I used to make a living making music. Now, it's more of a hobby, yet I've been pretty delirious with glee at how some things have advanced. I used to struggle with sloppy MIDI setups which impugned my craft; now, USB interfaces like Native Instruments Kore not only have more bandwidth, they make it ludicrously simple to drill down to a specific sound out of 1,000s. Take that, old SysEx dumps!
Some people collect visual art. I used to collect sound samples fervently, but that hunger's returning again, to such a degree that I've considered getting a mobile recorder like a Zoom H4n to capture the sonic world around me. In the meantime, there's Kore with its Soundpacks — each one is a collection focused around a theme. And I've found a new fave, Acoustic Refractions:
ACOUSTIC REFRACTIONS draws inspiration from many idiosyncratic sources, as well as everyday objects and circumstances. Their transformation into playable instruments is a triumph of imagination, creativity and advanced programming. Beautifully sampled from such diverse sources as ice instruments, spinning washing machines, traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge, carpets being ripped, underground parking garages, and rain on a car windshield; ACOUSTIC REFRACTIONS is a celebration of refreshingly off-kilter sound design.
There are some "Ah! I hear what you mean" demos up on the site, but I wanted to show you how I'm exploring it. Kore has beyond a gargantuan base palette: for each sound, up to 8 variations can be created and smoothly morphed through. This is killer for evolving pads, shifting timbres, and anything you don't want to be boring. Acoustic Refractions makes excellent use of this, as I show you in this video tour:
Even if you aren't big into computer music, maybe this fires a spark in you. If so, check out the free Kore player. You'll understand what amazing possibilities lie before us. Memories slip into my mind like the first time I got on a friend's Roland XP-50 (whose orange screen, in some respects, isn't too dissimilar from the Kore hardware controller's red one) in 1996 and started rocking out, or being tantalized by the possibility of playing an analogue behemoth with many patch cables but not having the money to afford one.
Lovely sounds, Jeremiah Savage (kickass name). MAKE MORE PLEASE!
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It's so interesting and cool to watch/listen to you play with sound! Makes me look forward to your future productions.
Lovely sounds man !!! Especially the Piano at the end when you move the big knob – SOO sweet. thank you for that introduction!
@Steffen Yer totally welcome, I had a lot of fun doing this. GROOVE ON.
Torley sir,
You have inspired me to create a music station out of my computer. I have played video games for years- with nothing left to show of the hours spent. I am going to uninstall ALL my games, get an 88ES and the free kore player and start from there. If I reach 1/3 of your skill by the time I'm 90, I'll be happy.
Thanks! Keep up the goodness.
-Jer
thanks – a great demo, I think I'll get this one. Try the North Indian one – it's excellent. If you don't have it, arturia factory experience is amazing value too, same idea basically, best of their engines plus a hardware controller. Cheers
I got Acoustic refractions, excellent. Even better though is Evolve Mutations, which set itself up into 94 Kore patches, even though it is sold as a kontakt library