So really odd moment this morning.
I woke up a little later than usual, stayed up kinda late last night, and almost instantly got a really vivid idea for a patch I wanted to have a go at building.
Not like an idea for something to try, but more like "if i do this, then this, and make that, it WILL be awesome" So I leaped out of bed, made some coffee and got stuck in!
The first part of what I wanted was a synth engine built around a Wave table type deal. So I went to work making some wave forms of various complexities. From a simple sin to some very complex additive ones. I made about 40 in total, each a perfect cycle at the same frequency. I put these together into one long wav file and loaded into one of the sample modules in Reaktor.
Set up a macro to define the correct loop point as so on, and soon enough I had a lovely scanning wave table. I made a duplicate, and a small mixer macro to mix and blend the 2 oscillators in a bunch of different ways.
The next part of my idea was a way of sequencing numerous aspects of the synth engine. Rather than a sequencer lane for pitch, amplitude etc.. I thought it would be fun to make large value tables for sending to envelopes, and sequencer lanes to select from the tables. Essentially meaning you sequence the modulation shapes. This took a while, defining a good selection of envelope profiles and then modifying the envelope generators to redefine those values based on master tempo.. took a very long while to be honest.
Anyway, once that was done I duplicated the macro and attached them to lots of different parameters. Amplitude, pitch modulation, table position etc etc.
I also thought it would be interesting to include a stereo delay with the delay time also being modulated, and so I built that in too.
Well moment of truth, fired it all up and..... hmm, well not what I had expected!!
SELF-AWARE-DRUM-MACHINE-FAIL by Noisy Neighbour Sound
The envelopes are far too severe, the delay just didn't work, and the whole thing was so hard to sequence in any way that it is more or less impossible to use! I'm sure that there are some aspects which can be rescued, and I'm sure the envelopes idea could work, but I really need to re evaluate the method I tried here, come up with something better.
So all in all, not quite sure what to say about this sound. I guess sometimes what feels like a great idea can turn out to be a shoddy one. But I'm glad I gave it a go, it's given me some more ideas for the future and definitely doesn't feel like a complete waste of time!
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