tell me something cool i can do with NI Kontakt

i paid a shitload for this and i don't know what the point was

You can do any cool things you would do with any other samplers. Something specific to Kontakt... if you bought version 4 then look-up the information on AES filtering in the manual. Then build a patch out of two disparate sets of samples and use the AES filtering to do some quite different morphing.

j0hn

scripting.

tone machine, time machine = two features 99% of sampler don't have

very useful

Read the manual... seriously... its like 50 pages tops.

i've posted this a few times, but since it's relevant to the thread:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UnihCm_c28

i still have yet to get tone machine to sound as cool as it does in this video. Which sounds work best? sounds like short metallic ones

  On 2/28/2010 at 2:55 AM, Awepittance said:

i still have yet to get tone machine to sound as cool as it does in this video. Which sounds work best? sounds like short metallic ones

i don't know what i'd say sounds best - the tone machine is unique every time for me... i can get a general vibe from a sound and guess what the timbre would be when tone machine got ahold of it, but it's always a little unique.

what i get into in the video doesn't really even begin to touch on what you can do, though. once you have your sample in tone machine mode, you can drag the 'speed' waaaaaay down and then start playing with sample start position - even miniscule changes will open up this ridiculous universe of timbres. the amazing thing is the range of subtlety you'll here for any given sample you load in - and just when you think you're tweaking a sound's granular potential so much that a different sample wouldn't be any different, you load a different sample and realise it's got its own huge universe of potential.

then start playing with loop points a few samples later and adjust loop length with various scripting elements or LFOs... you start wondering why you'd ever need any other type of synthesis method.

basically, when you're getting down to this level of sample postiion, looping, etc - you've got a goddamn supercomputing wavetable synth.

then you can consider generating timbrally complex outputs in something like reaktor or MAX that make significant spectral sweeps, etc., or creating waveforms in an editing program of your choice that are essentially orchestrated wavetables, and playing around with granular sampling speeds and... well... you can see where that's all going.

i don't play around with kontakt as much as i used to, but i've made a lot of tracks that are nothing but kontakt's granular sampling and fuckery.

the track 'schmockwizen' off of my most recent release is nothing but field recordings gathered in berlin using cell phone mics, digital camera mics and my dictaphone... loaded into kontakt's time machine or tone machine, and manipulated with all sorts of stuff therein. EVERY sound in that track is a found sound, manipulated in kontakt. nothing synthesized or loaded from a sample library.you can check it out here if you're so inclined:

http://www.mausworld.com/sandwiches.html

it's a great tool. i'd say that it's a shame that they don't make an instrument exploiting this functionality in a more simplified and unique way, but i'm glad it's kind of a hidden thing that can generate some unique stuff. even people who know what it can do often can't be bothered to really explore it. it is fun.

if this made no sense, it's because of a combination of significant bowls of 'melon haze', and being distracted by 'showgirls' on FiOS HD.

banana jones

woah

yeah the tone machine is pretty incredible

Kontakt has a plugin that does convolution so you can combine sounds with each other. Pretty damn cool, and takes out the step of doing it in another app.

You can also route velocities to filters. There's a ton of great stuff in there that's really easy to do.

  On 2/27/2010 at 3:20 AM, acid1 said:

Read the manual... seriously... its like 50 pages tops.

Yeah, but the manual is absolutely atrocious. I made a thread a couple years ago trying to figure out how to get Battery to do 5.1 and it wasn't anywhere in the physical manual or the pdf. Native Instruments has awful documentation. I had a teacher in college that pretty much rewrote the manual for Vokator for us because it was so bad.

lol, do you still have the Vokator redux? i'd love to read it, i lvoe that program.

  On 2/28/2010 at 8:29 AM, maus said:

  On 2/28/2010 at 2:55 AM, Awepittance said:

i still have yet to get tone machine to sound as cool as it does in this video. Which sounds work best? sounds like short metallic ones

 

i don't know what i'd say sounds best - the tone machine is unique every time for me... i can get a general vibe from a sound and guess what the timbre would be when tone machine got ahold of it, but it's always a little unique.

