1.1 Welcome to ROTOR!

ROTOR probably behaves unlike any music software you might have used. For this reason, even if you don’t like to read manuals, we would recommend you to take at least a quick read to this first chapter, which progressively introduces most of ROTOR’s most important features and affordances, using hands-on examples. Even if you already have used the Reactable Live! or Reactable Mobile for iOS or Android, we would also recommend you to read at least this chapter; ROTOR has several points in common with the two aforementioned applications, but it has also many differences, and this introductory chapter will give you a glance at them.

In this chapter we will give you a hands-on introduction to ROTOR’s most basic and essential principles. Once you have concluded this introductory tutorial, you will be able to remix the demo songs we provide with the application as well as create and record your own.

1.2 Opening ROTOR for the First Time

Once you open the application, a blue empty screen with a pulsating white dot at its centre, will appear.

ROTOR empty blue sound canvas, with the audio sink in its center

• The blue empty screen is ROTOR’s canvas, where all the action takes place.
• The white pulsating dot is the audio sink or master output. All the sounds arriving to this point from anywhere in the canvas, will sound through your headphones or loudspeakers.
• The top horizontal toolbar incorporates most of ROTOR’s commands and options, such as the main menu, the transport bar, the interactive help, the main volume control or the NEW/SAVE commands.
• The menu icon, at the top left of the screen, allows to configure all ROTOR’s settings and to load sessions.
• The left vertical toolbar is the music dock, which includes all the modules (loop players, synthesizers, effects, sequencers, etc.) you will use for creating your own sessions.

To start, touch the MENU icon at the left of the top horizontal bar, and a menu will appear.

In the next chapter we will document all these options. For the moment, we will learn ROTOR's 4 most essential gestures.

Opening the configuration panel from the top left menu

• Touch TUTORIALS and select T10 Gestures.
• Touch the MENU icon again, for closing this menu.

• TAP and DRAG and object --> Move it
• DOUBLE TAP and DRAG an object --> Rotate it
• DOUBLE TAP an object --> Open its settings panel
• TOUCH an object RIGHT SLIDER --> Change its value

• If you move the object close enough to the white pulsating center, it will connect and sound.
• If you rotate it, its frequency will change.
• If you move its right slider, its volume will change.
• If you open its panel, you will be able to change its waveform (among many other things).

1.3 Play Your First Track

Four loop objects, all muted

In the canvas we have now 4 objects of different colors, each connected to the audio sink by a dotted line.

Press PLAY icon. The icon will change to STOP and the bar:beat counter will start to progress.

No sound is yet being produced because the dotted line represents a muted connection.

1.3.1 Muting/Unmuting Tracks

To start listening to some music, cut the dotted line of the yellow object with your finger. The dotted line should now be drawing a waveform and you should be able to listen to a drum pattern, which is the sound being produced by the object you have just unmuted!

Before continuing, we will now adjust the main volume so that it feels comfortable to you. For that, touch the speaker icon in the top toolbar and adjust the volume to the desired level.

Setting the global volume for the session

You can now explore the music material included in this object (loop player), by repeating the gesture of [un]cutting audio connections. Observe that when you uncut (or cut) a connection, the audio is not turned on (or off), until you lift your finger from the tablet’s surface. This allows to mute/unmute several tracks at the same time, and also, to do it at the precise instant you want it!

Notice that you can also temporarily mute a single track, by holding your finger on top of the audio connection, intercepting it, as shown in the next picture. This is specially useful for brief muting effects.

TIP: To mute/unmute one or several, just “cut” their audio connection with one finger. The sound will start/stop (changing from its previous state) when you lift the finger from the surface. To temporarily mute a track, you can also intercept its audio connection with one finger; the sound will return as soon as the finger is lifted.

1.3.2 Changing Loop Players Volume

Once you are familiar with the mute/unmute gestures, you can play with the volume of each of the loop players, by dragging the slider at the right of each object.

1.3.3 Changing Global BPM

If you look at the number value displayed next to the snowflake icon on the top toolbar, you will see a 120. This is the BPM (from beats per minute) at which the song has been produced. You can change this value at any point, playing it faster or slower, by just touching this value, which will open the following window:

Tempo panel

In the next chapter we will give more details about the different options shown in this window. For the moment you can explore them, focusing on the rotating wheel, and on the TAP button, which lets you to adjust directly the tempo by tapping periodically with one finger.

