Virtual patch cables in reaktor?

i honestly really don't think so. Results won't be the same.The interface is the first thing you get into the software with. It reminds you (in the case of an real synth-like GUI, for exemple) of other softwares/instruments, it may suggest some particular sounds, even reminds you some musical references, etc. It "suggests" some way to use it, it induces some musical gestures to produce sound.

Just have a look at acoustical instruments. You don't compose the same way for piano and guitar ( or whatever you what). I don't talk about their sound, timbre etc. Just the notes and other musical parameters. You simply won't end with the same score.

Now you can replace notes with frequency, ƒƒƒ with 0 dB. Is there a difference? I'm not sure. (it probably induces the question of relation between acoustical instrument parameters, and the electronics/electroacoustics parameters, but that's not the point here)

Now, i can understand that some people need to have an interface they seem to know. I'm as well influenced by the interfaces that i know. But i wouldn't like Reaktor to look like a modular synth. Merely because it wouldn't induce anymore that it is flexible and open. One may simply think it's a synth, and may even not think about producing sounds with a different approach than with a synth.

Reaktor offer a way to find YOUR way to produce sound (at least at a theorical level), and it doesn't offer a "finished" one.

Hope my English makes sense.

 

maybe in a more caricatural way: when i see Reason i think "yeah! i can make some techno", while when i see Reaktor, i think "mmm...what interesting music could i make?"

just kidding, sort of...

 

this is because it has to do with gesture. I personnaly think that the interface is supa important. because that's what you look at when you program your sound. I always put a background image in my instrument. it help the understanding of the routing, but I think there is something more.

unfortunatly to do really nice gui you need to know 3d software.and I don't have time to learn one.

personnaly I'm always a bit dispointed by the gui of official reaktor ensemble. they look so "machine".

there is one guy in the UL who do really interesting gui, I don't remember his name but he does alien artifact, there you are closer to a new instrument instead of a new ensemble.

on the moment I'm thinking of diffenrent gui (that i won't do unfortunately).

once is ala existenz the background image would be a beach picture with wide angle, taken close to the ground so that the most part of the picture is sand, and the upper part would be sea and sky. and on the sand instead having knobs, switch, etc, you have shells that you turn or move. if the sounds it produce are sea oriented then the result would be consistent. maybe a sea drone?

another one would be a kind of jungle picture, you know the one for children, maybe a bit ala mario,with a path, the background (the path) is always the same, but you can place animals at different places, so that it tells different story everytime. and you don't think your parameters in term of fondamental param(pitch cutoff, res) but in meta terms so that it is consistent with the story you draw. and if you put an algo composer with feedback on the animation (maybe a kind of metaphysical function but with samples) you'll get a never ending audio video story composer, very good to introduce children to music and sound synthesys, you record moves, put the animals in the position of the beginning of the story and here you go.could be done using big part of metaphysical, or inspired by, some sampler and some fm synthesys instead of AM which is a bit too dark for childrens.
don't know why, but I think this one is for spoombung.

another one would be based on chimeras. the interface is the head of an animal, but you can choose the color or size and the shape of diferent part of the head, the eyes, the ears, nose, tooth, lips every ting you can think about, and the sound should sound the way the head looks.

another one would be using water drip, the principe would be to have water drip instead of knobs, so it interact with the background, maybe a face or a landscape, the easy one would be considering drips on a window cause there you are in 2d just simulate a relection on the window and the use 3d soft to do the interaction of drips with the background image.

the harder one would be considering a 3d space, meaning you can move the drips only in the xy plane but you have drip that are close to you and other that are partly behind .more image to calculate to have all combination, but i think you don't need that much of overlapping, thinking the number of drips and their placement, so that it do the trick with not too much image is the big part of the stuff. but at the end you get a kind of matrix (the movie) synth.

it's a pity days are only 24h.

 

yes of course. The question, is "is there a musical gesture for software and electronic instruments?" There are some really interesting articles about that subject. (and I think it will be my subject of research for next year at university)

Nice GUI exemples. Maybe there could be some more simpler exemples (;-) ), but for sure one has to find better, and more appropriate interfaces than knobs and faders. mmm... I can't wait next university year...