 

what i get into in the video doesn't really even begin to touch on what you can do, though. once you have your sample in tone machine mode, you can drag the 'speed' waaaaaay down and then start playing with sample start position - even miniscule changes will open up this ridiculous universe of timbres. the amazing thing is the range of subtlety you'll here for any given sample you load in - and just when you think you're tweaking a sound's granular potential so much that a different sample wouldn't be any different, you load a different sample and realise it's got its own huge universe of potential.

 

then start playing with loop points a few samples later and adjust loop length with various scripting elements or LFOs... you start wondering why you'd ever need any other type of synthesis method.

 

basically, when you're getting down to this level of sample postiion, looping, etc - you've got a goddamn supercomputing wavetable synth.

 

then you can consider generating timbrally complex outputs in something like reaktor or MAX that make significant spectral sweeps, etc., or creating waveforms in an editing program of your choice that are essentially orchestrated wavetables, and playing around with granular sampling speeds and... well... you can see where that's all going.

 

i don't play around with kontakt as much as i used to, but i've made a lot of tracks that are nothing but kontakt's granular sampling and fuckery.

 

the track 'schmockwizen' off of my most recent release is nothing but field recordings gathered in berlin using cell phone mics, digital camera mics and my dictaphone... loaded into kontakt's time machine or tone machine, and manipulated with all sorts of stuff therein. EVERY sound in that track is a found sound, manipulated in kontakt. nothing synthesized or loaded from a sample library.you can check it out here if you're so inclined:

 

http://www.mausworld.com/sandwiches.html

 

it's a great tool. i'd say that it's a shame that they don't make an instrument exploiting this functionality in a more simplified and unique way, but i'm glad it's kind of a hidden thing that can generate some unique stuff. even people who know what it can do often can't be bothered to really explore it. it is fun.

 

if this made no sense, it's because of a combination of significant bowls of 'melon haze', and being distracted by 'showgirls' on FiOS HD.

 

banana jones

thanks maus, i need to play around with it some more. IT's still kind of weird that i find myself going back to the Reaktor object 'resynth' to do pitch shifting (While keeping the same time) of a sample across the entire keyboard. The kontakt ' time machine' mode doesnt sound as smooth to me as the reaktor one, maybe im not setting it right. In kontakt it sounds a lot more like obvious pitch shifting to me where in reaktor it sounds very warm/non artifacty like BOC or something

Awesome thread, while it's here and in everyone's mind can someone give me some pointers on how to automate kontakt in SX3 becuase it's doing my head in? I have this really cool sound going with the tone machine and when i tweak the speed knob it sounds really good but i can't for the life of me figure out how to automate it. If it helps i am using kontakt 2.

  On 3/1/2010 at 3:22 PM, Aces said:

Awesome thread, while it's here and in everyone's mind can someone give me some pointers on how to automate kontakt in SX3 becuase it's doing my head in? I have this really cool sound going with the tone machine and when i tweak the speed knob it sounds really good but i can't for the life of me figure out how to automate it. If it helps i am using kontakt 2.

might be a stupid question but have you tried the Read/write feature buttons on the plugin window while you tweak the knob? after you tweak it an editable automation lane will show up

  On 2/28/2010 at 10:58 PM, Awepittance said:

lol, do you still have the Vokator redux? i'd love to read it, i lvoe that program.

Man, I wish I still did have that thing, but I think it's been lost in the ether.

  On 3/2/2010 at 12:57 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 3/1/2010 at 3:22 PM, Aces said:

Awesome thread, while it's here and in everyone's mind can someone give me some pointers on how to automate kontakt in SX3 becuase it's doing my head in? I have this really cool sound going with the tone machine and when i tweak the speed knob it sounds really good but i can't for the life of me figure out how to automate it. If it helps i am using kontakt 2.

 

might be a stupid question but have you tried the Read/write feature buttons on the plugin window while you tweak the knob? after you tweak it an editable automation lane will show up

I tried it but it didn't work. I went through all the cc's as well but i couldn't find anything there that might be it.

ill try duplicating this tonight but you may be right. NI arbitrarily seems to have unautomatable knobs in their newer iterations of Battery. The new flam options and knobs that control the parameters are not automatable, i remember it being kind of a buzzkill when i found this out. If they are in a new version i am unaware of it

NI is really good at taking a great idea and making it nearly unusable.

