"Reaktor may have won the 1999 readers' award for Best Soft Synth but, judging from the amount of mail we get, it's clear that a lot of you still see it as a bit enigmatic when it comes to building synths of your own from scratch. So, being the nice chaps that we are, we've digested, regurgitated, translated and rearranged the manual into something a little more coherent. In this two-part tutorial, we'll be concentrating on building a fairly basic analogue synth that can be used for lead and bass sounds, but more specifically for slow filter-sweeping pads.
The key to using Reaktor is not to get carried away with it; it's all too tempting to stack up 20 oscillators, add a copious amount of controls and expect to have a huge sound. This will most probably end in a noise that swamps the rest of your instruments, and uses up a hell of a lot of your processing power at the same time. The sounds that can be had from Reaktor are determined mostly by which oscillators you're using. Triangle adds a metallic 'ting' (in the same way as the triangle instrument), Sine is basically a whistle, Pulse (also known as square wave) adds a woody, hollow sound (perfect for pads), and Sawtooth is for 'raspy' type sounds. The TB-303 is a good example, having both square and sawtooth waves. There are a lot more oscillators on offer, but it's best to experiment and decide for yourself which will create the sounds you're after.
The number of oscillators you use also affects the amount of control that you have. Too many oscillators can leave you lost in a forest of controls (with the movement of each affecting all the others), but too few and you're left out in the cold. So, put out the cat, lock yourself away, boot up Reaktor and we'll get started..."
See the tutorial here
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