UNDERSCORE is a rhythmic-workstation for Native Instruments’ Kontakt 5. Initially developed for composers who write music for film/TV/video games, it combines powerful real-time sequencing and sound-manipulation features in an elegant way, and lets you create complicated “character” instrument parts in seconds with unparalleled flexibility.
FLUIDPHRASE ENGINE
The FluidPhrase Engine allows UNDERSCORE to adapt to host-tempo changes without artifacts, seamlessly play harmonic sequence patterns in any key, and when used with the powerful trigger modes, can make the process of writing rhythmic music fast and fun.
Simply pressing and holding one or two notes can lead to unexpected rhythmic ideas that will inspire you in ways you haven’t experienced before.
5 LAYER ARCHITECTURE
Designed with a 5-layer sample architecture, UNDERSCORE was built to be memory-efficient. In fact, UNDERSCORE takes up less than 1GB of hard disk space when installed. The innovation is that the included sample content comprises the constituent sonic elements (transient attacks, sustains) of a wide variety of hybrid-acoustic and synth sounds.
This means that dynamically responsive instruments and “round-robin” style variation can be programmed without the brute-force method of traditional sampling. This leads to the further benefit of making synth sounds more “human” and nuanced.
PHRASE TRIGGER
UNDERSCORE contains no “audio loops” – all phrases are created by triggering multisampled instruments in real-time with the fully-editable FluidPhrase Engine, the combination of a polyphonic step sequencer (with multiple trigger modes), and the Phrase Envelopes (modulation sources that can be used to alter sound parameters over the duration of a phrase or sequence).