Yeah, LFO rate wasn't automatable in early versions of Massive! And that is one of THE Dubstep synths. I just can't fathom why they would leave any knob unautomatable.

also their UI design is shit. Windows are not resizable, icons are fucking nebulous and have no tooltips, thier browser sucks donky balls.

The guts of the products are good, but the UI implementation almost kills them. In Kontakt I go nuts from the fucking double click opening and closing things unexpectedly. Their apps try to do too much a lot of times.

That said reaktor looks like teh radness.

  On 3/2/2010 at 6:02 AM, Awepittance said:

ill try duplicating this tonight but you may be right. NI arbitrarily seems to have unautomatable knobs in their newer iterations of Battery. The new flam options and knobs that control the parameters are not automatable, i remember it being kind of a buzzkill when i found this out. If they are in a new version i am unaware of it

Thanks dude. I really hope it can be done otherwise it's going to be really frustrating.

  On 3/2/2010 at 3:17 AM, Aces said:

  On 3/2/2010 at 12:57 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 3/1/2010 at 3:22 PM, Aces said:

Awesome thread, while it's here and in everyone's mind can someone give me some pointers on how to automate kontakt in SX3 becuase it's doing my head in? I have this really cool sound going with the tone machine and when i tweak the speed knob it sounds really good but i can't for the life of me figure out how to automate it. If it helps i am using kontakt 2.

 

might be a stupid question but have you tried the Read/write feature buttons on the plugin window while you tweak the knob? after you tweak it an editable automation lane will show up

 

Have you dragged a corresponding midi cc/host parameter to an instrument knob, from the automation menu? Once you specify this, read/write should pick up.. just make sure to use host automation if you're dialing in from your DAW..

 

I hate NI's hoop jumping for automation. It's even worse in Reaktor...

Also - has anyone managed to successfully automate Time Machine settings without Kontakt causing DAW armageddon? Crashes every time ...

  On 3/24/2010 at 3:30 PM, thingfish said:

Also - has anyone managed to successfully automate Time Machine settings without Kontakt causing DAW armageddon? Crashes every time ...

you've reached the glass ceiling of kontakt. :P

i have the same problem regularly. it just doesn't seem to be able to keep up when you start tweaking that stuff. sometimes even if you're manually adjusting sample start times and stuff while playing it'll shit itself.

unfortunately, doing that sort of stuff is fringe enough that i doubt NI will dedicate any resources to improving it. they have yet to even make mention of 64-bit versions, and i'm mildly terrified to see what sort of havoc those updates will bring us.

maschine still has a tantrum-inducing latency bug inside of logic that they seem unlikely to fully address.

they make some great tools, but the follow-through and attention to detail for the power users is a little lacking. it's frustrating.

  On 3/24/2010 at 2:51 PM, thingfish said:

  On 3/2/2010 at 3:17 AM, Aces said:

  On 3/2/2010 at 12:57 AM, Awepittance said:

  On 3/1/2010 at 3:22 PM, Aces said:

Awesome thread, while it's here and in everyone's mind can someone give me some pointers on how to automate kontakt in SX3 becuase it's doing my head in? I have this really cool sound going with the tone machine and when i tweak the speed knob it sounds really good but i can't for the life of me figure out how to automate it. If it helps i am using kontakt 2.

 

might be a stupid question but have you tried the Read/write feature buttons on the plugin window while you tweak the knob? after you tweak it an editable automation lane will show up

 

Have you dragged a corresponding midi cc/host parameter to an instrument knob, from the automation menu? Once you specify this, read/write should pick up.. just make sure to use host automation if you're dialing in from your DAW..

 

I hate NI's hoop jumping for automation. It's even worse in Reaktor...

 

Holy crap! I'm going to give this a go, thankyou very much. That's brilliant.

  On 3/24/2010 at 2:51 PM, thingfish said:

I hate NI's hoop jumping for automation. It's even worse in Reaktor...

reaktor's pretty quick n' painless, no? right-click -> midi learn -> tweak knob of your choice -> disco party 3000.