I’ve had Reaktor5 for a while, having snagged it in a promotion, in the hope that one day I might spend time to understand it and build my own instruments. I printed the manual for reading during trips and made some modest but slow headway in this manner.

There are no really good introductory tutorials for building your own instruments and FX in Reaktor. I’ve looked – they are all too shallow for my taste. I wanted a step-by-step guide to building a synth using different methods. Well, I’ve found one, and it’s much better than I expected:

Build a Clavia Nord Lead with Reaktor 4 (pdf) 

Yeah, so Reaktor4 it says, but it’s all valid and the perfect gateway for someone with a little synth knowledge to get their hands dirty with something useful. Really excellent.

The ensemble can also be downloaded for dissection: http://www.audionetwork.be/