason’s Subtractor. This is consistent throughout Circle except for the rate control in the built-in arpeggiator which is controlled with a horizontal slider.

While sound is an aural experience, we can learn a lot about what we’re hearing through visual displays. In Circle, the motion of LFO waveforms is clearly displayed. While there is a healthy selection of sixteen LFO waveshapes, each LFO section allows two separate shapes to be combined into a single composite again, clearly displayed. In the envelopes, a ball traces the progress through the timed segments. In the step sequencer, progress through the steps is outlined as each colored step turns white as it plays. While these may seem like obvious features, they are things that you aren’t typically seeing in other software instruments, making Circle very easy to use.

Behind the user interface, there’s a very robust subtractive architecture with some twists. There’s quite a variety of timbral possibilities in Circle, beyond the geometric basics, using the oscillators in wavetable mode. In each of these, two waves can be combined, similar to what we see in the LFOs. While the envelopes in Circle are standard ADSR shapes, step sequenced control and the variety of waveforms available for periodic LFO control makes it possible to create the kind of rhythmic patterns one gets from the multisegment envelopes in synths from Native Instruments.

So what’s on the frontier for electronic instruments? It very well could come from the kind of thinking behind this first offering from Future Audio Workshop. I can only imagine what may come from future products that use more complex synthesis architectures. FM made simple anyone?

Summer for me means that my schedule slows to the point where I can indulge in some of my guilty pleasures…. Fishing perhaps? Not quite. I’ve always been interested in building things, or at very least taking things apart and trying to put them back together. When it comes to electronic music, there are two really great toolkits available for building software instruments: MAX/MSP/Jitter and Reaktor. My April 26 blog post talked a bit about the new version of MAX, so I’d like to give you a quick look at Reaktor.

Reaktor is perhaps one of the most misunderstood products in the musical instrument industry. Everyone has heard of it, but everyone seems to have a different idea of what it is. I like to think of it as a combination of three different things that users will all make use of differently. Reaktor is a collection of software instruments, an object oriented programming environment, and membership to big fellowship of users. It’s really the first two here that throw people. While Wikipedia provides a good history and overview of Reaktor, there are a few basics to understand before you get started.

First off, Reaktor is a commercial product from Native Instruments. The package contains the software and documentation that will get you started. Reaktor is not a single synthesizer per se, but a player that comes with a collection of factory Ensembles, each it’s own self-contained software synthesizer. Each Ensemble is made up of one or more Instruments, these are typically some sort of synthesizer, effects processor, or a step-sequencer. While this may seem somewhat confusing, these are exactly the types of components that make up a commercial hardware synthesizer. So, your new Virus TI might be thought of as an "ensemble" of instruments in Reaktor-speak.

Opening the program, you need go no further than opening Ensembles either as a standalone software instrument or as a plug-in, to experience Reaktor. More adventurous users will want to dig a bit deeper, and that’s where things get a bit more involved. Ensembles are viewed in panel mode, where only the user interface –knobs, sliders, buttons, and displays– are visible.

A Reaktor Ensemble in Panel View

Structure view shows how the ensemble is made. On the top level, you’ll see the various instruments used, but clicking on any of them will reveal the components and connections that make up that instrument. This is where the programming work in Reaktor is done.

A Reaktor Ensemble in Structure View

The individual modules you see can represent anything from a simple math calculation to something more akin to a synthesizer module, like an oscillator or envelope generator. Fortunately, Reaktor comes with a wealth of objects, but more importantly, you can build and save your own, as well as share them with other users. Which brings us to the Reaktor community.

Native Instruments maintains an online database of user submitted Ensembles. Currently, there are about 2700. The community of Reaktor users that contribute to this resource is nothing short of amazing and there are submissions here from novice users all the way to legendary mad scientists. Bob Moog said in the film Modulations that building electronic instruments was "hot-rodding for the 90s," and Reaktor and the community that supports it is a software version of exactly what Bob was talking about.
For those of you getting ready to take the plunge, here are a few thoughts to get you started:

Tips for Learning More About Reaktor

1. Learn all you can about using the factory instruments. You will be amazed at the clever synthesis architectures that you’ll find. However, the documentation for many of the factory Ensembles is rudimentary at best, and you should plan to spend a good deal of time mastering any of the instruments.
2. Start simple. Start by building simple subtractive instruments and work your way up by adding features to your creations. There’s a quick tutorial in the user guide that will get you started.
3. Analyze and create your own variations of the factory instruments. This is where you can start hot-rodding your own ensembles. Here again start simple with swapping instruments and then component modules between ensembles
4. Look through the collection of Reaktor patches on the Native Instruments website. Here, you’ll find countless variations on basic synthesis tools that in many cases will offer different approaches to the same basic design.
5. Make friends and ask questions. Many Reaktor users are online in various discussion boards and are often quite willing to help newcomers. Find other musicians in your area, where possible who have been using the program and share your knowledge.
6. Lastly, have fun. Use the ensembles you hack in your music whether it be in the studio or live.

