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Re: [microsound] Getting started



This also seems to beg the question though, how powerful and useful would Reaktor be if the internet wasn't available as a resource? How would one be able to learn it well then?


Cheers,
Dave

On May 14, 2007, at 5:21 PM, aleks vasic wrote:

There are too many fantastic user made resources and tutorials to list for Reaktor. Thats what user communities are for.

Just google it and see what you find... Same applies for most all apps that are well made and garner interest from uber grognards.


aLEKs

On May 14, 2007, at 8:12 PM, Dave Watson wrote:

I would have to agree with this completely. While I do like reaktor some, I find it practically impossible IMO to approach learning it like you would a programming language. The tutorials do nothing more than explain what reaktor can do, and are very uninspiring. And the documentation for any reaktor module is mostly worthless beyond finding out what the modules inputs and outputs are.

It's mostly worthless because it'll tell you what a module does, what it takes as inputs, what it outputs, and nothing behind that. It doesn't tell you anything at all about things like the common uses for a particular module, or what sorts of things one might be able to build using a particular module. The only way to learn reaktor is basically to look at a whole lot of other peoples reaktor ensembles and try to piece together in your own head how they made a particular element of their ensemble work. Figuring out how they did it is not made any easier by the fact that the concept of documenting (comments throughout the structure for example) is pretty much a non-existent one in the reaktor world. I'm not even sure if there even is a way to add small comments about just one particular piece of your structure.

And while I agree that the best way to learn something like a programming language (or any language i suppose) is to use it, how you start using it can be very important in helping you truly gain an strong understanding of it. The difference is like trying to learn how to speak Korean by watching old Korean movies with english subtitles vs learning how to speak it by a person (a teacher perhaps) who teaches you in a fashion that lets each learned thing be used as a foundation and building block for things learned in the future.

If anyone on here is a C programmer, I think a perfect example of what I mean is the book "The ANSI C Programming Language" by K&R.

My other gripe with Reaktor, while I'm at it, is that it's very unclear as to just how power they eventually intend to give the user. Reaktor 5 came with "Reaktor Core" which, for one is a very confusing term combined with the other terms in reaktor. And two it's still beyond me how Reaktor Core is supposed to improve reaktor since it doesn't seem to do much other than put specific requirements on how you build your ensemble and give you access to some lower level modules so you have a bit more flexibility. They make it sound like this is a really big deal, but if it is, they do a very poor job of demonstrating the amount of power it's suppose to give you. So poor in fact, that I've mostly concluded that the benefit of having reaktor is really just the _huge_ number of user ensembles that exist. It can do some cool things yes, but from my impression native instruments is mostly interested in making it do the cool things that will get them prettier and more engaging ensembles in the user library, and not much more beyond that.

No, I'm not saying that's inherently a bad thing, it is just the impression I get from using it. And in my case I just desire more flexibility than the ability to make pretty ensembles (which very well might sound good also). I find that more flexibility exists in other software because there is less design emphasis on providing the ability to create pretty soft synths and more focus on creating a tool set that has a fairly consistent and congruent set of behaviors amongst the tools provided. It's the difference between being able to program your computer to do your bidding vs being able to make your computer make sound w/ pretty interfaces that you built, which are wholly unusable outside of the reaktor environment itself.



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