ReKombinator II

GRANULAR PLAYBACK

Granular playback means that instead of playing the entire sample in a single run, you play small fragments of the sample, gradually moving the playback start. The sample fragments are being called grains. This method is often used to change sample speed while preserving sample pitch. To avoid choppy and grainy sound, you can define grain size to be larger than the playback position step, so the grains are overlapping, which also creates a kind of sound blur effect.

Rekombinator II is using script generated notes to create grains, for each grain there’s a note being played internally. Kontakt’s AHDSR envelope is used to shape volume envelope of individual grains. As the grains are overlapping, playing a single note on the keyboard will generate many voices internally. Don’t be surprised by the high voice count on Kontakt’s voice meter.

It is worth noting that waveforms A and B are being played in an interlaced manner. The playback schedule is: play grain A, wait, play grain B, wait, play grain A, and so on. It should be apparent when using large grains.

This works towards a more uniform distribution of grains.

ADVANCED MODULATOR

Rekombinator II modulator is fully scripted and it’s a crossover between step sequencer and low frequency oscillator. You can define a value sequence, curve parameters for value sweep between steps and then the instrument will render a waveform, which will be used for low frequency oscillator. The LFO here is technically a high frequency step sequencer, where step interval is one midi tick, which translates to 960 steps per quarter note. The waveform is rendered every time you change value sequence, step duration or curve parameters, the process is a little CPU intensive, because of the number of steps in the final waveform sequence (which can be up to 61440), so waveform parameters are not well suited for live tweaking. On the other hand, once the waveform is calculated it doesn’t take much processing power to play it back.

8 MOD WAVEFORMS

You can define up to 8 modulator waveforms and patch them to various instrument parameters. By default the modulator engine is OFF. If you don’t want to use the modulator, it’s better to keep it disabled as it is using some resources when running in the background. Modulator on/off switch is labeled “MODULATOR”. When modulator is disabled, the controllers in modulator panel will be semi-transparent, just as other controllers in Rekombinator II that are not in use at the moment.

I will be calling rendered LFO shape for each of modulator parts a “modulation waveform”, which is not to be confused with “sample waveform”, which is sample loaded to one of granular engine slots.