Sound-A-Day 15.03.2011

Finally back to the blog!

Dear oh dear oh dear. A week with no sound a day. Actually pretty pissed at myself for having left it so long..

To be fair though, I've not exactly been sitting on my ass doing nothing. Been super busy with so many bits and pieces, that finding an hour or so to make, upload, and waffle on about a sound has been just too much of a stretch.

Still, like the guilty feeling sap that I am, I hope to make it up with presents!!!

A little while back I uploaded a short loop from a synth I'd been working on. One of the things that I had hoped to improve on was the interface, it was a touch confusing. So I started rebuilding that whole thing and went off on a bit of a tangent. Loads of ideas about interfaces and what not.

I ended up making a far simpler version of the synth, same engine etc, but far simpler control layout. I also built a TouchOSC template to go with it and finished off the Reaktor panel in a style matching the Ipad layout.

I think it looks really cool!

Here's a pic of the Reaktor panel..

And here's one of the IPad panel..

The synth is built around a fairly straight forward 303 style engine, and 16 step sequencer. You have control lanes for Note, Octave, Gate, and slide. The synth as you'd expect, has the choice of Square or Saw tooth wave shapes, and a nice rubbery filter, just like a 303. There is also a distortion macro for driving the sound some more. In addition there is a pair of resonant filters, and a frequency modulation effect. These are probably my favourite parts, and lead to some really unusual sounds. Each of these post effects has a dedicated XY controller. There is also a control for each XY which runs the output through a S&H module which steps the output in sync with the master clock.

Here's a little audio clip, straight out of the synth with just a little bit of reverb.

GRID-LOOP-2 by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Of course this synth can make classic Acid line sounds, and not just the unusual sequences like the one above. But I think it's a good demonstration of what else can be done with this ens.

I did encounter several obstacles in making the Ipad interface. Due to limitations on both TouchOSC and Reaktor, I've had to change the way many of the synths functions work, particularly with the sequencer. None the less, I plan on revisiting this in the coming weeks and hopefully re introduce some of the functionality of the original.

I have also begun making an 808 synth drum machine to partner up with this patch. The eventual aim is to have 4 or 5 instruments all running from 1 Ipad interface and Reaktor ensemble for making Acid/electro type stuff in a fast and intuitive way. Will be sure to upload and revise each part as I progress!

Here's a link for the Reaktor Patch and Ipad TouchOSC template.PAD SYNTH

Of course, if you do not have an Ipad, then do not worry, because as well as working really hard on that version, I also tweaked and finished the original!

The interface is still the same web of confusion as before, but honestly, it doesn't take long to figure out. This version has quite a few more features than the Ipad version. As well as everything listed above, there is also a separate automation lane for almost every parameter, with dedicated amount controls. Visual feedback of automation data on the controls, and pattern offset control.

The interface is split across both A and B panel views. A view displays note, gate, and slide information, while B shows Parameter automation, post filters and FM.

Pattern offset is controlled by the scanning boxes at the top of both views, just start clicking about and you'll figure it out!

Reading back through my "description", I cant tell if I have had any success in explaining this patch. Really I'd recommend just clicking around and trying things out. If anyone wants though, send me a message and I'll put together an instruction guide or something to help you out! (Same goes with anything on this blog btw)

Here's a link for this Reaktor patch.. GRID SYNTH

To get the panel elements working the way I wanted them to, has meant that changing them would take quite a while. I will do it at some point, but for now this one doesn't look quite as cool as the Ipad version. Still stay posted for that!

Anyways, sorry for being so behind in keeping this updated. Hope to get it all back up and running over the next few days. Lots of interesting things to show and tell coming up though, a couple more downloads, and maybe even some videos!!!

Sound-A-Day 25.02.2011

Well, I did it again!

As I may have mentioned previously, I am currently unemployed having quit my last job. One of the wonderful things about being unemployed is the amount of free time you get to working on the things you love. One of the downsides is it's all to easy to loose track of where in the week you are. I thought that Friday was Saturday, and therefore not a sound-a-day day... oh well.

So as way of apology, I hope you'll accept a nice track instead of just a sound. After all, a track is made up of many sounds, talk about value for money!!

This is a track from an EP I released late last year as a free MP3 download. Just a fun little side project I had been busy with. One way I find really nice to write music is just to get a few synths running together and jam about with things. The EP was a few of those jams, edited and arranged into more coherent tracks. Not my usual style of output, but I still really love these tracks, and so I hope you enjoy it!

ROT13 TRACK4 by Noisy Neighbour Sound

If you fancy checking out the rest of the EP, you can download it for free HERE

As I said, it's all ideas that started from jams, so expect drifting tuning, rough mixing and all the rest, but I like that aspect, bit of the charm for me, especially considering how particular I normally get with tracks.  

Sound-A-Day 02.02.2011

AAggghhhh!! Disaster!!!

Sat down to make some music and stuff last night, switched on my monitors and "Bbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrap.. Crack!"

"Bollocks...."

So I think the Amp in the right one has gone, really annoying. Spent the rest of the night trying to get it working but to no avail. Gave up and went to bed. Still, hopefully get it fixed on the weekend.

In the mean time, I have some passives which I wired up this morning. They're not great and I don't really trust them, but at least it means I can make some noise for the moment.

So back to the matter at hand. Last entry I posted a kinda glitched out circuit bent robot sound I made with a little Reaktor patch I built. I discovered that it was a cool way of making some WALL E sounds as well, a bit like this:

WALL E TEST by Noisy Neighbour Sound

Just finished polishing it up a bit, making it look all pretty for you all to enjoy, so if you fancy having a play you can download it here This time its a much smaller file, only 2.1mb. It's really easy to use, just select the sound you want to play with, and click & drag on his body.

There's something I really like about this type of sound design, and it's just another reason why I'm such a fan of Ben Burtt. It has this amazing cross over between sound design and Foley work. I think WALL E's voice is a great example of that, both the initial recording and the playback manipulation have such a strong effect on the end result. The guy is a genius!!

Anyway, hope you enjoy the patch, I really recommend loading some of your own sounds into it, gives some really cool results, and also means you wont have to listen to my terrible vocal takes!

Reaktor Patch: VidSeq

Hurray!!

Really excited to start sharing some of my Reaktor patches finally. I hope to upload all types of different things, some will be pretty full on synths and live patches, others smaller toys, designed only to be a bit of fun.

This one is probably a bit more in the second category. It's a granular sample based beat machine, but with a difference! More recently, I've become really interested with the idea of combining video and audio, and I'm really excited to explore the various ways the two things can be integrated.

Panel A

Panel B

This patch began as an experiment to see how well Reaktor can manage video playback, and ways that the 2 elements can work together. The idea is that sequencing and granular parameters have a direct influence on the video playback as well as audio. Reaktor is certainly not designed to do anything video related, so it took a bit of experimenting to get this working, but I'm really pleased with the result.

You can download the patch HERE, be warned though, due to all the image files it a pretty large file (+200mb!)

I've left the interface pretty simple, I thought it would be more fun to leave things unlabeled so that the user felt more inclined to just try things out and see what happens. There aren't so many parameters, so it should be fairly straight forward. I plan to upload some instructions on making your own video content for this patch, as well as audio, and would be interested to see what other people try out!

Hope you all enjoy it, and as I plan to develop this into something much more powerful, any suggestions and feedback are genuinely appreciated.