à qui le dis-tu... ;-)

 

do you have links for the article?

as for the question it has to do with hardware interface as it is what you move. there could be many approach, one is building a remote. like a real instrument, doesn't mean instrument we know, it could be a sphere with a ball inside and you have to turn the sphere in your hand so that the centrifuge force will produce a pressure in the sphere.then use that pressure to remote a param of the sound. considering the whole mechanical system, human + sphere+ball inside, the transfert function would be interesting, and could be musical.I think the "musical" gesture is the big question, what would be musical? turning the cutoff knob of a 303 is "now" a musical gesture, even if that knob wasn't intended to be use that way. another solution would be virtual remote, using data glove or anything else , the data glove and other digital armour are already in use, this also produce a gesture. but I was more thinking of a virtual reality instrument. I was thinking of terrain synthesys, imagine you could sculpt your terrain, this could produce musical gesture, but I think feedback force and resistance are important can't explain why, but i'm sure it is important.

 

I think that the cables in Reason are not used in the best way as they are used to interconnect the different synths, effects and the mixer etc. Most often you have to scroll the window to see both end of the cable. It's really a pain to use!

On the ARP 2600 imitation from Arturia it's another situation - there it make easier so visually see what is connected to what - as long as you don't have too many cables. I don't think there is ONE type of GUI that is best for all situations. Patch cables is just one option... an option we don't have in Reaktor!

 

Here are the main books i use for an exposé i done this semester.

*Cahiers de l'Ircam (Recherche et Musique), Ircam - Centre Georges-Pompidou

"Instruments" n°7, 1995

"La composition assistée par ordinateur" n°7, 1993

"Composition et environnements informatique" n°1, 1992

*Les nouveaux gestes de la musique, H.Genevois, R. De Vivo, Collection Eupalinos, Editions Parenthèses, 1999

* Interfaces homme-machine et création musicale, H.Vinet, Hermès Sciences Publications, 1999

This one was really interesting:
http://www.lavoisier.fr/fr/livres/index.asp?texte=2746200800&select=isbn&from=Hermes

 

Not only in fact. In the case of a "classical" instrument, the string you pluck, the knob you turn, the drum you bang is the way you send values, parameters to produce sounds. Then, one could ask if turning a knob on a screen can be a musical gesture. The knob exemple may be a bad exemple since it tends to reproduce a physical and known situation. What about puting some numbers in a number box? Is the physical situation the only point related to the way you produce any sound?

What is a "musical gesture"? ( qui n 'est ici qu'une traduction de "geste musical", et renferme donc non uniquement l'aspect physique du geste)

According to Claude Cadoz ( cf ), the concept of causality is essential to sound production with an instrument. But it's not the case for J.B. Barrière for exemple, who consider the CODE of the software as the way to transmit the parameters to produce sound. Then the code play the role of the physical causality. Then, one could ask if the musical gesture is necesseraly related with hardware and its interface.

 

There's no doubt it would make more complete.

 

I don't know about multi-pictures, the only logical way to do it is to get a patch panel and photograph it with a fixed camera in every combination.

There's no doubt it would make reactor more complete.

It should only take a couple of days to make a four sided patch table with the scope, by lining up series of small squares all around the border and using mouse position to do/undo the links , but you would really have to have a very weird elaborate synth plan to bother.

I thought this thread was about update patches, ha ha

 

I don't know about multi-pictures, the only logical way to do it is to get a patch panel and photograph it with a fixed camera in every combination.

There's no doubt it would make reactor more complete.

It should only take a couple of days to make a four sided patch table with the scope, by lining up series of small squares all around the border and using mouse position to do/undo the links , but you would really have to have a very weird elaborate synth plan to bother.

patches smatches

 

It´s defenetly the biggest advantage of the nord modular system that you can make this quick and direct connections... another important enhancement for Reaktor : If you would have adjustable knobs within the structure you get to a similar modular patching ability as with kabelconnections within the main view. The way to build and fintune sounds to the running sequence...

 

just my 2 cents, but it seems like adding panel patch cables would totally change the type of program reaktor is. i suppose you could make a patch cable module that works like the list modulse, or something similar, but it would be very large/space consuming, i would think, and would alter the whole "feel" of reaktor. with software at the prices they are today vs hardware, wouldn't it make snese to consider buying the arturia MMV or void modular synths? unless you want non-traditional sound-sources with traditional hardware patching paradigm, which the structure view seems to hold onto anyways (although ina more of a schematic type way rather than a modular synth panel way). personally, i lve the fact that reaktor allows me to make stuff that would be inconceivable in hardware w/o wasting huge amounts of $$. i know that if it was done right i could just "not use the", of course, but it seems to me that doing something like that would mean that the whole program would have to be made differantly, and i, at least, would NOT want reaktor to lose it current style to allow it to make easier modular synth clones (ive tried max/msp, and even though its superficial, i like the fact that in reaktor i can make an interesting GUI that looks nice and maybe allows for new ways of data input, vs the rather ugly M/M patches that contain most of the wiring and guts right on the panel. this is one of the primary reasons i use reaktor almost exclusively, until i can 1 day afford to go out and buy M/M as a sacondary program to mess around with in my free time, which is also something i am rather short on these days)

 

Maybe you are wright that patchcables are not the way to go... but it would help when the shell of a macro would allow to have adjustable value windows...with this you could get such a direct patch ability while being in the structure... not as beatiful as with cable simulations ;-) but from the workflow a step in this direction

 

Another take on what db_sputnik just said...

