Automate switching instruments

Newcomer problem.
I'm stuck on something which I'm sure has a simple answer.
I have 4 instruments loaded in K4 and 1 midi track in Cubase.
I want to automate the selection of each instrument in turn to play it's part on the one track and I can't figure out how to do it.
Is it anything to do with the green keys on the kontakt virtual keyboard? I can't find any reference to them.
Thanks in advance

 

Use Instrument Bank.

Click on File, New instrument bank. You will be presented with something that looks much like regular unedited empty instrument. BUT, click on the wrench icon!

You now have 128 slots in which you can put any NKI you want, and then you just switch between them using usual MIDI Program Change messages! Set the MIDI input channel to what you need, and off you go!

 

Thanks very much. That works ok.
One thing though. One of the instruments is solo violin, and I don't see the window with the articulations etc. which I get when I load it into the rack directly.
Can I get to this somehow?
And the green keys?

 

Double-click on any instrument in the bank to bring up its instrument edit window.

 

Yes, I get the edit window but not the one with the articulations, 'sustain, fortepiano' etc.

 

Yes, that's a bit different. You need to go to Script Editor to see the performance view.

Generally, instrument banks aren't made to show visual representation of the currently selected instrument IN the bank.

The OTHER way to do it would be: simply load all the NKI you want, and set them to receive different MIDI channels! You can have up to 16 MIDI channels in VST version. In Cubase, your MIDI item can have up to 16 MIDI channels, right? Then just record to one of those channels to switch between the instruments on the fly!

Let's say you have violins on MIDI channel 1, violas on 2, cellos on 3, contrabassi on 4. In Cubase, you have your MIDI item. Enter some notes on channel 1, you'll hear violins. Enter some notes on ch 2, you'll hear violas, etc.

 

Thanks very much for the advice. I'll give that a go.

 

I'm still confused here. How do I 'switch between the instruments on the fly!'
I have one track here, how do I enter notes on different channels?

 

Use multiple MIDI tracks . You can have multiple MIDI tracks going to the same plugin instance.

ew

 

This depends on your DAW. In Reaper, I can have one MIDI item send out 16 MIDI channels, essentially I can control 16 different Kontakt instruments on just ONE track.

 

Yes I'm aware of that option but the point here is to use one track only and switch between Kontakt instruments on the same track.
As EvilDragon has said I can use the 'New instrument bank' way but I thought there must be some way to switch between instruments loaded individually into the rack.
I can't see any way in Cubase because a channel is allocated to a track and I don't see how it can be changed other than manually, so if my instruments are set to different midi channels I can't access them all from that track.
That's how I see it anyway.
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Just in case I misunderstand the terminology could you clarify 'midi item'
please.

 

MIDI item. A container which holds up to 16 channels of MIDI data.

The same thing you get when you drag an audio file in your DAW, except this one holds MIDI information instead of audio.


Now, I don't know Cubase, but there DEFINITELY must be a way of switching the displayed MIDI channel of the CURRENT item in Piano Roll. Perhaps check up on the manual?

After all, Cubase started out as a MIDI sequencer. It would be retarded if it couldn't have 16 channels defined in ONE MIDI item.

 

Thanks again, I'll check that out.

 

geoff, I can describe how I do this very thing in SONAR, but I'm not sure how well it'll translate to Cubase. I figured this out based on a KB article here, which tells you about 1/2 the story, and uses the term "program change", which I've never seen used elsewhere (most docs I've seen use "patch change").

Be forewarned - ultimately this may all be more trouble than it's worth and you may be better off just moving the notes for different instruments to different MIDI tracks. FWIW, I sympathize with your frustration - to put it politely, the NI documentation leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to anything practical.

As ED says - create a new Instrument Bank and drag each of the instruments you want to control (i.e., from your single MIDI track in Cubase) into a slot in that bank - 001, 002, etc. To modify the instrument in a given slot, double-click on it and the instrument edit U/I will come up - you don't have access to an instrument's Performance View when it's in a bank, so you'll have to do things like turn off reverb, if you need to, from here (Side Note: I guess this is just one more feature suggestion to add to the list of stuff that should already be in the product. That is, if an instrument HAS a PV, then don't lock out access to it just because I've dragged it into a bank. Duh.).

