- When Native Instruments recently revealed Flesh, their third collaboration with the cross-genre producer and programmer Tim Exile, I was a bit confused. The NI promo sheet describes Flesh as a "performance synthesiser" that can "generate a complete track from a single loop and can be played like an instrument." In practice, this means that Flesh detects transients in rhythmic material and uses them to automatically trigger melodies. At first glance, this central concept seems like a rehash of the Beat mode from Mouth, the last instrument they released together back in 2010. Besides a slick new interface, I was curious to see what else Tim & Co. had cooked up this time that set Flesh apart from its predecessors.
Flesh was built in Reaktor so you'll either need the free Reaktor Player plugin or a full version of Reaktor to run it. Flesh is one of the first commercial products to make use of the new Table Framework features introduced in version 6 of Reaktor, so you can't open it in an older version. The Flesh ensemble comes with 70 snapshots organised into Multitrack and Sequenced categories, with a third dedicated to some of Tim Exile’s own creations. These snapshots are a great way to familiarise yourself with the instrument's methods and workflow.
When you load the ensemble in Reaktor for the first time, you're greeted with five large multicoloured circles, each accompanied by their own unique icon. These represent Flesh's sound generators—the modules that produce or affect sound based on the sample data currently loaded into the instrument. From left to right, they include a Sub Synthesiser for creating bass lines, a Mono Synth for leads, a Sample Player for mangling and playback of the loaded sample, a Poly Synth for chords, and an FX module that includes dub delay and filtering. The circles themselves are multi-purpose. They allow you to adjust the volume and effect send for the sound generators while also providing a Loopy-style waveform display of the generator's output. The sound generator's icons also serve as navigation buttons that pull up the control panel for each individual generator, where you can select presets and make other parameter adjustments.
Sitting below the sound generator circles are four global macro controls that are linked to corresponding sound-shaping parameters in the individual generators. These are named Spectrum, Character, Length, and Modulation, and they generally give you the ability to affect the timbre and liveliness of the instrument. However, depending on what presets are selected in the individual generators, the changes caused by these macros can be somewhat unexpected, and are more useful for experimentation than dialling in specific sounds. This is a consistent theme with Flesh. The direct control over each individual generator favours simplification and surprise over flexibility Accordingly, you get a limited selection of 16 presets for each module and one or two preset-specific parameters in the Mono and Poly synthesisers. Native Instruments' choice to obscure these details makes sense for many users, but experienced synthesists would likely have preferred to have the option to dive into the weeds. Those looking to tinker need a full version of Reaktor 6, which allows you to delve into the Edit panels where you'll find a rudimentary user interface for the individual generator modules.
At the bottom of the display, you'll find three groups of 12 small circles arranged in a keyboard format. These are the remote octaves for the Harmony, Samples, and Sound sections. A remote octave is essentially a set of 12 preset slots for a subset of Flesh's controls that can be activated using incoming MIDI notes. Playing a key on a MIDI keyboard connected to Flesh will trigger playback of the five sound generators, using the settings defined by the snapshot and the selected Harmony, Sample and Sound presets within that snapshot. Owners of Native Instruments' Kontrol S series keyboards benefit here from tight integration with Light Guide, which clearly shows the ranges of the remote octave (as well as a handful of special MIDI-enabled switches) but it's fairly straightforward for standard MIDI keyboard owners as well—C1 through B2 triggers the Harmony presets and the two higher octaves trigger the Samples and Sound presets in that order.
Clicking the names below the remote octaves brings you to the subpage for the Harmony, Samples and Sounds sections of Flesh. Within the Harmony page you'll find one of the main areas where Flesh differentiates itself from the Mouth. In both plug-ins you can set the scale of the notes played by each generator, but Flesh allows you to record up to eight bars of a sequence of harmonic changes. When you combine this with the ability to change the rhythmic triggers via the Samples remote octave and the synth presets via the Sounds remote octave, you start to realise the immense number of possibilities you can get out of a single snapshot.
Another area where Flesh differentiates itself in a major way is in the synthesis algorithms, a development that was surprisingly glossed over in much of NI's marketing for Flesh. Both the Mono and Poly synths use rather unique means of generating signals that go beyond the typical subtractive synthesiser architecture. Poly uses a resonating granular synthesiser engine, and Mono actually pulls data from the samples loaded into Flesh to resynthesise the waveform into a completely unique wavetable synthesiser. This rewards users with some unheard-of sonic textures, but it also causes a workflow limitation in that all samples have to be loaded into Flesh via click-and-drag. This may feel like a step back from the Mouth's ability to react to transients in real time, but in addition to the resynthesis ability, Flesh also gives you more control over transients and sample playback within the Samples subpage. One feature that is missing here is the ability to mark transients manually—a small request that could go a long way in increasing usability.
There are other tricks up Flesh's sleeve, including a fairly comprehensive modulation scheme and a clever transport/loop sync engine, that add to the overall power of the instrument. Looking at it as a whole though, Flesh still feels like an instrument pulled in two separate directions. You've got the gorgeous UI that attempts to simplify usability but ends up limiting access to an innovative synthesis engine in a sometimes frustrating way. It seems to be marketed for a broader audience of musicians, but the CPU-heavy resynthesising wavetable algorithms may appeal less to that crowd than a regular virtual analogue engine would. However, Flesh is no doubt a technical achievement and as an instrument that encourages experimentation, it can be a whole lot of fun.
Ratings:
Sound: 4.3
Cost: 4.4
Versatility: 3.8
Ease of use: 4.8