I saw it advertised and tried the demo in Reaper. It's completely beyond me tbh. I managed to change synth sounds but couldn't control the sound it makes at all. Just a lot of random noises strung together. There don't seem to be any presets with the demo that show off what it can do either. The website has a lot of information but it doesn't seem to be laid out in a clear way. It's a good priced sound generation app but it's too mind boggling for me to get to grips with. I'd probably end up smashing my laptop before I got anything sensible out of it.

At their website it states the "Desktop Standalone for *Mac OS X only*" will be thru the AppStore (once approved). Does this mean there will not be a demo for the standalone version only the plugin version? For me this would matter because I would like to have it piped (output) to several different midi channels at once and I don't see how a plugin can do that in Live unless it can access the IAC bus directly like Consequence can.

Well, mixtikl on the ipad is cheap enought that I decided to play with it.

It appears to be a matrix like sequencer with 12 tracks. Each track can address one of four cells. Each cell contains some generative piece or a loop/sample (or nothing). For each track, only one cell can play at a time and cells can be triggered or looped in a few different ways. One can define the number of bars a cell plays for as well as the number of times the content in the cell loops. Both of these parameters have a range which can add a random component to the track.

One can apply effects to each cell, and to each track.

So, one sets up a sequence of cells on multiple tracks as well as assigning some cells to be triggered from the eno-exque visualization to play a generative piece.

The variation in the cells/loops/generative pieces allows the track to have a lot of variation without a lot of interaction.

It seems well suited to ambient, I'm not really sure what else it's really good for. You can import your own loops as well as generate mixpaks on your pc, I can't tell if you need the desktop version to do this or not. The samples on the website for "techno" and "funk" are particularly awful. I'm not sure if they're worse than the Band in a Box examples or not.

To create new generative bits it seems that you need tikl.

Probably the most fun thing about it is that you can select some mixpacks, or your own previous mixes, and have it generate a new mix for you to play with. I think that you could create an ambient album in a weekend with this thing.

Because the randomness happens at increasing macro levels (cell/track/mix) what you get out is reasonably interesting and constrained.

What would make this thing useful as a VST is if each track were a separate output and it tempo locked to the host. For those that own the VST version, does it do that?

For those of you with noatikl, what is the workflow/structure like? What are you working with and how useful is it for various styles?

I mad two ep's with it in reaper:

http://silentfrill.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-ii

http://silentfrill.bandcamp.com/album/ambient-iii

Works like a breeze for me, using it in multiple output mode.

Here's a vid on how I use it in reaper:

http://www.mediafire.com/?9o22ty26rwke292

The User Guide has just arrived:
http://www.intermorphic.com/images/products/noatikl/noatikl2 UserGuide.pdf

116 pages of sheer entertainment.

Best wishes,

Pete

Noatikl can drive a single MIDI device directly (e.g. IAC on Mac) - that has been how users of the Noatikl 1.x plug-in variants had to use it!

HTH

Pete

This is where generative music sort of has me confused and what you call the people who "do" it. I may have it all wrong and if I do I humbly apologise but where is the creativity, the musicality in some poxy algorithim generating the music? I mean I tried it but I honestly felt like the ugly bird in a porno flick who sits in the background amusing herself and pulling absurd faces but having no real input to what is going on around her .

More to the point, I am absolutely disgusted about the no upgrade price bullshit.

Smashing-up your laptop would be bad

http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/noatikl/doc/noatiklUG_gene ral_3.html talks about a phase required to adjust to using Generative Music apps - they certainly don't suit everybody!

Noatikl tutorials page is here:
http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/noatikl/doc/noatiklUG_gene ral_16.html

A series of videos on Partikl sound design (in Mixtikl, but applies to Noatikl) here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo7QU1G1f9c

HTH!

Pete

Noatikl has an obtuse interface and the documentation is verbose.

People who use generative tools are artists. The paint brushes and the way you use them happen to be different to more traditional, linear approaches. I think it is more like gardening; casting the seeds about, and choosing what grows. There is more than one route to creativity!

Here is an article on Brian Eno, and how he used Koan (the predecessor to Noatikl) to make his work Generative Music 1...:
http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/noatikl/doc/noatiklUG_gene ral_5.html

A box of Eno/SSEYO's Generative Music 1, as well as a box of SSEYO's Koan Pro 2, is currently on display in the Science Museum in London, as part of the Oramics exhibition on the second floor.

http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/ORAMICS

It was fun seeing them a few weeks ago for the first time, in display cabinets, thinking that the new version of Noatikl was just around the corner!



Strong words! Like any company, Intermorphic needs to make some money to be able to invest in product development - and the way that software is sold & distributed is changing hugely. For example, on the Mac App Store (and iOS app store) the only way to release a paid-for upgrade, is to release a new product version and charge for that; there is no other option. The only sensible approach seems to be to reduce prices to account for this, work hard on annual release cycles, and not have an upgrade price as such.

Full discussion of the new pricing & upgraded approach here, if you're interested!
http://www.intermorphic.com/tools/noatikl/faq.html#31

Best wishes,

Pete
Last edited by pckvr on Wed May 16, 2012 12:48 am; edited 2 times in total

Any suggestions on how to improve either of those?

So was Jackson Pollock.......Apparently

Why the doubt over whether JP was an artist?

Thanks for the pdf manual!!

Man, I bought Noatikl many moons ago and it brought me much joy. I never expected to read so much critique.