OMega 3 Workstation YouTube tutorial

Not sure how to use these. When in the instrument and properties View I assume .tga files can be browsed to for BG color???

 

Nice example. Will scrutinize carefully tomorrow.

 

Targa used to be the only color format for Reaktor.
You could convert to PNG or something else nowadays.
They can be a background for any macro, instrument, or ensemble.
For example:

 

I think we are all at this point.



Probably Paule's library is much larger than this. He is very prolific.

I have over 300,000 samples, not NI libraries, my own:



I use XO to sort these into 'Drum' categories and I can find similarities.
XO will classify a sample in two dimension and group them into a drum category. It works somewhat well with non-drum sounds.



NI factory library and Falcon library:


I used a system-wide search tool to located files and samples, etc.

Who can keep track of all this goodness?

 

Oh, nice demonstration of their use. Very cool.

 

Or, if you subtract the channels all the common-mode frequencies will disappear and you will left with lots of resonances only. Then mix that back into the dry channels.

If the pitch is too high pitchshift it down.

 

So sorry to be such a noobie after this much use of Reaktor but...
I was getting event loops on load of Polyplex into Reaktor 6.4 Standalone.
I went into Preferences and checked: Globally Disable Event Loops.
No more Event Loops. Is it that simple? You did recommend this, didn't you?
I didn't realize it was a Preference.
So confusing! But having made that change, when i went into Logic Pro, the event loops also stopped!
So now I should be able to use Omega 3! I'll report back...

 

Yes I mentioned that, but in the event loop you posted I didn't see how it could progress past the first event because the router would have been off.
I thought event loop warnings were to prevent infinite loops.
I don't have event loops disabled and I have not experienced them in any ensemble I use.

I just loaded Polyplex with no problems.

Would you mind checking this version h below with the panelset mods?
It should have a bunch of panels showing that select various instruments groupings.
Each setting should show the pieces in the upper left top screen position so that an HD view makes everything fit.

If it doesn't view correctly, try selecting the show panelsets option and make sure automatic panel layout is off.

Speaking of preferences and startup options, here is what I do:

1) My prefs:


2) In my user directory, I place a 'New.ens' with everything set up for me to start working on a new ensemble. That includes Info documentation for the ensemble, the label of the Reaktor version that is current, etc. There is a New.ens in the factory path, but this will override that path. When you select open with a new ensemble, this will get used.

3) New path:

 

Will attend to all this helpful stuff shortly.
Quick report on using Omega 3. I like it. I can use it. It's realtime fun.
With Morse-Thue running things it's less 'me' than 'you' in some sense, but I think I figured out how to disable the sequencer and play my MIDI notes through some snapshots from your favorites.
Even when disabled M-T tries to govern my pitches. I reset every time to INIT and I'm OK.

If JIMI Played Drums: that is a humdinger. I figured out how to engage a lot of the instruments and make variations in real-time. That gives me back some control. Cool.
What makes JIMI so musical? Any insight/tips will be welcome.
I want to be able to make my own patches based on the heart and soul of this snap!

 

Every ens. snapshot I saved (Surreal Snaps and Thanos Snaps, but not INIT snaps) will have the MTS enabled, I think.
It is internally connected everywhere MIDI is spoken.
Easiest for you might be to Mute the instrument so it won't run.

 

That snapshot features Blue Grains working rather well.

Blue Grains is a granular delay line with the input buffer showing on the display.
At the position marker the samples are sent to an envelope follower.
When the envelope follower threshold is reached, some triggers occur which modulate positions, lengths, etc.

It requires careful setting of the 'thresh' and 'hold' XY panel in addition to the input gain. The pitch can be adjusted and the modulation envelope times may also be altered for quick or slow envelopes.

In that snapshot, MIDI drums from the Sampler are played at random, and since they are spikey, the envelope follower in Blue Grains gets plenty of threshold triggers.

I was hoping that no drums would be heard at all, but some seem to get through.

Blue Grains will require some time to get the feel, it is not obvious or intuitive, for me. But I like it when it works well.