Anyway, once you have a Kontakt Instrument Bank loaded with the instruments you want to play from your single MIDI track, go to your track view in Cubase and set your MIDI track's output to match the synth instance and channel the instrument bank is set to. For example, in SONAR I set the track's Output to the synth instance (e.g., "1-Kontakt 4 8out 4") and the track's Channel to the MIDI channel the Instrument Bank was set to (e.g., "1" for "[A] 1"). You may or may not need to set the MIDI track's Bank (I don't - I see only one bank in SONAR regardless how many instrument banks I've created in a K4 instance - one of the annoying ways in which K4 doesn't support SONAR very well).

Set the Patch to the slot number of the instrument that plays first. This can be tricky. I've seen that in some DAWs this value is offset by one - you'll just have to experiment. Luckily, it's easy enough to do - just select a patch number, play on your keyboard (or play the MIDI track in the DAW) and see which instrument plays. Adjust your numbering offset as needed.

Now for the fun part... open your piano roll and move your cursor (the "Now Time" in Sonar-speak) to the point right before the note where you're switching instruments. It's there that you want to Insert a MIDI Patch Change command. Different DAWs do this differently. In SONAR I click the Insert menu and select Bank/Patch Change... . A dialog pops up and allows me to select the Patch I want, then I just click OK. Do this for each instrument switch in the MIDI track and you MAY be good to go.

Caveats: on my system, no matter how carefully I select a Patch Change point in the piano roll, the change event will sometimes shift position and get placed AFTER the note instead of BEFORE it. SONAR has an Event Viewer I use to edit this directly (if Cubase has one, you can probably also use this to insert patch change commands 'manually'). Anyway, once you have the patch change inserted, you'll likely need to test it to see if it was inserted where you really wanted. Play your file and adjust as needed.

Hope that's helpful,

U0

 

Thanks very much UserZero for the detailed reply. I will try that tomorrow (as it's now after 1am - and I can barely think).
I know what you mean about it being more trouble than it's worth. Sometimes the problem takes on it's own legs and becomes detached from the original musical intention.

 

Good luck.

I'm not sure who at NI is testing the plug-in version of Kontakt with SONAR, but there's a lot that's not working very well, and this is one area where that's true. In Kontakt, my Instrument Bank slots may appear as something like "001 - Cello Solo", "002 - Cello Ensemble", "003 - String Ensemble", "004 - Solo Strings", etc. But in SONAR, the patch selections list I get is "none", "Cello Solo", "1", "2", "3", etc. So it takes a good memory, a lookup table in Notepad, or a lot of switching back-and-forth to select the right patch.

This same problem arises when selecting MIDI controllers in the Piano Roll view in SONAR - the list of available controllers reported by Kontakt is essentially blank, unlike with other plug-in synths.

U0

 

Program Change messages can be either 0~127, or 1~128. You can change which method to use in Sonar so it matches your instrument.

 

That's probably true (although I just looked through the various options in SONAR, and it's not obvious how to change this), but the bigger issue is that Kontakt simply doesn't communicate with the plug-in for stuff like this.

Where, with my Roland JV-1080, the MIDI track parameters will display the list of all banks installed - by name - and a list of instruments - by name - for each bank, Kontakt does not do this. It only tells SONAR the first bank (no name - just a number: '0') and only tells SONAR the first instrument in that bank. If you want to know anything else, you have to switch to the K4 synth instance's property page and start opening instruments. If you have 6 instances with several banks in each and multiple NKIs in each bank... well you can see how that gets old pretty fast.

Perhaps there's an INS instrument definition file for K4 or, rather, some way to generate one for a given instance configuration, that I simply haven't found yet. I kind of doubt it, since that would be SONAR-specific. But it seems like Kontakt could do a better job of reporting its instrument configuration when used as a VSTi.

U0

 

UserZero
I'm actually ok on that, I can do the program changes now quite easily in the Cubase list editor.
I think my main gripe was that I couldn't switch between instruments in the PV, but I can do what I need to with the instrument bank - or multiple tracks in the PV.
Thanks again.

 

I hate to carp on about the same thing but can anyone tell me what the Green Keys are for?