Native Instruments - Form

  • Published
    Sep 14, 2016
  • Released
    September 2016
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  • When Native Instruments announced the latest incarnation of their behemoth Komplete suite in August, a new synthesiser called Form grabbed my attention. In my experience, Native Instruments doesn't introduce a new instrument without some degree of innovation, which is refreshing in this era of seemingly endless reissues of vintage analog architectures. Taking into account the variety of synthesised and electronic options available in Komplete, it's hard to imagine what the DSP scientists at NI could have cooked up this time. We're given a clue with the name Form, which is a reference to formant, the audio term used to describe the signature or characteristic of an audio source separate from its pitch. You often hear this term used when describing vocal sound sources, where formant shifts can be used to change the apparent gender of a sung or spoken line. NI has used the formant concept in previous plug-ins, such as the formant oscillator in Razor and the SubHarmonic ensemble for Reaktor. Where those instruments used formants to shape the sound of a traditional oscillator, Form takes a new path by allowing you to use sample data as the oscillator itself. To see how this works, the best thing to do is to load up the plug-in and start with a blank slate. Following the trend of many recent NI synthesisers, Form is a Reaktor instrument, which means you can load it as an ensemble in Reaktor 6. Form's main UI section consists of three switchable pages: Sample, Sound and Effects. The Sample page is the place to begin, as it allows you to load wav files and select up to 30 seconds of time as the range Form will analyze and use for its oscillator. Then Form displays the detected pitch as an articulated graph throughout the sample waveform. Form calls this the "pitch curve," and it serves as a non-adjustable reference to the notes in your sample. It can also be used as a modulation source. If you send some MIDI notes to Form at this point, you'll hear the sample played back with pitch tracking like a standard sampler. As we'll soon see, however, it's far from a standard sampler. In the footer section of the UI lies Motion Curve. This determines the playback direction and speed taken through your sample. The default shape is a straight diagonal line, which may seem odd until you open the Curve Editor screen and see how the playback head on the sample waveform scrolls from bottom to top. Therefore, the default Motion Curve shows that, over time, the playback will proceed at a steady rate from the beginning to the end of the selected sample region. You can easily break with this by choosing a different curve, which will cause Form to scan back and forth through the sample in unique ways. You're not stuck with one segment either. You can add additional motion curve segments with their own presets defined over a smaller section of the overall sample region. Here we start to see the power at the heart of Form's sound engine: the sample resynthesis algorithm gives you free reign over the rate and direction of playback, seamlessly veering into granular resampling styles as needed.
    Additional control of the playback rate is offered by the Speed footer panel, which allows you to switch between values relative to the sample length, Hz and the host tempo. I would have loved to see another option here allowing you to base it on the selected window size in the individual Motion Curve segments. If you have a multi-segment curve playing small sections of the overall region, basing the playback speed of the individual segments using the total region size doesn't really make sense and can throw the timing off when using rhythmic samples. Once you get your sample playback sorted, Form gives you ample tools to fill out and alter the sound. Form calls its sample resynthesizing oscillator the Form Osc. You'll find controls to alter the pitch and formant separate from one another, as well as the pan and volume, in the Form Osc section on the Sound page. There's also a sub oscillator that follows the detected pitch of your sample to provide some low-end foundation. This sub oscillator can also serve as an FM modulator within Form's Oscillator FX section, which gives you five controls that serve to further mangle the resynthesized sample in different ways. From there, the sound travels through a multimode filter and into the effects section, which boasts a dual-band frequency shaper, a warmth module that provides digital and tube saturation, a compressor, a delay and reverb with five different room settings. My favorite may be the "cheap" setting, which emulates a cheap spring reverb. The modulation and performance slots provide further sound design potential. Starting with the former, Form gives you two envelopes, two LFOs and a sidechain modulator that allows you to combine two mod sources together and use their product as another source. Almost all of Form's controls can be modulated and the process appears straightforward. Clicking the label of the control you want to modulate brings up a menu of available sources, where you can map up to three mod paths and set the amount of modulation. The only downside to this flow is that there's no way to visualise the modulation routings within a patch outside of observing the knob movements and making mental connections. The performance slots continue the "internal preset" theme found in many NI instruments lately (most notably Flesh) where you can save up to 12 variations of a sound and either switch between them remotely via MIDI or stack them up for simultaneous playback. What NI has developed in Form is quite impressive in that it can be many things at once: a granular synth, a wavetable-based instrument or a sample playback engine with an expansive set of thickening effects. The presets do a good job of showing off its versatility, too. There are some that ignore the motion curves altogether and just transform a simple pluck into something much larger. Once you get your head around what's possible with all of the modulation options, and the minor workflow hiccups, Form could easily be something you use in every production. Ratings: Cost: 4.2 Versatility: 4.1 Sound: 4.4 Ease of use: 3.6
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