You may have noticed that unlike many other audio applications, playing the track faster (or slower) does not make it sound higher (or lower) in pitch. That is because in ROTOR, by default pitch is preserved independently of the speed at which the audio is played. This is attained thanks to a technique called time-stretching (in chapter 3 we will see how this behavior can be configured and also overridden in different ways.)

TIP: For closing any other horizontal toolbar window (this includes the BPM window that should be currently open), just touch anywhere outside of it.

1.3.4 Playing with Loop Variations

You know now how to [un]mute any ROTOR track, change its volume and change the global BPM of the song. We will see now how to add more variety to the mix by using one of ROTOR’s most distinctive features, that of changing between different loops on-the-fly, while always preserving a perfect synchronization between all the tracks.

For getting better acquainted with this feature, mute all tracks except one (leave for example the blue track sounding and mute the remaining 3).

All ROTOR loop objects show 4 slots on its left side and each slot can store a different loop, with the one currently playing being shown with a brighter color.

There are 4 possible ways for swapping between these 4 loops:

1. Touching directly one of the slots.
2. Touching a slot and moving your finger up and down vertically anwhere on the table will cycle between the slots until you lift your finger.
3. Double tapping a loop object (the object will then retain the focus) and dragging the finger without lifting it from the surface.
4. Capturing the loop object with a ROTOR controller and rotating the controller.

No matter which method you prefer, in all cases the loop being played will instantly change, while keeping a perfect synchronization with all the other tracks.

TIP: The animated trail circling the loop player icon in the interior of the loop player object indicates the current position within the loop (with the “12:00” clock position marking the beginning of the loop).

In section 3.2 we will show you how to upload you own loops. At this moment, you can practice your personal mix, changing between the available loops of the current session. Considering that there are 4 loop player objects and each one can hold up to 4 different loops (+ 1 silence), there are 5 ⁴ = 625 combinations for you to explore in each song!

1.4 Adding Effects to Your First Track

1.4.1 What Are Effects?

A typical electronic music session does not only use a variety of loops; it also frequently applies effects to them. In this section we will learn how to do it. For that you should load the T12 Effects session.

Adding effects to our track (filter and delay)

This new session is a variation of the previous one, to which we have just added 2 new effect objects, namely a filter applied to the blue loop (the synth melody) and a delay applied to the yellow one (the drum loop).

TIP: Unlike loop players (and other sound generator objects we will later see), effects do not make sound on their own. They need some incoming sound for being activated. They do not have a colour on their own either, taking instead the color of the sound generator they are processing.

In this example, the drum sound of the blue loop is entering the delay effect, while the synth coming from the yellow loop is passing through the filter. The visual audio outputs of both effects, represent the resulting sound after it has been modified by the corresponding effect.

1.4.2 Controlling the Effects Parameters

Like loops, effects also have two primary controls, each one situated at one side of the objects’ circle.

• The left slider controls the amount of the effect (e.g. applying longer or shorter delays).
• The right slider controls the mix balance. When the right level is at the bottom, all the original sound passes through the effect without any alteration (DRY), and when the level is at the top, all 100% of the original sound is affected by the effect (WET).

For changing these values, you can apply the same mechanisms we have used for the loops:

1. Change the right dry/wet mix by dragging the right slider with the finger.
2. Change the left effect parameter by,
1. dragging the left slider with the finger;
2. double tapping the effect object and dragging the finger without lifting it from the surface;
3. or capturing the effect object with a ROTOR controller and rotating the controller.

Practice these gestures while listening carefully to the outcoming sounds.

1.4.3 Moving an Object vs. Changing its Parameters

Now that you know what are the audible results of applying a filter to a bassline and a delay to a drum loop, do you wonder how it will sound if you did the opposite? Or if you chained both effects to the same loop?

In ROTOR changing connections is as simple as moving any object in the sound canvas. For that, just touch any of the two effects and move it around, without lifting your finger. You will see how the effect connects/disconnects with the sound sources placed in its proximity.

