Mixtikl
Noatikl
Liptikl
Partikl
The tutorials for Noatikl are mainly in video form. We will add specific links to videos in this page as they become available. You will also find links to tutorial information in the Noatikl forum, which is at http://forum.intermorphic.com/index.php?c=6
There are various tutorials and videos demonstrating Noatikl in the following locations:
- Intermorphic high-definition video channel http://www.vimeo.com/intermorphic
- Mark Harrop (also featuring some great audio content!)
- High Definition: http://www.vimeo.com/umcorps/
- Lower Definition: http://uk.youtube.com/user/UncertainMusicCorps
- High Definition: http://www.vimeo.com/kantudok/
- Lower Definition: http://www.youtube.com/kantudok
Using the video tutorials
Simply click on the link (high or lower definition) to hear the video play!
Where possible, we have provided both High Definition (HD) videos via Vimeo, and lower-quality videos via YouTube for those of you with older machines or slower connection speeds.
- If you have a modern, fast computer, with a fast internet connection, then we highly recommend you view the high definition (HD) videos from Vimeo! Tip: you can click on the "FULL" button on the HD videos to have them run at full screen!
- if you have a slower machine, or a slow internet connection, you might want to use the lower definition videos from YouTube.
Note! The videos show an older evolution of the Noatikl user interface, where the parameter view selection was via a small combo box rather than what we now use (which is a the list of all available views on the left-hand side of the file window)!
Noatikl tutorial - creating your first piece on Windows
by Pete Cole
Creating your first simple MIDI piece with Noatikl standalone for Windows.
Noatikl tutorial - creating your first piece on Mac
by Pete Cole
Creating your first simple MIDI piece with Noatikl standalone for Mac.
Written Tutorial - getting started with Noatikl Standalone
In this tutorial will create a simple Noatikl piece in an ambient style. This is quite a good musical style to begin with, because you can concentrate on building an atmosphere rather than getting too worried about the precise placement of notes.
This example mostly uses General Midi voices.
This example assumes you are using Noatikl Standalone!
Start and configure Noatikl
First things first: you must start Noatikl standalone, and configure Noatikl and your system so that you can get sounds out!
Windows: Follow this video tutorial!
Mac: Follow this video tutorial!
Creating your first piece
To create this example piece from scratch, you first need to open a new file; select File -> New and select Standard Template -> Scale Rules.
Change view: "Piece - Tempo" (use the Object/Parameter View list)
In the Tempo cell, drop the tempo down to about 45 beats per minute.
Change view: "Piece - Rules"
Click on the Scale Rule cell. This will show you a drop down list of available scales. Select Phyrgian from this list. This is now the scale rule used by every voice in the piece unless we override it at voice level.
That's as much as we need to do in this view, so lets get on with building the piece, bit by bit.
Element 1: the drone
Where would ambient music be without a drone somewhere in the background?
Change view: "Voice - Basics"
The first voice has already been defined for us by the template. It needs changing!
You can call the Voice whatever you like by just entering the text you want in the Name Cell. However, we want to leave the name as it is for now.
Set the Patch that this voice will use (for example, you could use 90-Pad 2 (Warm Pad), which is the default value.
Set the Pitch to 33 and the Pitch Range to 11. This will force this voice to stay within a single, low octave (note 33 is equivalent to A1 on most keyboards). As this voice will be a continuous drone; set Phrase Gaps to 0 and Phrase Gaps Range to 0. There isn't going to be a phrase gap for this voice, so the Phrase Length parameters are irrelevant.
Change the Voice type to Ambient (a click on the voice type box lists the available options!).
Change view: "Voice - Ambient"
You should now set-up the Ambient properties for this voice.
Set the Units to "Full seconds". Set the Duration somewhere around 15 seconds and set the following to 0: Duration Range, Gap Minimum, Gap Range.
After all that, we now have a voice that will play a sustained note, selected from the scale rule at 15 second intervals for the duration of the piece. Press play and see how it sounds!
