Cracklefield

I have released new music machine at Kontakt Hub, it's named Cracklefield. This idea has been following me for a long time. I imagined a grid based sequencer, with objects traveling in different directions, bouncing off walls and colliding with each other, creating dynamically evolving patterns. Cracklefield is such generative music machine, experimental sequencer, more a simulation, than a loop player.

The sequencer workspace, the field, is cellular grid. The field can be read or modified by cursors, pointing at sequence track playing position. The cursors can travel the filed in any direction, horizontally, vertically or diagonally, each at it's own rate. They can bounce off field edges or obstacles (walls) and, what is the fun part, bounce off each other. Just imagine several sequencer tracks playing 'pong' with each other. On next level, cursors can interact with the field; paint, erase or flip cells, build or destroy walls, shift whole field rows or columns. It's a playground for building evolving patterns - set initial conditions and see what would it sound like.
Cracklefield can also use cellular automaton named 'Langton's ant'. An ant is basically a cursor, which changes direction depending on what kind of cell it steps on. For example, it turns right on a filled cell and turns left on an empty cell, flipping the state of cell it has visited. Sounds very simple, yet it creates surprisingly complex structures. In Cracklefield you can combine several ants of different types to explore variety of possible generative pattern setups. The machine is using a note map, assigning each cell a note number, according to one of different algorithms, to play melodies, or create round robin percussive patterns.
Cracklefield can also act as an apreggiator. Each cursor can be bound to one of notes from the chord being currently held. Arp patterns can modulated (transposed depending on cursor position) and fit to a scale pattern, while each cursor can play a different sound.

Here's a video showing some of the possibilities:

 
This machine is not really about the sounds, but it has been built on a sample player, so obviously it needs samples. I wasn't quite sure how to approach this and in the end I decided to pick a set of sounds that, most likely, nobody would have already, as it's not a kind of instrument, one would be interested in just to get more pianos. The Cracklefield sample set is mostly based on acoustic/electroacoustic instruments, or found sounds, unconventional, experimental or unusual sounds, featuring a hollow soviet balalaika, copper rod mallets made with contact microphones, experimental guitar setups, glass chimes or wire-brushed crash cymbals. On the other hand, the machine is designed, to make adding new sounds relatively easy; just duplicate a group, put new samples and refresh the instrument. There's also a built-in note recorder, it allows the user to capture multichannel MIDI clips, which then can be exported to a DAW by drag'n'drop mechanism and reused elsewhere.

Here's another video, playing with random electronic drum samples, shows how it looks and sounds to use the instrument:

It is thus far the largest, most complicated and one of the most unusual projects I put myself into. If you'd like to learn more about Cracklefield functionality, see the manual:
http://www.fairlyconfusing.net/docs/cracklefield.pdf

Or watch even more videos:

Cracklefield needs full version of Kontakt 5.6.6 or newer to run. It takes 950MB of hard drive space after unpacking (the samples are in plain wav format). You will need at least 1280x1024 screen resolution to be able to see the whole interface without scrolling, it's bigger than standard ones, as there are plenty of controllers.

It's available from Loot Audio:

Now updated to 1.2 - with field animator...

Bassmeister

I assembled a Kontakt bass instrument crudely nick-named Bassmeister, which is now available on Loot Audio... The samples were created with rare, vintage bass piano.

I bought the piano sometime in early 90s (took me a while to get to sample it), the guy who was selling it, advertised it as "The Doors bass". He was referring to Rhodes bass piano used by Ray Manzarek, but this box was no Rhodes. The piano is "Basset II" made by East German accordion manufacturer Weltmeister. Not to be confused with Hohner's Basset, which is electronic keyboard. Weltmeister's Bassset I, is somewhat noticeable on the Internet, as it's a keytar, it has been produced from early to late 60s. Version II has lost the handle along with proud name of keytar and has different casing, but from what I can tell of version I pictures, the interior is very similar. Unlike Rhodes, this critter is using a set of metal stripes (in place of metal rods) built into a comb shaped pickup. The mechanism of making the stripes vibrate is rather unique. There is a lever mechanism which lifts the stipe up, until it slips off its edge, which is similar to the way you play a kalimba with fingers. Lever mechanism is simple, yet quite fragile. It would explain, why there is not many of these still in working condition. My unit has five broken or missing levers, however, as the lever design is the same for all keys, I could use one of working levers, for sampling separate keys. Which was just a lot of screwdriver work. At the side there is a kind of volume modulation pedal, which doesn't work very well, probably because of aged parts. The bad thing about this piano is resonance, it's enough to tap the case harder and all the stripes start to resonate, interfering with playing keys. It might be partly because of aged (and cheaply made) sponge dumpers. For sampling I used two small towels to quiet unused stripes, the amount of work it would take to secure them all, would rather indicate a design flaw.