• If you touch any object and without lifting the finger, you move it across the canvas, the object will follow your finger.
• If you double tap any object, it will get captured and moving the finger will vary its main parameter, without displacing the object.
• If you capture an object with a rotor you will be able to do both things at once: change its main parameter by rotating and move the object by displacing the rotor.

IMPORTANT: For this and the following tutorials, it is recommended that the SETTINGS option “Connect on Release” is turned OFF.

You can double check it and correct it if needed, as indicated in the following figure. More information on these settings as well as on the meaning of the visual feedback shown on the objects’ connections will be given in the next chapter.

Checking “Connect on Release” is OFF

Practice all these gestures, swap effects, daisy-chain them, while always listening carefully to the results. Try also displacing the loop players (instead of displacing the effects).

1.4.4. Adding New Effects

We have now used two effects (a delay and a filter), but ROTOR allows to apply many more and diverse ones.

There are several ways for adding new effects, or for that matter any new object, into the blue sound canvas:

1. Touch an icon from the left dock and drag it to the canvas.
2. Touch or hold an icon from the dock and then touch its desired destination into the canvas.
3. Touch or hold an icon from the dock and place the rotor in the desired destination in the canvas.

You can now practice adding new effects. You can add more filters or delays, but you can also try new ones. In particular the two ones that are highlighted in the next figure, which respectively stand for a “ring modulator” and a “distortion” (the icons below these two ones, are not effects, and will be progressively introduced in this tutorial).

The ring modulator and the distortion, from the objects dock

1.4.5 Freeze Mode

At this point, you should know how to play and change loops, apply effects to them and control the parameters of both loops and effects. Sometimes you might have experienced minor problems, for example moving an object, when what you really wanted was to change its parameters or vice versa. This is where the freeze mode comes in.

Freeze mode is activated by touching the snowflake icon on the top toolbar. When freeze is ON, the canvas’ blue turns lighter and the snowflake icon spins.

In freeze mode, the screen turns bluer.

TIP: In freeze mode, objects cannot move anymore and all audio connections remain fixed. You can think of freeze mode as a safe mode in which, once you have carefully arranged your track, you can play with all its parameters without worrying about involuntary gestures and surprises.

Changing parameters with a rotor (left) and the finger (right) in freeze mode

1.4.6 Using the 2D Control Panel

Now that you know that most objects have two main controls, one at each side of their circles, we will show you a way in which you can easily control these 2 values at once.

TIP: Double tapping any object will open its configuration panel.

1. For this example, double tap on the feedback effect. A black panel will appear at the right bottom of the iPad.
2. Select the last [·] icon. The black panel will now show a white dot and two thin straight lines.
3. Move this point with one finger and listen (and watch the visual consequences in the feedback object).
4. For closing the black panel, just touch the cross icon (x) placed at its right.

A 2D control panel 6DOF control on the 2D panel with a ROTOR

TIP: When using rotors, 2D panels become 3 DOF panels! (DOF stands for Degrees Of Freedom). This means that apart from moving the rotor in a 2D space, you can also rotate it and control a 3^rd parameter!

1.5 Adding Controllers

Until now, we have seen two types of modules: the loop players and the effects. But ROTOR has more types! We will now introduce you to the controllers. After that, we will conclude this introductory chapter with a look to the synthesizers.

Load T13 LFO. This looks quite similar to our previous session, just that one new object have been added, connected to the blue filter object.

An LFO controller is connected to the filter (blue thread)

1.5.1 Using Low Frequency Oscillators (LFOs)

Let’s first concentrate on the object showing a sine wave icon, and let’s unmute its connection with the blue filter object. We first can observe that the connection visual feedback is different from what we have seen until now.

TIP: Controllers (i.e. LFOs and sequencers), do not output audio. Instead, they do output control data values, which will vary the parameters of the object that receive them.

• Rotate the object and appreciate how the filter effect now varies periodically, slower or faster, depending on the LFO rotation angle. We are currently modulating the frequency of the filter, and by rotating the controller we are modifying the modulation frequency.
• Change the object right slider and listen how this modulation effect becomes more or less accentuated. We are now controlling the modulation amplitude or depth.

The object we have used is called Low Frequency Oscillator (or LFO) and is a common component among most types of synthesizers. LFOs in ROTOR do have many more options we will later document in chapter 4. At the moment, you can try applying it to any of the two effects (in chapter 3 we will also study its effect on loops.)

1.5.2 Adding Accelerometer Control

Load T14 Accelerometer. This new version of the session just adds a new controller object which looks like a small smartphone. For testing its effect, just move and lean your iPad in different directions. What we are doing is controlling the ring modulator effect applied to the green synth pad, with values output from the iPad accelerometers.

If you are curious, check the Talkin Box demo for a more advanced and compelling use of the accelerometer. No samples used. Just white noise, filters and the accelerometer!

Using the accelerometer (here applied to a ring modulator effect)

1.6 Adding Synthesizers and Sequencers

Load T15 SamplerSeq for starting experimenting with the three last types of objects to be introduced in this chapter, namely samplers, sequencers and synthesizers.

A sampler and a sequencer (violet thread)

• The “keyboard” violet object is a sampler. We will fully cover its possibilities in chapter 5. For now, we'll just see some of its most essential features.
• The “dotted circle” object is a sequencer. Sequencers, like the LFO we have just seen, are controllers. That is, they don’t produce, neither process any sound. Rather, they send control information to any object they are connected to. Now, our sequencer is violet, because it is connected to the violet sampler.

Notice also that the sequencer connection is muted. For the moment, let’s leave it that way until we tell you the contrary.

1.6.1 Playing Notes from the Virtual Keyboard

1. Make sure the connection from the violet “keyboard” object (i.e. the sampler) to the central audio sink is unmuted.
2. Rotate the object (or touch any of the small sections in its outer left slider). You should listen to bass-like sounds being played. Playing an interesting melody rotating the object that way, would be theoretically possible but rather difficult indeed! That’s where the keyboard panel and sequencers come to the rescue.
3. Double tap the object to open its configuration panel.
4. Select the “keyboard” small icon in the panel top toolbar: a grid of rectangles as the ones shown in the figure should appear. This figure is a “piano keyboard”, where each rectangle stands for a different note, and the two rows correspond to two different octaves. Play it and check how it sounds!
5. When done, close this keyboard panel by clicking at the (x) symbol on its right.

The virtual keyboard panel

In chapter 5 we will cover in detail how the keys were laid out. In this tutorial (as in the figure) we will also explain why we can only play 5 notes, when you may know that in a piano octaves are made of 12 keys (7 white and 5 black keys). For now, suffice to say that in this tutorial, we have set ROTOR to automatically analyse the sound of the loops being used, and according to that analysis, ROTOR is showing you only the “correct” notes, i.e. the ones that will sound well in combination with the audio material being played by the other objects.

In case you wanted to know which are the notes in our example, you can look at the thinner row with white and black smaller columns on the top of our virtual piano. The first column (white) corresponds to a C; the second (black) a C#; the third (white) a D, and so on… Notice also, that with the current settings, this automatic correction is not only applied when using the touch keyboard, but also when sending notes from ROTOR’s sequencer controller, as we will do now.

TIP: Automatic tonality analysis and correction is one of ROTOR’s most powerful features! This can be configured in many different ways, according to the users different musical needs and know-hows. This will be covered in depth in chapter 3.

1.6.2 Playing Notes from the Sequencer

1. Unmute the connection between the sequencer (dotted circle icon) and the sampler. A melody should now start sounding!
2. You can rotate the sequencer object, for changing between different pre-stored melodies (4 different lines should be available in the current preset).
3. You can also rotate the sampler object, for transposing the sequences being played.

The sequencer will be covered in depth in chapter 5. For the moment, if you are curious about it, you can double tap the sequencer object for opening its configuration panel, and select the second icon from the left (with some small bars up and down).

The monophonic sequencer programming layout

1.6.3 Changing Sampler Sounds

ROTOR comes with dozens of different sampler sounds ready to use.

1. For choosing another sound just double tap the sampler object to open its configuration panel.
2. Touch the list icon and a list with different instrument names will appear.
3. Touching any item on the list will automatically change the sound being played.

Applying a program change from the samplers panel list

1.6.4 Introducing Synthesizers

ROTOR’s synthesizers are powerful objects with plenty of configuration options. Whereas samplers’ sounds come quite predefined, not giving room for much freedom to tailor them to your needs, with synthesizers, all the work is left on your side. In this final part of the tutorial, we will use the same sequencer that we employed with the sampler in the previous section, and we will now apply it to a synthesizer. We will also profit for taking a look at ROTOR’s “hard” connections.

Load T16 Synth. It uses the same sequencer object (and with the same pre-stored sequences) as T15 SamplerSeq, but the sequencer now feeds a synthesizer (triangle icon) instead of a sampler. For adding some more spice to the sound, we have also added to additional effects after the synth, namely a delay and a filter.

A synthesizer (triangle) controlled by a sequencer (dotted circle) and processed by a delay and a filter

Synths can be played very much like we have seen with samplers. You can:

• rotate them;
• touch any of the small notes on the left of the object;
• connect the object to a sequencer;
• play them from their own virtual keyboard.

If you double tap the synth icon for opening its virtual keyboard, you can take a look at its configuration panel, which includes such things as waveform selection, configuring up to 4 oscillators per voice, defining envelopes, etc. We will cover these settings in chapter 5.

1.6.5 “Hard” vs. Soft Connections

In this example, we can also observe than, instead of their regular white color, these new connections are now Turquoise. This is not a peculiarity of synths, but rather a property all ROTOR connections can have (and which we haven’t introduced until now).

To test the meaning of this different color connection, just move around any of the 4 available objects of this red branch. You will observe that, no matter how far you move any of these objects, the connections won’t change. This is because they are “hard” connections!

Hard connections also “unbreakable” and thus permit to make more complicated processing chains, allowing control objects to send its output to several objects simultaneously. In the following figure, the sequencer triggers both the synth as well as the envelope of the filter. You can try to construct it by your own (or otherwise load T17 HardConnect).

TIP: For setting or un-setting a hard connection between two any objects, just touch one to the other and then bring them back to their original positions. Each time two objects touch, their connection type changes: soft (white) connections turn hard (turquoise) and vice versa.

A synthesizer thread showing several blue “hard” connections

1.7 Performing and Saving Your First Session

In next chapters we will see all these powerful objects in much more detail. Now it’s finally time to record your first session! For that, we recommend you to stay with one of the last tutorials we have open which incorporate most of the elements we have seen for the moment: loop players, effects, an LFO, a synth or a sampler and a sequencer. If you dare, you can of course add more objects or substitute any of them!

1. Get familiar with all the objects present in the blue canvas.
2. Adjust the tempo to a BPM you like (the original BPM of this session is 120).
3. Remember that, if you prefer, you can use freeze mode (once you feel that all your connections are ready). You can of course also alternate between freeze ON/OFF at any point.
4. Rehearse and plan your session.
5. When you feel ready to start recording your set, touch the RECORD icon.
6. When you are done, press RECORD again. The wavefile containing your session performance will be automatically saved with the current date and hour. For accessing/renaming it, open iTunes and go to Reactable documents.
7. Anytime you repeat this recording process (steps 5 and 6), a new wavefile will be added to your documents.

TIP: For making synchronization easier, recording may not start immediately, but rather at the precise beginning of the next bar. Equally, when stop recording, the application will wait until the end of the current bar.

1.8 Wrap Up

This has been a long introductory session, but we hope that it has allowed you to understand ROTOR’s basics and grasp the potential of this app!

• We have seen how to place and connect objects in the sound canvas.
• We have used different types of objects, such as loop players, effects, samplers, LFOs and sequencers, and have seen how to control their most basic parameters.
• We have learned how to record a session.

In the next chapters of this manual we will get into ROTOR’s objects in more detail. The remaining information is organized as follows:

• Inchapter 2 we cover ROTOR basics, including how the connections between modules work and how to interpret the visual feedback they provide, plus additional information on the settings and the configuration panels.
• In chapter 3 we will learn how to use loops and wavefiles, covering in depth all their possibilities, including how to load your own material.
• Inchapter 4 we will study audio effects.
• Chapter 5 is, on its turn, fully devoted to synths, samplers and sequencers.