Kontakt has become one of the most popular and respected software samplers for modern musicians. If you're relatively new to Kontakt then these 5 steps will get you up and running in no time.

Create the output channels in Kontakt then click 'Set as default' in Kontakt. Then unload and reload Kontakt in Studio One, once this is done S1 should show all the channels when you expand the instrument. This works for me. Windows 7 64, i7 980 24GB RAM Studio One 2.5 Prof + FL Studio 11 (rewired). Jul 24, 2019  Studio One Pro 4.5, Intel i5-8400 @ 2.8GHz, 32GB RAM, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 (2nd Gen), Akai MPK Mini MKII, Novation Remote 25 (ancient, but not as ancient as I am) Link to this post. Turn On MIDI Ports. Select the MIDI tab. Locate your MIDI controller ports and change them to On for both Input and Output tabs. For Komplete Kontrol and Maschine hardware controllers, turn Port 1 on when transmitting MIDI over USB.

Rather than my typical list of secrets about a particular instrument or DAW program, I thought this month I’d shake it up a bit. Here are 5 important tips I absolutely wish somebody had told me when I first started using the powerhouse megasampler Kontakt from Native Instruments. Hopefully, if you’re getting started with Kontakt (or even if you’ve been using it for a while!) these tips will save you valuable time in your workflow.

Quick Load Menu Is…. Quick

It’s so easily overlooked, and it’s one of the best features of Kontakt if you find yourself reaching for your favorite instruments often. Just to the right of the ‘keyboard’ button at the top menu bar, click on the ‘quick’ button and you’ll be treated to Kontakt’s Quick Load menu. You can drag and drop your favorite multis, banks, and instruments into the menu. If you find yourself reaching for a similar set of instruments often, you’d be nuts to waste valuable session time hunting around that huge library. Put them in the quick load menu and call it a day!

How

Drag and Replace, Keep the Same MIDI Channel

Ok, you know how you pick out one sound, decide you want to use another so you browse a bit, double-click on a preset, play some notes… and still hear the original sound? I know, it drove me nuts too. When you have a sound loaded up in the rack and you double-click a different patch, Kontakt automatically keeps your previous sound and adds a new sound on MIDI channel 2. Of course, since your controller is set to MIDI channel 1, you won’t hear your new sound when you play!

Well, it doesn’t have to be this way! Instead of deleting your original sound and then instantiating your new one, simply drag and dropMercy by amanda cook mp3 download. the NKI file onto the current sound that exists in the rack. Voila! The current sound will disappear, and your new sound will appear, already routed to MIDI channel 1. It’s a great time saver if you’re looking to browse through your library and don’t want to use Komplete Kontrol.

Right-Click and Assign

Want to take advantage of that fancy MIDI controller you bought with over 300 buttons, lights, and knobs? You don’t have to worry about what knob is transmitting what message on what MIDI channel… All you have to know is where the right mouse button is.

Right-click on a controller on the instrument inside of the Kontakt window and you’ll be treated to the ‘learn MIDI CC automation’ dialog box. Click it, then touch something on your MIDI controller. Whatever you touch will now control that knob on the screen. Pretty cool, right? If you’re not happy with a mapping, simply right-click it and you can remove it.

As if that amount of control wasn’t enough, you can even click on the ‘auto’ menu in the navigation area (upper left corner of the window) and you’ll be treated to a top down view of all the assignments you made. Here, you can easily invert a routing if you like! Why not have a single knob move one control up while moving another one down? You can make some pretty drastic adjustments in tone that way.

Cores, Cores, Everywhere

In the options menu under ‘engine’ you’ll be able to adjust Kontakt’s multiprocessor support options. Of course, when running Kontakt in standalone mode you’re going to want Kontakt to utilize all those cores you paid so much for. However, did you know that this option can sometimes work against you when hosting Kontakt in another audio program?

MainStage, for example, has excellent multi-core handling and does all the heavy lifting in that respect for you. In that case, you want MainStage managing your multicore support and Kontakt to disable said support. Each DAW or audio program handles this differently, so be sure to research which will work best for your needs. I noticed a dramatic shift in CPU dropouts when I disabled multicore for the AU plugin but left it enabled for the standalone app on my laptop.

See The Pretty Colors

See those different colored keys? They actually do stuff!

