REAKTOR COMMUNITY

DESCRIPTION

A drum synthesizer is really several synthesizers in one instrument, one for each percussive sound. Hence, I took advantage from Reaktor's internal hierarchy and programmed each of percussive sound as an individual Reaktor Instrument, tied together into an ensemble. This way, the user can easily create and recall snapshots for each percussive instrument separately, and also for the whole ensemble, to grow and browse banks of drum sounds and drum kits, respectively.

I refrained from creating a beautiful GUI (sorry).

Paw is GM compatible, which means that the sounds' location on the keyboard are as defined by the General Midi Standard. That way, Paw works with your Midi Drum Loops out of the box, giving instant fun while switching drum kits or individual sounds. I have assigned variations of individual instruments to different keys: three versions of Snare (loose on D1, tight on E1, rim on C#1), six differently tuned Toms (F1, G1, A1, B1, C2, and D2), and closed (F#1, G#1) and open (A#1) Hihats, muting each other. The secondary Kick is on B0, which is GM standard. Note that you can decide whether to use Kick 1 or Kick 2 as primary or secondary Kick by switching the small buttons on top of the corresponding channels in the Mixer module. You can also use both Kicks as primary Kick simultaneously, giving particularly punchy kick sounds.

Paw is Multi-Out capable, which means that the first stereo pair (the default one that is always active) returns the Stereo Mixer output, the second pair is for the Kicks only, the third pair is for the Snare, etc. This feature is useful when using Reaktor as a plugin, where you may want to mix each percussive sound separately in your DAW, enhance them by reverb, echo, compression, etc. The channels of the Mixer module are fed into the multi-out channels as they are, i.e. with their volume and panning settings. This way, you won't have to recreate your Paw Mixer channel settings in your DAW. Don't forget to activate these additional Reaktor output channels in your DAW and then to mute the first channel containing the Mixer output.

There are some global parameters that can be tweaked from the Mixer module: velocity sensitivity (VSens), maximum velocity (VMax), envelope decay (Decay), and pitch. These settings are stored in Mixer snapshots, as well as in global ensemble snapshots, but they are excluded from randomization. The mute and solo buttons are excluded from snapshots and randomization.

You can easily create new drum sounds by pressing the "Rand" button in the Mixer module. The knob below controls the amount of randomization. If you find an interesting sound, store it in a snapshot of the corresponding instrument. Since Paw is a drum synthesizer, you will always obtain percussive sounds, so a high rate of usable drum sounds is guaranteed.

I have prepared some snapshots for the individual sounds and for the entire ensemble. Have fun listening through the drum kits and through the individual sound presets, and have even more fun creating your own!

Best

Kim

--- Version History ---

v1.2:
- Derived a rim snare sound from the snare settings and put it on C#1 (GM standard).
- Shifted the Perc sound to E2
- Derived six Toms tuned in major thirds from the Tom settings and put it on F1, G1, A1, B1, C2, and D2
- Adapting some value ranges to better fit the expected sonic spectrum of the given percussive sound
- Minor fixes and tweaks

v1.1:
- Redesigned Multi-Out mode: Now Kick 1 and 2 are mixed together and routed to one channel. This way, the "Multi-Out" button became obsolete; Channel 1&2 is always the Mixer stereo output, Channel 3&4 the stereo output of the two Kicks, Channel 5&6 is for the snare, etc. Adapted the description accordingly.
- Small tweaks with the Mixer module, e.g. the master fader is now of the same scale as the other faders