Introduction to Reaktor Ensemble DRON-E by Antonio Blanca

We welcome back Brent Kallmer as he walks us through the incredibly awesome Reaktor ensemble DRON-E by Antonio Blanca. It is one of those instruments that seems both very simple and quite complex all at once. You can think of it as a cross between Native Instruments Space Drone and Skanner. It has the ability to generate delicate and lush soundscapes and atmospheres, as well as very big and complex walls of sound for projects ranging from melodic pop songs to epic cinematic scores. It truly is one of those ‘Must Haves‘ for anyone who is producing professional audio or just a sound design enthusiast. It comes stocked with plenty of content to get started and offers the option of customizing it to your specific needs.

The Reaktor ensemble DRON-E is a very deep instrument, so this tutorial is aimed at offering an introductory walkthrough of the basic features. We will be revisiting DRON-E in future posts here to delve deeper into some of the most interesting possibilities it makes available. DRON-E has four main voices, and the first is from a loaded audio sample. This lesson begins with looking at just how this instrument uses samples and soem options for you to experiment with in your own sessions.

Position Modulation is a rather powerful feature within the Reaktor ensemble DRON-E and can be used to help you create ever-evolving soundscapes and atmospheres in a very intuitive and simple way. Understanding how to get the most out of this feature means that you have figured out play speed and sample selection are managed. The rest of this lesson focuses on the other three main windows and how the modulation matrix affects them. This is where you can set up rather complex modulation assignments to control pitch, granular manipulation and other parameters based upon features like wave shape, frequency, depth, etc.

There is so much more to cover in future posts in regards to the Reaktor ensemble DRON-E, and we will! If you have requests for specific features to be explored in more depth, just shoot us a message and let us know! You can grab your copy of DRON-E here!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cheers,
OhmLab