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As part of our upcoming Geosonics release, I spoke to Chris Watson over skype to find out some background to the many field recordings featured in the product. What unfurled was a fascinating discussion, adding more colour and depth to the recordings than I could have imagined. Tales of glaciers, baked river beds in the Kalahari, Volcanos in Iceland and of course, the very sound of the North Pole.

The Swamp Interview:

The Ice & Water Interview:

The Wires Interview:

The Wind Interview :

You often hear this kind of effect in horror movie soundtracks, and in certain contemporary classical music.  It’s no big secret that I love this sort of stuff.

The script generates extra notes near the input MIDI note, and using a knob or controller you can move the notes nearer or further away from the centre pitch.   This is different from a fist cluster on a piano since we generate pitches “in between” the distinct MIDI notes, so these are microtonal clusters in a sense.

You can set the number of Voices between 1 and 12.   For each voice there is a deviation amount, seen at the bottom of the interface here as Dev 1 through Dev 12.   These are cent deviations from the played pitch.  Obviously Cluster will use a lot of polyphony if generating 12 voices for each input note.

The Cluster knob can be controlled with the Deviate CC controller, so you can perform or sequence moving away from unison to maximum cluster and back again to unison.    Randomize will generate a set of Deviations within the set Range, and has a gaussian distribution so notes closer to the centre are more likely than notes further away from the centre. In the drop down menu you can set the Deviations to be recalculated for each note if you like.

DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPT

Requires Kontakt 4.2.4 or later.

It seems that on many Clavinets the hammer tips get worn down over the years, and the key tabs bent out on an angle so that the string is not trapped flush between the hammer and the harp.

If there is a small gap there you might be able to bend the string slightly since the hammer would have some play.  I’m guessing that because we had our unit refurbished with new hammers I’m unable to bend the strings on this instrument.

Still, pitch bend by pressure is an interesting performance idea, so we’ve written a KSP script to add that feature to our Clav library, and to any other Kontakt instrument for that matter.

KSP SCRIPT : LAST NOTE AFTERTOUCH PITCH BEND

Using this script you can set the bend range in cents, up to a maximum of 2.00 semitones, although I find smaller values feel more “natural” for this slight wobble.  The pitch bend works on the last note played only, avoiding the rather synthetic sound of all notes bending simultaneously.

For Clav, this script works best when loaded in the last (far-right) script position.  Of course you can use this with any library, not just Clav.   If you use it on a harpsichord patch you can create an effect somewhat like an 18th century clavichord.

This kind of feature would work much better with polyphonic key pressure, then each key could be bent independently, but poly AT is quite a rare feature on contemporary keyboards.   (Perhaps it’s about to make a comeback?)

DOWNLOAD THE SCRIPT

Requires Kontakt 4.2.4 or later.

Quick Guide : Loading KSP Scripts into Kontakt.

You will need a full license of NI Kontakt ; you cannot edit Kontakt Player patches in this way.

Copy the script (.nkp file) to : User/ Documents/ Native Instruments/ Kontakt 4 or 5/ Presets/ Scripts

Open a Kontakt instrument (.nki) in edit mode, by clicking the Wrench icon shown below

Open the Script Editor, and click on the last tab on the far right , pictured below :

Go to the Script Editor preset menu, and navigate to the User section. You should see your recently added script there. Select it to load.

You can now save the Kontakt instrument (.nki) as a new version, and it will load with the script already in place.

Since that time we have never stopped working with KSP, of course – all our instruments rely heavily on scripts to give them their function as well as their character. Aside from the instrument specific scripts used for our products, there is also Dan’s private collection of ideas & experiments – the ‘inner sanctum’ of the Scriptorium.

We had planned, at some point, to make Scriptorium II – but in all honesty Soniccouture’s production and release schedule is busy enough, and it never seems to be the right time.

