Reaktor is a massively powerful toolkit for building instruments and effects, but that power can easily be overwhelming at first. Peter Dines has completed a five-part introduction tackling sequencing events. It’s one of the trickier bits, but also the skill that will help you have the maximum amount of fun.

Be a Reaktor Sequencer Ninja

Here are the five parts for CDM’s Kore minisite:

Part 1 – introduction
Part 2 – the X+ module
Part 3 – the event table
Part 4 – the snap array
Part 5 – the mouse area

(See the clocks/events refresher to get going.)

See also: Reaktor forum discussion

Downloadable Instruments, Effects

As you’re learning, it can help to grab more ready-to-use instruments and effects. Here’s a sampling, though of course you’ll find many more in the NI User Library.

Don’t believe the tutorial can spawn new creations? Boombox is a drum machine built with the Roux sequencer macro Peter Dines uploaded for his tutorial series.

Boombox Drum Machine (Direct download link)

HaasCheezburger is a new LOLcat-powered stereo delay effect from Peter.

You can also download Peter D’s Grain Delay effect

Teaser: New Spiral Ensemble

This is an upcoming Reaktor 5 ensemble from one of the great virtuosos of instrument/effect patching (in any tool, not just Reaktor), Lazyfish. The creator of Gaugear and Newschool turns his attentions to a new, swirling, animated modulating synth. It demonstrates what’s possible when you take sequencing to the edge, and has the typically inspiring take on user interface Lazyfish is known for. I’ll be able to share more about this soon, but NI has already said on the forums that this ensemble will be free to existing Reaktor 5 users.

Our own Peter Dines notices the similarity to the Whitney Music Box. The possibilities for where instruments can go conceptually and in terms of interface just continue to unfold.

For more Reaktor getting started resources, see our story from last month:

Learning Reaktor: 10-Step Path to Building New Sequencers, Beatboxes, and Effects

Updated: Native Instruments has announced the SoundPack this comes from, the new Reaktor Animated Circuits. If you don’t own Reaktor (or Kore, for that matter), you can run Reaktor Animated Circuits and get all the sound goodness from SpaceDrone, Metaphysical Function, Skrewell, Newscool, and this new ensemble Spiral Sequencer. But, of course, we think you’ll be even happier if you get Reaktor and start tinkering yourself (and you need Reaktor to see Spiral’s nifty graphics). That’s just how we roll.

How to use it: Spiral is a sequencer, so you do need to hook it up to a sound source. Wondering how to do that? We’ve got a screencast that explains from resident Reaktor guru Peter Dines.

If you do have Reaktor, Spiral is now available for download via Service Center, so have at it!

We have a special guest performance for the next Handmade Music party, organized by CDM in New York with Etsy.com and Make Magazine. The Mister Resistor ensemble features various musical oddities — electronic and acoustic — created by students at Parsons The New School for Design.

Mister Resistor – the video from ranjit on Vimeo.

Mister Resistor Preview 1 from ranjit on Vimeo.

The course is taught by Ranjit Bhatnagar, who’s been a regular at Handmade Music with robotic Theremins, MIDI ironing boards, and other alternative instruments. Ranjit explains how the course works:

Background: for the last few years I’ve been teaching a studio class in Parsons’ department of Design & Technology (that’s the multimedia & physical computing department). The class is called Mister Resistor, and it’s about making homemade instruments and performing with them. I introduce the students to circuit bending, simple acoustics, synthesis, and the like, and get them making and playing their own instruments. The “final exam” for the class is a public concert. Last year’s class did their concert at the Flux Factory gallery in Queens, in the midst of a giant sound sculpture I’d worked on.

I know we have other instructors out there, so if you use similar techniques in your class (or would like to), let us know about it!

I’ll be flying all the way from Australia back to New York to co-host Mister Resistor on Sunday at another installment of Handmade Music. Various other reasons this one is special:

• I’ll be hosting a free workshop using a ribbon controller electronics kit from PAiA Corporation. Even the kits are free to makers, until we run out. (More on that kit and how to get it wherever you are soon.) You can do the whole thing without soldering, even if you’ve never done this before.
• We’ll have free beverages, supplied by Function Drinks.
• It’s in Manhattan, not in Brooklyn — our friends at Etsy Labs hooked up a fantastic space in SoHo called openhousegallery, 201 Mulberry Street near Spring Street.
• It’s in the afternoon (2-5p), rather than at night. And you can still catch the NYU ITP show Monday. (Just go; you’ll understand.)
• As always, if you’re in town, stop by and bring your own projects for show and tell if you like. (Hint: they don’t even have to function properly. We’re relaxed like that.)

Once again, that’s Sunday, 12/16, 201 Mulberry Street in SoHo, completely free, you’ll hear great music, and you’ll learn to make electronics without soldering even if you never have before.