Links to Online Support Resources

Reaktor Tips
NI Reaktor User Forum
NI Reaktor Tutorials
Reaktor-Phile
Sound on Sound Reaktor Tips part 1
Sound on Sound Reaktor Tips part 2
Reaktor Wiki Tutorials

There’s something innately appealing to us about human sounds, the sound of a voice, hands clapping, whistling, vocal beat-boxing. Sound designers have been acutely aware of this, and have used the voice to create innumerable sound effects –the mouth is their secret weapon. One of the first classic sounds from the early days of sampling was the sound a human blowing air across the top of a glass bottle. More recently, Bjork explored the possibilities of human sounds in her haunting work Medulla, where just about all the sounds on the CD are derived from the voice or body. While it’s easy to record the sound of humans, making expressive sampled instruments from those recordings can be a daunting challenge.

This spring, SONiVOX released an interesting sample library aptly named Anatomy. Anatomy is a massive collection of 856 sampled instruments formatted for Native Instrument’s Kontakt 2 or 3. All the sounds in the collection are derived from some sound produced by the human body, and are divided into two categories: man and machine. Sounds that are distinctly human like singing and screaming are in the Man category. Those listed as Machine are sounds that have been mangled beyond recognition to create all sorts of instrument sounds, from drums and basses to pads and leads. While this is not the first time human sounds have been made available in a sample library, the sheer size of this collection is unprecedented.

While some of the instruments included here, like the vocal beat-boxing kits, are what you would expect to find, the real strength of this library is in the range of unexpected permutations that bear no resemblance to the original recorded source. Even sounds that are bizarre or aggressive have a certain appealing quality to them. SONiVOX provides some demos on their website, and here are a couple done by former students of mine from Berklee:

Anatomy Demo 0 - composed by Ben Cantil - 3,228k

Anatomy Demo 2 - composed by Stephanie Olmanni - 2,037k

To further entice you, SONiVOX offers ten of the Kontakt instruments as free downloads that will allow you to load and experiment with these on your own.

SONiVOX Anatomy Free Samples

If there is any critique of the library, it’s that you need to own Kontakt to use it. For the last few years, manufacturers have been relying on various sample players, like Kontakt Player used in the Garritan Personal Orchestra, to deliver programmed content. When you buy a library, the player is included. This has the distinct advantage of insuring compatibility, and eliminates the need for manufacturers to develop the same library for multiple sampler formats. However, for anyone interested in developing their sound design chops, there’s a big advantage to delivering the library as Kontakt instruments. You can open any of the instruments in Kontakt and see exactly how it was programmed; educational opportunities abound with examples of both standard and more exotic programming techniques.

All to often we segregate synthesis into two broad categories: subtractive synthesis, where the source of sound is some sort of geometric waveshape, like the typical square wave or sawtooth, or sampling which starts with digital audio file. However, things always get interesting in a boarder town, and some really creative and interesting sound design comes from the crossbreeding of these two types of synthesis. Unfortunately when it comes to sampling, the main focus of commercial sound libraries is usually in emulating existing instruments, often either drums or orchestral families. The goal of these is to provide the most realistic recreation, and indeed many current libraries, in skilled hands, yield stunning results.

So far this year, two products have emerged that take a very creative approach to working with sampled sound and serve not only useful instruments, but as inspiration for further exploration– Plectrum from Vital Arts, distributed by Ilio, and Anatomy from SONiVOX. I’ll start with Plectrum and cover Anatomy in my next blog entry.

Plectrum is the brainchild of sound designer extraordinaire Geoff Gee, who cut his teeth creating many of the factory sounds for the Kurzweil K2xxx series of instruments. I first met Geoff when he did a presentation on creative sound design with the K2000 at Berklee. For this, he started by recording the sound of a match strike into the synth, then proceeded to mangle the source into a series of strange and wonderful sounds. Geoff has a remarkable ability to listen to a sound and imagine a world of possibilities, as well as the technical chops to come up with useful results. This is one of he hallmarks of a great sound designer.

Several years ago Geoff and his family left the Boston area for a farm in upstate New York, home to Vital Arts, the umbrella organization for the creative work he and his wife pursue. An old farm is a rich source for all sorts of natural found sounds, from plucked stings, glass objects and breaking twigs. Undoubtedly, Geoff had a field day (no pun intended) sampling his new surroundings. Some time later he came up with the remarkable collection of instruments that became Plectrum, using the powerful synthesis capabilities in GVI, the GigaStudio Virtual Instrument sound engine. One of the real strengths of this collection is that it’s designed to be very playable. On top of his sound design prowess, Geoff is a virtuoso pianist and everything he programs reflects his passion for expressive performance.

Geoff Gee talking about Plectrum at the 2007 AES Convention in NYC.

I got my first preview of Plectrum at the 2008 Winter NAMM last January. The floor of a trade show is not the best place for listening, and wasn’t till Geoff paid a visit to Berklee last month that I really got a chance to listen carefully and really hear what this collection was about. Geoff put Plectrum though it’s paces in a good listening environment and talked about the process of collecting and designing the sounds. Altogether there are 185 different instruments organized by category. While this is not your General MIDI sound set, Plectrum covers a wide range of musical functions, from exotic bass patches to pads, and yes, plucked instruments. The real standouts here are the namesake plucked sounds. Here, he’s done a remarkable job of creating sounds that are completely new and fresh, while at the same time, sound familiar.

Vital Arts MP3s Plectrum Demos

As of this writing Plectrum is only on the PC, but since Tascam has recently released a Mac version of GVI, it’ should be fully cross-platform very soon.