If you have a collection of macros with all the same input and output ports as the ports on modules in the Nord Modular, then why is wiring them together in the structure view that much slower or more difficult or less intuitive than wiring them together on the panel itself??

The only difference I can see is that patches could be saved as snapshots in the nord modular, but they have to be saved as files in Reaktor.

- CList

 

Ahh, nevermind, forget what I just said. I see the problem, as I think 3phase was saying is his post;
You cant see on the panel which ports are connected so you don't know which knobs will do anything when you turn them because some might be connected to empty ports.

I can conceive of a way that you could get around this problem, however, by simply having small lamps next to each knob that light when they receive a non-zero value. That way you'd know which ports were connected and which weren't.

Still, I think my point is valid. How many times do you need to set up a new patch that you can;t get with Carbon or something? Like when you're trying to mock up a kick drum sound from a Sound On Sound article? Who wants a whole screen full of modules with loads orf knobs to make a simple (or even complex) kick-drum that's going to have maybe 4 or 5 parameters that you're actually going to use? Reaktor is so nice because you don't waste your screen with all those useless knobs, you just make them constants on the inside.

Ah, whatever, like I said, different people have different workflows and GUIs that they feel comfortable with, and I don't know if there's any reconciling them!

CList

 

While I have no need for "visable" patch cables, I was dissapointed to find the Reaktor did not provide "virtual" patch cables. Reaktor instruments are like semi-modular instruments of the past. You can patch anything you like from the panel, as long as it's already been patched "behind the scenes". It's like having to get out the soldering iron each time you need to make a new unique connection. As a musician, I want to be able to do this quickly from the front panel. As a techie, I want to be able to open the hood and add a few custom mods from time to time. It's the difference between building the instrument, and building a patch WITH the instrument (and having as few limitations as possible).

I was surprised that Kontak has the features I wish Reaktor had, ie, start with a basic Osc (sample) and VCA, and only add the modules you actually need. Need a LFO? create one, and then choose what to patch it to. Wonder if the LFO is actually affecting the chosen parameter? Look at the ring around the destination's "knob" and see how much work it's doing. It's also pretty easy to arrange the "source" and "destination" modules so they are near each other (sorta...).

This is the type of instrument I'd like to build in Reaktor, but so far it doesn't seem possible. I'd love to be proved wrong! In the mean time, I'm getting plenty of work done with R4 (and looking in my mailbox every day for R5!).

 

I think that's the whole point with Reaktor - you can build a synth for each purpose. No need to reconcile the GUI. Most often a simple synth/tool is more efficient to use than a complex. By designing it so a special purpose you can decide where you set the limits. And Reaktor is a wonderful tool for just that. To have one super flexible synth where you can do everything will in most cases be cumbersum to use. And this apply to the discussion on virtual patch cables. In some cases I think they would add to the usability - in some cases the would not. I think patch cable would add usable flexibility for smaller synths like MS20. For monsters like a full Moog modular system - probably not.

 

What if I already have built a synth for "a" purpose, and in the heat of creativity, I just want to add another LFO? With the Kontakt concept (which I wish Reaktor had) you just choose your modulator (in this case, LFO) choose your destination, and set your depth. In three simple actions you have accomplished your goal. With Reaktor, you deal with creating the LFO, hooking it up, creating a depth control, and then go back to the panel and clean up the mess you just created. AFTER you get things looking good, you can actually start to "program" your patch – if you stil remember your original inspiration.

As for having one "super-flexible" synth, well, I agree – it's hardly a perfect solution. I would just like the ones I build to be MORE flexible, like a real modular (but with CPU limits instead of rack space and $ limits!). I want to be able to create the modulation routings from the "patch programmer" point of view, not the "synth designer/builder" point of view. In THIS way, you would have virtual patch cords, or as I would prefer them to be called, "Modulation Paths" (but I'm not asking for "on screen" patch cords).

Like I've said before, this is hardly keeping me from making music, just an item on my virtual synth wish list.