In the last month, I've really been digging into the guts of Reaktor. In part because I've needed to make the time and because I'm on my way up the learning curve as I finish up some of the last bits of Galileo.

Initially one of the most frustrating things was being able to have complex sequence and modulation parameters from a friendly “control center”. On one hand, I really wasn't into trusting my own cushy-chair timing for sequence generation, but then making and importing sequences from some non-Reaktor tool was too large of a context switch. On the third hand, many of the “tables” or other widgets for note/data entry were to small and un-ergonomic for me to really get “into” and enjoy thoroughly.

In my frustration, I posted a lil' sump'n sump'n on the Reaktor board and was pointed to lost-online Studio instruments. These patches were godsends. I can now happily sequence and modulate everything from note and controller data, to presets, in a comfortably big window, and can plug and play these instruments into any new patch. Sweet.

This time I didn't have to bite the bullet like back in 2001, when 6 months before Ableton Live was released, I wrote a gargantuan MAX/MSP patch and a handful of abstractions to sync asynchronous input/MIDI events to large banks of seamlessly looping audio clips at a given tempo. I learned a lot, but the tool was way too unwieldly.

I can't make heads or tails of it now, and has thankfully been archived for posterity.