Frame 3 - Free Creative Sampler for Reaktor + Tutorial Series

Frame is a simple Reaktor sampler I built to implement a type of freeform looping and creative sampling I felt was missing from most other software samplers on the market. Frame allows you to define a window of sound and sweep it across the sample as it plays without glitching or popping. Depending on the size of the sample, the smoothness, the spacing, and whether or not you've turned up the position / length LFO, you can get results that are reminiscent of some of the great creative sampling musicians - well alright, this also requires skill and taste; all I'm doing here is removing one of the technical hurdles. ;-)





Today we begin a series of tutorials that are going to start with picking apart and explaining Frame's structure then move on to sound design and even modifying the structure - adding more modulations and even sequencing, perhaps. I'm open to suggestions!

Loupe 2 Release

After a long wait and several delays - one of which was caused by the addition of a delay mode, ironically - I present Loupe 2.

What is Loupe? It's a Reaktor ensemble that assigns freeform sections of a sample to different MIDI notes and allows them to be pitched, reversed, resized, filtered and enveloped individually. The incoming MIDI notes do not repitch the sample directly , but you can manually adjust each slice / key's tuning to create more complex melodic variation out of your source sample.



It works fantastically well to transform and remix a five to ten second musical phrase, a beat loop, a few seconds of a full song, or even a field recording of a drunk guy swearing at a lamp post. There is music lurking everywhere, sometimes in other music, sometimes in the notes between the notes, in the hissy crackle of decaying note tails on old vinyl samples, and Loupe will help you find it.

There are slice copy and paste buttons, so you can create slices with small variations on different keys or in different octaves. This video provides an introduction to Loupe in general as well as the new features in version 2:

Update May 8, 2013: Loupe 2.0.1 now has a per-slice "single shot" option so a slice plays only once even if you hold down the note. This is much more useful for sliced beats especially. I've added a few snaps to showcase the one shot feature.

There is also an improved button style for both the "reverse" and "single shot" controls - just click on 'em instead of clicking and dragging.

Also, I've added an envelope to the slice animation, so the markers fade in and out with the envelope. It's a subtle difference but looks pretty snazzy.

I will have more info and demos soon regarding the new features but I wanted to get this update out to the user base ASAP. Download links have been updated and the Loupe 2 password you received will decrypt this update. Enjoy!

Guest Review: BitRate by Icebreaker Audio

 This is a guest review of Icebreaker Audio's BitRate ensemble for Reaktor that was originally posted on the KVR forums by Sendy (Alexandra Cornhill). BitRate is a first-rate lo-fi tool and this is a well written review so I asked for permission to repost it here rather than seeing it scroll off into forum infinity. - Pete

BitRate - Verdict: 9/10

If you have an interest in chip music and have Reaktor, just get this now. If you've got any doubts beforehand, check out the audio demos and then buy it. This is living the dream - the dirty, pixelated, large-grain-parametered, limited yet limitless dream which is working with 8-bit and lo-fi gaming audio devices.

Filtastep (Free Reaktor Ensemble)

Filtastep is a free Reaktor ensemble from Audiobricks.net

This is a sample player with a filter and a frequency shifter. All that pretty customizable. It´s not really in the category “reinventing the wheel” but it´s quite fun. Good for rhythmical beat additions or insect like sounds.

Get it here. Looks fairly basic but that can be cool - means it's ripe for modifications! I'm thinking you could throw in some stereo delay with feedback and get some Fabfilter Timeless 2 type sounds happening.

14 Bit MIDI Receive Macro for Reaktor - Free Download

Someone asked about 14 bit MIDI on Twitter, then implemented their own solution while I was snoozing - different time zone? Red Bull? Who knows - so I thought I'd upload my own version for comparison.

It receives two MIDI controllers, one of which represents the most significant bit, the other of which represents the least significant bit. It uses a bit shift module in Core, which is always fun. Whee! The upshot is, you get extremely high resolution for controlling things that you don't want to be overly steppy, like filter cutoff and sample playback position.

I'm not using it any more because Reaktor now has OSC in the plugin version, so I use OSC tools like Konkreet Performer, TouchOSC and Lemur for my hi-res controller needs. But for those of you who have hardware that supports 14 bit MIDI, this is going to be useful, as Reaktor has no native 14 bit controller support.

All you have to do is decide which controllers you're using, set them in the controller properties, then use the NRML output for a normalized 0 to 1 control range.

Here's the macro. Happy controlling!

Update: Thanks to the ever sharp eyed and vigilant lazyfish, I've been informed of a bug in the macro. It will work but it looks weird because there were two modules on top of each other in the core cell. Here they are separated:

 

You can either multiply the incoming MSB by 128 or bit-shift it by 7 bits. I had tried both, got the same basic results, and left both modules in the core cell but with only one connected of course.  Sorry for the confusion! I've uploaded a corrected macro.

Update 2: lazyfish asked the important question, why am I converting twice? I think I was programming Lemur-ese in Reaktor based on input from a template I was using on iPad at the time. Here is another iteration of the macro:

In this one, the value range of the controllers can be left at 0 to 1 which is the default in Reaktor, and the values, math and scaling happen in the core cell where everything's explicit - I like to avoid having magic numbers hidden in properties whenever possible.