If you use rachToys as well, you can place Blue Grains before or after it, depending on what you like to do.

Blue Grains can make rachtoys sound more animated, or rachToys can soften the blow provided by Blue Grains.

Sometimes Blue Grains has small annoying clicks that can be hidden by rachToys.

I tried to eliminate these, but...

If you are at all familiar with Jimi Hendrix live performances you will see the reference to that style of feedback-sustained noise.

I think my personal favorite is Weather Report from Titan which offers very realistic thunderstorms. Since it is random, some are more dramatic than others. SF provides the dispersion for the echos. That snapshot was a total surprise to me. I did not plan that so much as found it while exploring. Pure serendipity-do-dah.

The vast majority of my snapshots were found by chance and refined over time.

 

You might think so! But none of the event-loop dialogs I get leads to disabling behavior. They all happen on some innocuous event like snapshot change or ensemble load and then (except for the DClk issue I had with Omega3) stop happening so idiotically.
It could be in 'my system' but they were happening before when I was on mac Pro not mac Mini.
I think they began with 6.4 and maybe NI should look at the code that generates these warnings.

 

Of course I'm familiar with Jimi. I heard him play several times before he was Jimi. He was Jimmy James (with Randy California, later of Spirit, on rhythm guitar!), and the Blue Flames. Cafe Wha, 1966-7. RIP.

 

Blue Grains is easy for me to mess with. Big Fun on Jimi Drum for sure.
The controls are intuitive enough.
I played my MIDI notes and changed instrument snaps and then went back to 7-5. Cool results.
I don't mind the drums coming through at all! They just add surprise.
Now how do I see what the samples are that Blue Grains is gently combing its way through?
Can I change them while we play or do my MIDI notes and velocities already mess with that?
Hat tips to you and Mr. Medes.

 

I hope these images (which I made using the version h panelsets ensemble) will help.
If not, ask what puzzles you.

The 'keys' are two fold - selecting instrument MIDI Ins appropriately and setting the sampler to play back samples based on MIDI note.
In other words, Keyboard or MTS notes will select from the sample map regions in the sampler that contain the GM drum set samples.

 

Your pix apply to the version I'm running (haven't switched yet as goin' with the flow).
It appears that I am generating all the sample changes myself from my Midi stream, which is fine with me, as the Jimi preset's sounds are all noise/percussion.
What this does then (having my stream select samples) is synchronizes the sample changes to things that might be happening on other tracks in tandem, i.e. the pitches could be sent to that Explo guitar I demo'd.
It's possible that if Internal has MTS selected, then MTS TOO will provide its own sample changes, but my stream of notes is pretty steady and relatively rapid, so it would likely override MTS, at a guess. I tried other maps you have there (Granular, via either selector or preset, but only 1 sample happens even when 'Pitch' chooses; also the Sampler INIT 3 instead of Drum Sampler from presets, and there I get different and not uninteresting samples, but nothing quite so persuasive as the GM Drums).

 

I changed to your prefs and they work too. But prior to changing to yours, my prefs were pretty similar, i.e. and they work. The 'Globally Disable Event Loops' oddly enough was CHECKED prior to this. So I guess this means I had them 'Enabled' and since 6.4 came along they fired on all kinds of benign moments. But I sure as hell didn't change that preference as i didn't know it was there!

 

Other winners while I play around and get the hang of it:
March of the Droids; Kick the Can; 51 Penduluminous Chaos; 66 Granular glitch -- which I switched over to use Drum sampler -> Blue grains -- LOVELY!

 

Let me see if I can help you figure out the MIDI issues.

Firstly, I turned on my MIDI keyboard, picked the Jimi patch for drums and slowed down the drum speed notes in MTS.
That allowed me to clearly hear any keyboard notes I played.
Polyphony was set to 6 and I was able to generate extra MIDI drums playing along with MTS from my external MIDI keyboard.

Selecting other samples, I also heard 6 voice polyphony. I remember testing 88 voice polyphony once or twice a while back and I never encountered anything odd in the MIDI play area.