Not very interesting, but we'll now look to improve on that!
Adding movement to this basic sound
With the focus on this first voice, select Edit -> Copy. Now select Edit -> Paste. This will create a copy of the first voice, which will save a lot of effort.
Change view: "Voice - Basics"
Rename this voice to "Voice 2", and change it's type to Follows.
Change view: "Voice - Following"
Set "Follow Voice" to the name of the first voice, and set the Strategy to "Semitone Shift". The other parameters are OK as they are.
All we have now is a second voice that will play identical notes to the first.
Press the Play button, so you can hear what you are doing!
Change view: "Voice - Micro Pitch"
The parameters in this view make very small, subtle shifts to various aspects of the voice in question. This is a useful place to tweak parameters to get a "humanised" feel to your pieces.
In this piece we are only interested in one parameter in this view and that is the Pitch Bend Offset. This can raise or lower the pitch of the voice by small amounts, it's a kind of fine tuning control. While the piece is playing, adjust the Pitch Bend Offset slightly down. As the voice is tuned away from the pitch of the one it is following you will hear the sound thicken up considerably and it will start to gain a sense of motion. Adjust this value to suit your taste.
Change view: "Voice - Envelope - User Envelope 2 (Pan)"
Shift the level up a bit on the first voice, and down a similar amount on the second you will enhance the motion effect. Try it!
Adding another follows voice
This is where we really start to make the piece sound interesting!
Change view: "Voice - Basics"
Paste a copy of Voice 2 into the piece, and rename it to "Voice 3".
Set the Voice Type for this voice to be "Following"
Change view: "Voice - Following"
You"ll need to ask it to follow the first voice again. Change the Units to "Full seconds", set both the Delay and Delay Range to 5 seconds each, and set the Semitone Shift value to +5.
What we have done here is set up a third element of the drone that means you will have a new note, coming in a perfect fifth above the base drone note some time between 5 and 10 seconds after the drone selects a note to play. Again, it adds interest to the sound and the choice of patch for these voices means that you get a little, slightly randomised chime effect when this third voice kicks in. Play it back and check it out!
So in three simple stages we have gone from a rather boring sound to something with some movement and a bit of surprise about it. So far so good.
It's probably a bit too loud at this point so it might be a good idea to lower the volume envelopes on all three voices now. We can fine tune them later on. Note that, because Noatikl is managing the midi channels for us in this example we don't have to worry about these envelopes being channel specific.
Element 2: What about a melody?
Now we have this nice ambient drone as a bed we need something melodic to set it off. This element demonstrates that you don't have to combine multiple voices to get impressive results. For this element we will use just one voice and get Noatikl to do the donkey work.
Change view: "Voice - Basics"
Select "Edit -> Add" to get a new default voice. Rename this voice to "Voice 4". This element will be based on a rhythmic voice type.
Set the Patch to be the Acoustic Guitar patch (025). Set the Pitch to 40 (which is the lowest note a guitar normally plays) and set the Pitch Range to 24. Leave the other parameters at their defaults.
Change view: "Voice - Rules"
Just set the Rhythm Rule for this voice to "Very Slow". Start the playback and see how it sounds.
It's OK but it's not very interesting as single notes. It sounds a bit mechanical and computerish. We can do better!
Change view: "Voice - Chords"
This show another really powerful area of Noatikl where a couple of tweaks here and there can completely transform a voice. You can do all kinds of special effects in this view, from creating basic chordal shapes, or generating all manner of broken chords right through to creating some very convincing delay effects. On this occasion we"re going to break some chords and stretch them to add some extra improvisations to the very basic melodic themes this voice generates on it's own.
Try these settings. Set the Depth Range to 3. This means that our chords can have between 1 and 4 notes in them. I know a one note chord isn't a chord. It's just another way of saying that there won't be a chord sometimes! If you always want a chord of some sort, you need to set the chord depth to be greater than 1.
Set the Pitch Offset to +7. This is a really fuzzy parameter and it's always hard to predict exactly what it's going to do. In this case it forces the notes of a chord to be spaced up and out from the root note. The space between each note of the chord will be about 7 semitones. So, with a 4 note chord we could be looking a the highest note being somewhere around 28 semitones higher than the lowest. Like a lot of things in Noatikl you just need to play around with this parameter until you get a result you like.
Set the Delay and Delay Range to be 250 each and set the Delay Unit to be'seconds (thousandths of a)". Set the Depth % to around 80% (which means that you won't get any chords at all for 20% of the time) and set the Strategy to be "Chordal Harmony" which means, in this case, that the chords are calculated according to the Piece's Harmony rule.
After all that hit play and see what you have done. Not bad eh? Quite an improvement over the basic, unadorned rhythmic voice and not exactly hard to achieve.
Saving your work
Finally, having composed this piece we need to think about saving it for future use. Saving the file is as easy as any other application you might be familiar with: "File -> Save"
And that's it for this tutorial!
Setting-up Noatikl VSTi to work with Cubase under Mac and Windows
by Pete Cole
This tutorial shows you how to get data out from Noatikl VSTi, into Cubase SE 3 for Mac and Windows, and targeting your favourite software synths! We have also documented the steps required in written form here.
Don't forget to download the template project zip!
Setting-up Noatikl VSTi to work with Sonar 6 under Windows
by Pete Cole
This tutorial shows you how to get data out from Noatikl VSTi, into Sonar and targeting your favourite software synths! We have also documented the steps required in written form here.
Don't forget to download the template project zip!
Setting-up Noatikl standalone to work with Sonar under Windows
by Pete Cole
This tutorial shows you how to get data out from Noatikl standalone, into Sonar and targeting your favourite software synths!
Don't forget to download the template project zip !
Setting-up Noatikl standalone to work with Logic on your Mac
by Mark Harrop
This video is a walkthrough of how to setup Noatikl standalone on the Mac under OS X using either the IAC driver or using MidiPipe and how to set up Logic 7/8 to work with Noatikl using midi sync.
Don't forget to download the template project zip !
Setting-up Noatikl AU (Audio Unit) Plug-in to work with Logic on your Mac
by Pete Cole
This video tutorial follows-on from the Noatikl standalone with Logic tutorial, and shows you how to use Noatikl AU with Logic as an alternative!
Don't forget to download the template project zip!
Setting-up Noatikl standalone to work with Cubase SE
by Pete Cole
This tutorial shows you how to get data out from Noatikl, into Cubase SE and targeting your favourite software synths!
Don't forget to download the template project zip!
Setting-up Noatikl AU (Audio Unit) Plug-in to work with GarageBand on your Mac
by Pete Cole
The trick with GarageBand is to first configure MIDI Pipe to hijack the IAC MIDI Port used by Noatikl, before starting GarageBand. This video tutorial shows you exactly how to do this.
note to MIDI CC conversion in noatikl
by Mark Harrop
How to use note to MIDI controller conversion to create a system of MIDI control that conforms to the musical compositional rules in noatikl.
Noatikl and mix automation in Logic 8
by Mark Harrop
A detailed walk-through of how to set up Logic 8 to enable midi continuous controllers sent from Noatikl to hook into Logic's internal fader message system. This powerful technique places virtually all synth, plug-in and channel strip parameters under direct generative control.
Generative tempo control in Logic Pro using Noatikl standalone
by Mark Harrop
A demo of how to set up Logic to allow Noatikl to generate tempo variations whilst maintaining full midi sync.
Tutorial - St Ive's song 07 dissected
by Mark Harrop
A detailed breakdown of the St Ives Song 07, exploring the techniques used in Noatikl to create the piece, including the use of rhythmic, following and ambient voice types, rule definition and chord creation. Also looks at one way to exploit velocity controlled sample switching.
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