granular like Tone Machine

I posted this over in the Kontakt forum, but it may be more appropriate here:

----------------------
Although I like the Tone Machine mode in Kontakt, I frequently find myself wanting to use the back-and-forth loop mode. Unfortunately, while looping is available, that mode is not.

Does anyone know of any other instruments that do what Tone Machine does (impose playable pitches onto sample data that is not necessarily pitched via granular synthesis... or conversely impose a sample's dynamic tone qualities onto playable pitches) but allow for back-and-forth looping in the sample?
-----------------------

Know of any other vsts that do this? Or Reaktor ensembles? If there's a better place to post this query, let me know.

Thanks.

-glenn
http://balloonastronomy.com

 

Just wanted to give this query one more shot... Still looking!

 

Both the Resynth Sampler and the Pitchformer Sampler are 'Granular' samplers that can loop samples back n forth. however the quality or the reverse playback is very 'grainy' especially with the 'Resynth'.

the 'Graincloud' sampler can have its 'Position' modulated, which can result in very nice back n forth modulations.

there are quite a few in the User Library - Frame and Particles spring to mind. also there is Travelizer in the Reaktor 5 Library.

sowari

 

I'm curious... does anyone know what Kontakt is actually doing to impart pitch to the sounds in Tone Machine? Particularly, sounds that don't seem obviously tonal to start with (percussion, motors, normal speech, wind, etc)? Resonant filters? Or does it somehow extract or come up with a "momentary" pitch per grain and pitch shift each grain accordingly? Or...?

-glenn
http://balloonastronomy.com

 

i think you need to google 'granular synthesis'

sowari

 

Sowari, thanks for weighing in. I'm pretty sure I understand at least the google-quick-search basics of granular synthesis. At one time I dabbled in introducing myself to writing a VST/C++ plugin and wrote a little granular thing as a learning project. There obviously are some blind spots and holes in that understanding though.

Specifically, I did nothing related to applying pitch to apparently non-pitched material as in my earlier question, and after further googling it's still unclear. Time stretching/compression and the various ways of combining that with pitch *shifting* all make sense.

But what does one do to add the sense of pitch to material that does not originally have a pitched "character"? Is it doing per-grain filtering like a vocoder? Is the pitch generated because the grain start rate is in the audio range? Just guessing... Some salient or appropriate concepts or key words would be great, and I'll look them up.

Thanks in advance...

 

You could check out the ezFFT package from NI.

http://co.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=userlibrary&type=0&ulbr=1&plview=detail&patchid=5722

There is a tutorial at nireaktor.com which should give you an introduction.

 

sorry, i forgot Tone Machine behaved a little differently to the Time Machine samplers in Kontakt.

Tone Machine uses Formant Shifting. Formants are like the A, E, I, O, U vowel sounds. when you transpose a male vocal upwards, it can easily start to sound like a female vocalist. with Formant shifting you can attempt to preserve the characteristics of a male voice even if the pitch is higher as a result of playing the same sample much higher than it was sampled.

if you have Reaktor, you should have a zipped folder in your Library folder called 'Legacy'. if you unzip it you should find some easier to understand Ensembles that explore this. just search for Formant.

putting Formant into the User Library search engine throughs up a mixture of stuff including vocoders. so yes, Formant shifting can sound like a vocoder.

sowari