Secondly, there are two things that affect polyphony in a major way outside of the instrument voice count.

One is the Pitch Control setting in the OMega synth. It may be poly, mono or legato. I took this from James Walker-Hall's 3X ensemble in the U/L.
It dates from 2004 and I don't believe I changed it very much.

The second is the Bypass on the VOL macro. When the volume envelope is bypassed a decision has to be made as to how to send polyphony to the effects bus. Prior to that in the signal chain, audio streams are polyphonic, multi-voice on a left and a right bus. After that, the right and left bus are single voice stereo as all the effects have voice count expected to be 1.

So when not bypassed, VOL will use a voice combiner to add all the voices into a single voice for each channel. If the VOL is bypassed, only the last voice played is selected. Otherwise, if all voices are simply combined without an ADSR attached, the gains will add up quickly. If voice count is 88, the volume could be absurd.

Next look at the Sampler instrument. Ignoring the granular sampler, the regular sampler is typically used as either a single sample select with MIDI controlling the pitch of that sample, or as a Pitch selector with the MIDI note selecting the sample. There are also some adjusters for the root note of the sample. The root notes may be based on MIDI note 0, or may be saved at a MIDI pitch. There is a pitch adjuster for that.

When you want to play drums, the selector is set so that, internally, only notes from 35 to 81 are passed through. And the MIDI note coming in will select the sample map for the drum for that note. In this mode it is not typical that one will pitch shift the drum with the sampler in addition to choosing the sample with the Pitch.

The granular sampler only uses the sample selected by the knob and MIDI changes the pitch.

As far as I can tell, all MIDI notes I play add together with the MIDI notes generated by MTS.

I use external MIDI channel 1 for my keyboard synth, which happens to be an Axiom 61.

Let me also explain a bit how the MTS works. It is monophonic, but you can add more to get polyphony. I made 4 versions with different colors for that purpose, this one is the Blue version.

A sequence of numbers is generated at a certain rate. For each number, the number of bits set base 2 is counted and that number is used. That is why large numbers appear here so that lots of bits may be set. The Base value is a modulus to restrict the number to a small value between 1 and 16 I think.

When the number is chosen for the pitch, another number is chosen via a similar method for the velocity and both are latched to a MIDI Note On event.

When the next note is generated, a MIDI Note Off is sent to the last note and the new note is played.

This can leave a hanging Note On when switched off.

As far as I can see, all this is behaving exactly as I want and planned.

I have seen an occasional strange note appear when a snapshot is changed and it appears to be the last note encountered in the previous snapshot. Usually, all notes are 0 on all channels when a snapshot change occurs, and I've only seen this under Reaktor 6.4.

There are MIDI indicators on every instrument panel header and there are panel indicators on the Control modulator in the Omega 3 synth, the MTS panel and the Sampler instrument panel to show MIDI notes and velocities for the current note played.

Gate leds are indicated here and there as well.

So a careful inspection of all these debug aids may help you figure out the MIDI issues.

Be careful of MIDI channels and MIDI Omni mode and the usual stuff like that, that might be on your note generator.

 

I don't remember how I made these. I do remember that the Penduluminous chaos setting had what sounded like rolling balls going from left to right and vice versa, but I forgot how I made it.

For the granular sounds I usually set the granular up to playback very slowly over some complex point in the sample. That is why the granular samples are so weird.

If you look only at the OMega 3 Synth snapshots in my bank, they are tutorials. There is one snapshot featuring every oscillator and every major filter and effect. So if I wanted to remember how Weedwacker works, for example, I might select that snapshot and start tweaking that patch.

I made those a decade ago, so I forget many of them, but I do remember spending a lot of time with the settings on each of those patches. I probably used those snapshots to set default values for the various inserts, effects and filters.

Something I often forget is that the INIT snapshot that plays a sine wave at middle C uses the sine oscillator Pitch set to 60. If I start with that and use that oscillator, I have to remember to return the Pitch to 0 to play normally. There are a few INIT gotchas like that.