Invite and ensemble details + music, misterresistor.com
Handmade Music Event on Facebook

Speaking of events, there’s been so much awesomeness and I’ve been so very much in Australia that I’ve gotten way behind, so apologies about some cool events I didn’t get up. I would be remiss, though, in not pointing to another ensemble, partly because you can go while I’m in a 747 over the Pacific, but mostly because I hope by second semester we’ll have massive battle of the band competitions between these things. NYU’s own NIME ensemble after the jump.

Oh, and to the 95% of readers not in New York, a calendar for CDMworld is definitely in the works so we can share the love.

From our friend the insanely busy Jamie Allen:

NIME @ Exit Art
475 Tenth Avenue
New York, NY
In collaboration with R. Luke DuBois’ ‘Algorithmic Composition’

Thursday, December 13, 2007
Performances 8PM-11PM
Installations begin at 7PM

NIME: New Interfaces for Musical Expression.
NIME: creating new performance tools for digital music.
NIME: a graduate course at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP).

In the sixth annual NIME end-of-semester performance, students will perform on a series of newly designed electronic instruments that aim to keep the “live” in live performance of digital music. The NIME performances are presented by ITP instructors Jamie Allen and Gideon D’Arcangelo. ITP students from R. Luke DuBois’ “Algorithmic Composition” class will present installations and performances as part of the evening’s proceedings.

Computer music is usually played with a keyboard and mouse. Laptop musicians often sit at a desk and give performances that are little more than watching someone engage in “office gestures.” The idea behind NIME is to go beyond the mouse and keyboard, beyond even piano keyboards and drum pads, and develop performance tools that make the most out of the new opportunities that digital music offers.

NIME students answer questions like:
- “What will the next generation of musical instruments look like?”
- “What will they be able to do that traditional instruments can’t already do?”
- “What aspects of traditional instruments will we want to retain in digital instruments?”"

Over the course of this year’s 14-week course, students are developing projects such as an musical weaving loom, a instrument made of speakers that feed back and make glorious noise, an augmented rocking chair, a musical abacus and a host of others.

NIME at ITP
http://itp.nyu.edu/nime
Jamie Allen 347-563-5941, jamie@nyu.edu
Gideon D’Arcangelo 917-750-6950, gideon@nyu.edu

ITP
http://itp.nyu.edu
George Agudow 212-998-1891, george.agudow@nyu.edu

EXIT ART
475 Tenth Avenue (at 36th Street)
New York, NY 10018
(212) 966-7745
info@exitart.org
http://www.exitart.org

My feature story for Keyboard Magazine on recording live laptop performance is now available online at keyboardmag.com (as well as in the July print issue). When I got the assignment, I think my editor imagined futuristic, sci-fi like network recording, in which audio was streamed entirely virtually from players to a recording server and musicians connected to one another over the ether. Instead, we got just the opposite: quick and dirty solutions for capturing improvisatory computer performance, and intentional efforts to make laptop performances sound more like conventional instrumental ensembles. The case studies:

• The Moscow Laptop Cyber Orchestra hosts laptop jam sessions at the conservatory that bears Leon Theremin’s name. Individual speakers, stereo mic — plus groovy visuals in the background.
• Princeton University’s PLOrk plays with hemispherical speakers so that sound radiates from near the laptop the way it would from a real instrument. Their recording configuration is a little more sophisticated, with not only a stereo pair for the audience but three mics above the stage.
• Share in New York has the toughest challenge of all: a club environment in which anyone can show up with any gear and play. They combine the tried-and-true (old-fashioned analog snakes on the floor) with software tools for standardization (a template in the open source Linux and Mac DAW Ardour).

Check out the full story for details:

Electronica Unplugged

One thing we didn’t broach was what to actually play (these ensembles all experiment with everything from alternative controllers to live coding). But the recording question alone turned out to reveal a lot about laptop performance, and how it’s gradually evolving into just music performance.

Also of interest, Craig Anderton talks about the basics of recording your sets live in Ableton Live. The basic idea: record not only the arrangement, but external audio, as well.

This story also turned out to be an interesting demonstration of what can happen when new online sites (like CDM) interface with a traditional outlet (Keyboard, bringing you music making information since 1976). That’s my ultimate hope: that these outlets will make each other better, and each will expand the knowledge of techniques and what (and who) is out there. Less lofty translation: if Keyboard hadn’t asked me to write this up, I might never have gotten around to it, and conversely, if I didn’t have CDM, I would never have hooked up with folks like the Moscow Laptop Cyber Orchestra.

Speaking of which, let us know how you record your sets and even laptop ensembles, and if I missed anything!

Previously:
Laptop Orchestras Proliferate, from Princeton to Moscow