For Kontakt instrument I used two velocity layers and five polyphonic round robin samples per key. By polyphonic round robin I mean, there is separate round robin counter for every key. Key velocity doesn't really matter in instrument's design, but hitting a key really hard make a distinctive initial distortion sound, so I made a separate high velocity layer. The instrument has selectable filters, distortion, LFO and envelope modulators for some creative sound shaping. It requires full version of Kontakt 5.5.1 or newer to work.

Finally, here's a video overview of the Kontakt instrument.

 

Electric Noisebow

Electric Noisebow is imaginary virtual instrument for Kontakt sampler. It can generate drone sounds, noise soundscapes, ambient atmospheres or unfolding distortions. It is based on two sample sets I made by playing modified Reno electric guitar with an E-Bow. The clean set is built of sustained tone samples. The dirty set contains distorted sounds, I've got by putting the E-Bow very close to the vibrating string, so the string would start to collide with E-Bow housing. I edited all samples by hand to get more or less seamless loops, which are rather lengthy. Especially noise loops which span for 20-30 seconds. The instrument has double convolution reverb unit, which can be used to sweep between reverb and sound types. There is note doubler and round robin mechanism synchronized with transport position, so used in a project, the instrument should render repeatable results.
Here's example track created with one instance of the instrument in a single take:
http://www.fairlyconfusing.net/audio/electric_noisebow.mp3

And here's a small walk-through video:

The instrument is available at Loot Audio. Note, that it requires full version of Native Instruments Kontakt 4.2 or newer to work. There are 36 WAV samples, 88,2 kHz, 24 bit and the whole instrument takes about 220MB or drive space.

Alimchord: Paranoid Edition

This is follow up for Alimchord, imaginary musical instrument for Kontakt. It is built on samples from 7 tone kalimba and a wooden stick captured using various configurations of contact microphones. Paranoid edition has more controls, more samples and a preset memory function.

There is 290MB load of 96/24 wav samples, in three velocity layers and up to nine algorithmic round robins. It sounds somewhat different from regular model, percussive sound partials and release noises are the same, but tone partials is significantly more detailed.
It is available at Loot Audio. Note that you need full version of Kontakt 4.2 or newer to make it work. Also, this instrument can consume a lot of CPU, there are multiple sample layers and three convolution reverbs in use, if you have doubts, try regular edition first.

Alimchord

Alimchord is rare electroacoustic keyboard instrument. Few units have been produced in Poland in late 60s, however most of them broke down rather quickly. Today, I'm happy to bring it out of obscurity with a Kontakt based emulation. It does mimic most of 262144 valve switches combinations, although some of them appear to be broken. Here's screenshot and sound example.

Operating the instrument is quite simple, the set of switches will change the sound, in more or less apparent way each combination has a unique vibe. Two additional switches can be used to reset pattern or shuffle switches in random way. Ambiance knob will set the amount of ambiance effect, Stereo adjusts microphone placement and panorama and Tension will influence keys sensitivity, like a velocity curve.
This fine instrument is available free of charge, get it here, 15MB compressed archive. You need full version of Kontakt 4.2 or newer to make it work. Note that due to its triple convolution design, it is not recommended to those faint of CPU. Have fun.
If you like to have more control and more detailed sound, try paranoid edition.

Arctic Rooster - organic synthesizer for Kontakt

Today I serve Arctic Rooster. It's a sort of neo-retro organic synthesizer for Kontakt. It is based on very short waveforms, serving as 'oscillators', that has been cut from recording of an authentic Icelandic rooster that I took this summer. Also there is the oscillator bank made of waveforms that I took from recording of my own voice.

Features in an egg shell:
- 15 waveforms in 3 oscillator banks,
- wood finishing enclosure,
- 3 memory banks,
- lcd display,
- 3 LFOs and lots of knobs.


And this is how it sounds, first the rooster recording, then synthesizer sounds, one instance at a time, no external effects:



Finally the download link - 710KB. Requires full version of Kontakt 4.2.4 or newer. Free to download and use in your music. If you find is useful or amusing, I encourage you to show your support, pick one of my albums that you can find hovering somewhere on the right side of these pages. Have fun.