Kontakt’s keyboard will show multicolored keys for many patches. In fact, even the most basic patch that utilizes a single color still has significance! The blue colored keys represent sampled notes. In general, when playing back a high-quality sampled instrument, you don’t want the computer to ‘generate’ sound. If it’s high quality, there is likely a sample for every single key. The blue notes represent the sampled area. If you take a strings patch, it will mean the blue notes show the range of the patch you are using, and anything outside that range isn’t playable. Of course you could monkey around in the engine and get Kontakt to ‘stretch’ the pitch of the top note up and give you more range, but the quality won’t be the same and you’ll also be outside of the physical area that instrument can actually play.

The other colors can represent a number of different thing. Sometimes an instrument will use keyswitches to change articulations (such as from bowed strings to plucked) and you’ll see pink-ish colored keys to show you what notes will make that switch for you. Many instruments may have loops, one-shot samples, or other scripting ready to go at the simple press of a key. Take notice of these colors and make the most of using them as a guide!

Kontakt is Deep, Man!

Kontakt is an incredibly deep instrument, and the richness of the programming engine allows for developers to create some truly inspiring instruments that combine elements of synthesis with elements of sample playback. Use these tips to get the most out of the included instruments as well as 3rd-party ones that you add on yourself!

Learn Native Instrument Kontakt the easy way HERE.

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on Mar 06, 2015 in Presonus Studio One 0 comments

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Find out what multitimbral instruments are, why you should consider using them and how to set them up in PreSonus Studio One in this revealing tutorial by Gary Hiebner.

In this article, we'll look at setting up multitimbral instruments in Studio One. If you’re working with instruments like Kontakt, EastWest’s PLAY and Omnisphere; you’ll want to get the most out of their functionality by setting up multitimbral instruments. Right, let’s see how it’s done.

What is a Multitimbral Instrument

First let's explain what a multitimbral instrument is. It’s an instrument that can play several different sounds or patches at the same time. And this is done by each sound or patch being controlled by a different MIDI channel. So it’s sort of like a stacked software instrument. So, how is this achieved in Studio One?

Adding Your Multitimbral Instrument

I’m going to demonstrate using Kontakt, but it will be the same principle with any multitimbral instrument. Add an Instrument track, and then drag an instance of Kontakt onto this track.

Now in Kontakt, I’m going to add an instrument. On this instrument, I’m going to load up a multi preset. I have chosen a Kontakt Damage preset (the Combo Tonality for the Score preset) as this preset will have multiple instruments loaded up in Kontakt. With this preset, each instrument in the multi instrument is assigned to a unique MIDI channel. You could also build up your own multi patch and assign each instrument in the patch to a unique MIDI channel.

But the problem with this instrument track in Studio One is that it can only send MIDI on one channel. So let’s see how different tracks can send to different MIDI channels.

Adding More Tracks

Now add another Instrument track. On the input of the track choose your instrument again, so mine will be Kontakt. Now you’ll see that next to the name there is a box showing CH1. This means this instrument is sending a signal on MIDI channel 1. Now click on this box and change it to CH2, and now it’ll be sending a signal on MIDI channel 2. When I select this instrument, record arm it and play on my controller I can hear that it’s now playing a different instrument in the multi patch.

How To Assign Kontakt 5 To Kontakt 4 Studio One Download

So add more instruments tracks and assign them to the different MIDI channels of your multitimbral instrument. You can also go and rename each instrument so that it makes sense to you.

Using Multi-Output Routing

What’s even better is that most of these multitimbral instruments have multiple outputs as well. So even though you’re sending multiple MIDI channels to the instrument, you can also send out the stacked instruments in the multitimbral instrument to their own outputs. To do this make sure first that in your multi instrument that you have set each instrument to go to a different output. So for example on my side I have made sure that each instrument in my Kontakt multi goes to a different output.

Then in Studio One go to the Mixer panel, click on the arrow next to your instrument and choose Expand.

This will show you the outputs you can add. Tick the ones you want to add, and then you’ll see in Studio One’s Mixer Panel how you now have extra outputs for the Multitimbral instrument.

Now you can apply different mixing and processing effects to each instrument even though you’re only using one multitimbral instrument.

How To Assign Kontakt 5 To Kontakt 4 Studio One Computer

The benefits of using multitimbral instruments are that in my case I only had to load up one instance of Kontakt. So this will be saving on resources. And then each track has its own dedicated track for MIDI editing. So this makes it easier and more efficient to correlate all your MIDI data for the sounds and instrument.

Conclusion

How To Assign Kontakt 5 To Kontakt 4 Studio One Free

That’s how to set up and use Multitimbral instruments in your Studio One songs. It makes your music production more efficient with the MIDI sending data to as few instruments as possible in your song.

For further Studio One tips and tricks, check out these video courses:

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