Reaktor and Microtonal Music

Hi folks,

I've found a few old ensembles to help composers work with scales other than 12ET, but nothing very recent (in the last ten years). Is anyone currently producing microtonal (not atonal or noise--though also very cool) music with Reaktor? If so, how exactly? I'm especially looking for ways to play nicely with established toolsets like http://www.huygens-fokker.org/scala/. Are there any blocks that can load Scala tunings or that already have many tuning available internally?

Thank you,
d. vyd

 

it's very simple to change a scale (fixed note for p=60):

very interesting are scales of 19 or 31 tones per octave.

If you like to go deeper you will find something in REAKTOR RIDDLES (chapter 5 microtuning) (fixed note is here p=69)

ciao herw

 

Hi Herw,

Thank you so much for this explanation and the link to the Reaktor Riddles. I'm relatively new to Reaktor and have not delved beyond ready-made ensembles and hooking up Blocks. In your example image, is "Knob" the number of tones per octave? Is the "Numeric" output the frequency in hz? Do I need to convert or rescale that output before sending to a Blocks oscillator?

How would you go about creating a scale that is non-repeating (no octaves), likely requiring you to set each MIDI note directly in hz? The SCALA homepage mentions that Reaktor support is through "semitones file, frequency file or NTF file". Are you familiar with any of those? How would one load such files to avoid entering the data by hand? I noticed one solution in your Riddles link uses tables. You write that "when defining a new table you have to open its properties by clicking on Table Editor. You can load a saved table or define a new one. " Have you used this method with Scala files?

-d. vyd

 

the knob sets the number of tones per octave. The numeric output shows only the transformation to the new scale; it is still a pitch value. F.i. if you use a normal oscillator with pitch input and want to use a new scale, you only have to insert the macro scale (with input NotePitch and tones) and connect the output to your oscillator (instead to a numeric output). F.i. if you set knob to 6 and press key p=60 you get 60 (as wished). If you press a key with (normally) p=62 you get instead p=64 and so on.
For tones=24 and you press a key with p=61 (a half tone) you get 60.5 and for p=62 (normally) you get p=61, means you get quarter tones instead of half tones. There is no transformation to Hz.

i didn't use it but this the right idea. You can create and save a table to directly convert a normal pitch scale to any other values; you have to define 128 value which is a short job. So you have to define the table and then to use a read module to get other values. The incoming pitch value is the index of the table element.

ciao herw

 

... and it is no problem, to define a table with Hz and transform by a macro to pitch.