Native Instruments Reaktor Gaugear: Bill Holland Checks His Gaug-Reflex
Native Instruments knows that a good user-interface is half the inspiration when it comes to tweaking the sounds of a soft-synth, and Reaktor Gaugear might be their most inspirational -- and inspired -- GUI ever.
Bill Holland is reduced to near-tears when confronted with Gaugear's interface, which instills him with a sense of wonder he hasn't felt since he was but a wee Holland, traveling around in his drop-top stroller, circuit-bending his Teddy Ruxpin and basically starting the whole pacifier-raver-trend about fifteen years before anyone else.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
BILL HOLLAND: Welcome back to Gearwire.Com. This is one of the more bizarre programs made for Reaktor called Gauger, sorry, Gaugear. As you’ll notice here here, the controls are completely the sort of bizarre 8-bit mixed with old-school paint style images. I don't really know how to explain this control. All I can really do is play through and show you what happens. Right here, it does label it. If you see, I’ll right click here, and if you can get where everything is, it tells me where pitch, delay, what everything does. Outside is pitch.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
You have delay here.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
Filter.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
X-voice, which if you look here controls the routing and the modulation signals.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
We also have attack, decay, sustain, and release.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
Let’s reset this real quick.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
Whoa.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
As you see, we have a mute switch here.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
This little thing which if we right click is the level. It’s the main output level. This is our spectrum. Here you can set the type of scale you that play that the key it’s in, Dorian for example.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
No. If I get back to Dorian, there we go.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
We can do Mixolydian, Lydian, major pentatonic. Let’s stick to that for a second while I figure out how to get back to the realm of living here.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
Now, you’ll also notice these crazy squares over here.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
These are just morph controls. It’s like an XY morph.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
But there are endless combinations of how they can be controlled.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
And you can set your size...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
...decay...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
...diffusion...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
...color...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
...brown, which I’m not really sure exactly what brown is supposed to be. Mix...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
...for the dry and wet signal...,
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
...and then we can also again change up the main key and scale.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
Now, if you’re not quite sure how to navigate this, you can select from a variety of presets.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
Go down the line here.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
And again, the parameters can be adjusted for all of these.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
You can also change up the unison and voices. If I go to something with a little more melody to it, I can change up the number of voices.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
I can go into the instrument structure and actually rewire it if I want to.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
And if you don’t know what you’re doing, this can get very, very messy.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
For example, right now I’m just randomly connecting things, and you can see how I just completely kill that.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
You can attach like a delay to your resonance.
[BILL HOLLAND PLAYING THE NATIVE INSTRUMENTS REAKTOR GAUGEAR]
Well, if I didn’t just scare the living hell out of you by playing that and messing around with this, I’m glad you stuck around for the review. This is Gaugear. This is a -- This was designed in 2005 so it’s an older patch within Reaktor, but I’ve been using it a lot lately so I figured I would show it off. Again, if you want to use this, you can get a copy of Reaktor and it comes as a preset along with a host of other programs that people designed. For now though, this is Gearwire.Com, and my name is Bill Holland.
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