An Introduction to Reaktor Navigation

Moving at a pace that any user, regardless of experience level, can follow along with this tutorial video provides a great introduction to Reaktor navigation and basic features. With a program as advanced and open as Reaktor, we feel it is incredibly important to understand how you can use different views, modes and menu options to create a better experience, access more features and actually improve your workflows. There are plenty of directions you can take any instrument or ensemble within Reaktor, and we aim to help you learn each and every option available to you in the lessons we feature here.

This video begins with how to setup Reaktor with your computer and sound card. Routing, MIDI and other common setup features are also discussed. Next it moves on to opening an ensemble and adding instruments to it. It quickly turns to the different views of the Reaktor workspace. Panel View shows the user interface of the instruments, while the Structure View allows yo to see and edit the routing of the components that make up the instrument and/or ensemble. There are several different view and mode options shown at this point, as well. Make surre you understand how each one works before moving on with the video. Reaktor navigation is easy once you learn it, but you still need to know where to find everything.

Using a split screen view let’s you see both routing and the instruments at the same time. While making adjustments in both areas, this is probably the best approach to keeping track of everything. Though, when making changes to the different layers of the component’s structures, you can also use a split view that shows different levels of the structure view. As you drill down further and further into the structure of instruments, you find that Core Cells are lowest level of the Macros that you can edit, as they are the most basic building blocks of the instruments and effects in Reaktor.

The left-hand sidebar is broken down into the different main views to help provide a better understanding of both general Reaktor navigation and where certain changes are made to settings of an instrument or ensemble. The Browser gives access to all instruments and ensembles available. Within the Browser, you can navigate lists in the following categories: Players (Commercial Reaktor Players), Factory (Instruments and Ensembles included with Reaktor), User (Instruments and Ensembles you have saved), Disks (harddrives). The Snapshots view shows you what presets are available to use within an instrument or ensemble once it is loaded. Snapshots are saved in Banks. Here, you can also Randomize controls and Morph between presets. The next view option in the sidebar is the Panel view. This allows you to manage which components you want to be visible in the main Reaktor window. The last tab here is the Properties view. This is where you can make changes to and manage the various components, in regards to settings like total number of voices or whether the component is muted or set to be played in solo mode. Many more things can be accessed from here, and exploring all of the options in advance will give you a better chance of achieving the sound you really want while working in Reaktor.

As we move away from the elementary basics of getting started with using Reaktor, we would love to hear from all of you. Tell us what you want to learn. Let us know what tasks are causing you difficulty. Shoot us a message today and tell us what’s on your mind. Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab