Introduction to FFT for Beginners

FFT can be a very intimidating thing and for those who are not math gurus, you will be happy to learn that there is an EzFFT package available for download over on the Native Instruments site. It is the same tool used in this video and will help you get a jump start on the ideas shared in the lesson. Simply put, it will allow you to break a sound down into its smallest components and then reassemble them in new ways. Luckily this user friendly tool makes it unnecessary to actually understand the complicated mathematics used to make it all work! So us mere humans can simply follow along with this great tutorial from salamanderanagram and make some cool new tings to play with in Reaktor!

After the various FFT modules are briefly explained, he shares how to get started using them. Putting conversion modules to good use, the hard work of translating out real and imaginary values into pitch and amplitude is made easy. And setting up the inverse modules is basically a duplication of the first set of steps. Once the basic structure of the FFT modules is in place for our vocoder, the work of fleshing it out into something more useful begins.

First a trigger to initiate the sample playback is set up. Then a basic sawtooth synth module is added to control the pitch of the vocoder. An amplifier unit is used to boost the decible levels and then the vocoder is routed to a single output making it a momo signal. After a quick test it is obvious that the simple sawtooth synth is not going to generate enough interest and character, so a Lazerbass module is used as the inout synth instead. It also makes available all of the Lazerbass snapshots you have in your library. It makes for a much more robust vocoder effect!

Cheers,
OhmLab