So, starting next week, we will release a new script from the inner sanctum every few weeks via this blog. For free. We want to stimulate your inner sound designer; to encourage discussion and experimentation – every Scriptorium post will be an open forum for further suggestions, tips and ideas, which Dan will respond to when he can.

Additionally, to further fuel your sound design urges, we will be permanently dropping the price of the original Scriptorium product to just €29 / $39.

The first instalment from the inner sanctum will follow shortly.

From: Guy Sigsworth <guysigsworth@notgivinghisemailaway.com>

Date: Sun, 19 Sep 2010 18:54:38 +0100
To: james thompson <jim@sc.com>
Subject: Hi from Guy

Hey James. I’m sure you’ll remember this loop from your “Tremors”
collection: 140-shambiling-hats

I put it into a track I was writing. Then I played it to Alison Moyet, and now it’s in one of her songs; then I played it to a new artist, Cass Lowe, and it’s in one of his songs too. It’s going viral!

So funny. It sounds so simple – like it’s just filtered white noise – but it’s got this peculiar character. I guess it’s really easy to fit behind just about anything and get an instant feeling of atmosphere. It’s like the modern, digital version of stylus surface noise. I may start trying to program my own versions of it, just for variety’s sake.

Well, as you may know, the album, The Minutes was recently released on Cooking Vinyl, and it was great to finally hear the track in question, Remind Yourself :

Guy also tells us that the harpsichord type sound in the song intro is in fact Soniccouture’s Plucked Piano instrument from Xtended Piano :

“It’s the thing most people think is a harpsichord, playing right across the song. It’s most audible above the fray towards the end of the track. Actually, the French harpsichord gets used quite a lot – often in places where people might not realise. It’s doubling all the big synth riffs in “Apple Kisses”, for instance. I often use Pianoteq’s harpsichords too, but they only do a single stop sound. If I want that big sound, of the 8′ and 4′ coupled together, the SC French harpsichord is the one. It’s huge.”

Guy is a long time Soniccouture user and supporter – in fact he was one of the people who first suggested we create an Ondes Martenot instrument, which we eventually did. He told us :

“I REALLY LIKE the SC instrument libraries because:

1. They’re really interesting, unusual colours. You keep finding exotic instruments and unfamiliar timbres which have been largely overlooked by other sample library makers.

2. You put them together into sensible, practical programmes; so you can just sit and compose with them; at a keyboard, and in C major if necessary. Obviously there’s a place for great atonal noise collections too. But when I buy an SC instrument, I’m not worried it won’t be able to adapt to play something tonal, melodic or chordal in an existing song arrangement, if that’s what I need it to do. Of course it’s more fun to compose something new, specifically for the SC sounds. But sometimes it has to fit into an existing project. And that’s never a problem.

2. They’re in tune. Nothing makes me more angry than buying an expensive sample library only to discover it’s going to sound terrible if you MIDI it up with, say, an FM8 playing at A440 in equal temperament. I never understand library makers who excuse bad intonation or a non-440 pitch centre on the basis that it’s more “real” or “vibey”. It’s really easy to make a 440 ET instrument play at 415 in Pythagorean using the Kontakt factory scripts. It’s a nightmare trying to do this in reverse, especially when you’re on a deadline to finish a song.

3. They’re reasonably consistent across the instrument. I don’t expect a sample collection to have the unwavering timbral uniformity of a digital synth. But it’s also annoying to find, say, all the middle c samples sounding kind of dead and broken. I’ve never had to adjust the key splits on any SC instrument. I can’t say that for other libraries I’ve bought.

By the way. I LOVE your Kontakt script collection. On “A Place To Stay” there’s an organ sample being detuned using that script of yours (can’t remember the name) that does Penderecki-style slow glissandos. I think you should make another script collection!”

And the magic noise loop ? It lives on :

” I’ve used that Tremors top loop again on a piece for Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir which is coming out this month. It’s only in the quiet bits. You can hear it clearly in the long form version, but it’s largely left out of the “radio edit” I’m afraid. It’ll be on the internet soon.”