The Mapping Editor

You can manually create Zones by dragging one or multiple Samples from the Side pane or your desktop into the Zone grid of the Mapping Editor. While dragging, a highlighted region will tell you where Kontakt would place the Zone(s) on the keyboard. When you release the mouse button, the Zones will be created; if you change your mind and don’t want to add new Zones, just move your mouse outside the Mapping Editor and release the button.

While you keep your mouse button depressed, Kontakt will highlight the pattern in which it would map new Zones to the keyboard.

The way Kontakt will distribute the new Zone(s) depends on your mouse position and whether you’re dragging one or multiple Samples:

Note that when you drag multiple samples from the Side pane into the Mapping Editor, the sort order in which they appeared in the Side pane will also determine the order in which the corresponding Zones will be placed. For instance, if you’d like to create an eight-way velocity switch out of samples named “Piano-C3-1.wav” through “Piano-C3-8.wav”, you should make sure that the Samples list in the Side pane is sorted by name in ascending order before you select and drag the Samples into the Mapping Editor.

In addition to Samples, you can also drag one or multiple sliced loops into the Mapping Editor to place them on the keyboard. In this case, the newly created Zones won’t belong to the currently selected Group; instead, a new Group will be created for each Loop with its Source Module set to Beat Machine mode.

Placing Zones manually by dragging Samples from the Side pane into the Zone grid works well if your Instrument won’t contain a lot of Zones, or if your Samples are conveniently named in a way that makes it possible to pre-sort them in the Side pane before you create Zones out of them. But what if the samples of your violin set are not named “Violin-1.wav” through “Violin-14.wav”, but instead “Violin-G2-A2” through “Violin-A#5-C6”? There’s no way to get the Side pane to sort them in any meaningful way.

For scenarios like this, the Mapping Editor includes an Auto-Mapping feature. It consists of a customizable filename scanner that first attempts to determine which parts of your Sample’s filenames could contain valuable information, then lets you assign to which Zone parameters these parts should be mapped.

To use the Auto-Mapping feature, you’ll have to create Zones out of your Samples first by dragging them into the Mapping Editor as described above. While doing this, you won’t have to care about aspects that can be derived from the Sample filenames later. For instance, if your filenames contain the key range, you don’t need to place the Zones anywhere particular; they will be moved to their correct destinations by the Auto-Mapping feature anyway.

In the next step, mark all Zones in the Mapping Editor upon which you want the Auto-Mapping feature to act. You can select multiple Zones either by holding the [Shift] key while clicking on them, or by clicking on the grid background and dragging the mouse to open a “rubber band” selection frame. When all Zones you want to process are selected, open the Edit drop-down menu at the top of the Mapping Editor and choose Auto Map — Setup. A dialog window will appear that displays the result of the filename scanning process.

The Auto Mapping dialog, displaying a filename that has been split up into four tokens.

At the top of this dialog, you can see which filename has been used to determine where the interesting parts of the filename could be. These so-called “tokens” are any strings that appear in the filename and are separated from each other with non-alphanumeric characters like spaces, dashes, or underscores. Below, the filename is displayed again, this time split up into its determined tokens, with a drop-down menu below each of them. These menus allow you to specify for each token whether it shall be ignored or used to derive any Zone information. For example, if your Samples are named similar to “Trumpet-f-C1-D#1.wav”, with the “f” indicating the dynamic layer and the notes representing the low and high endpoints of the key range, you can leave the drop-down menu of the first token (“Trumpet”) at its Ignore Me entry, while setting the menus of the second, third and fourth tokens (“f”, “C1” and “D#1”) to Make Group Name, Make Low Key, Make High Key and Set to Single Key respectively.

Tokens marked “Ignore me” won’t be used for any automatic Zone adjustment.

Of course, this applies only if you want to separate multiple dynamic layers into Groups, otherwise you can leave the second menu set to Ignore Me as well.

When you enable the Read root key from sample metadata if possible option at the bottom of the dialog, Kontakt will read and use the root key information that’s embedded in some WAV and AIFF files, if available, instead of trying to get it from the filename. Once the settings accurately reflect the information contained in your filenames, click the Close button at the bottom of the dialog.

Now, with the Zones still selected, choose the Auto map selected command from the Edit menu at the top of the Mapping Editor, or use the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl] + T ([Cmd] + T on Mac OS X). If you correctly identified all filename tokens in the previous step, Kontakt will now automatically arrange and place the Zones according to the information it gets from the filenames of their referenced Samples.

Once you’ve created Zones for your Samples, you can take care of adjusting their parameters to your needs. Each Zone carries the following parameters with it:

Note that the last three parameters are mainly intended for a non-destructive correction of Samples which deviate in volume, panorama position, or tuning. They work in combination with the identically named parameters of the Source and Amplifier modules. If you want to modulate these parameters on a per-Zone basis, read about Zone Envelopes in section Zone Envelopes.

Editing Parameters via MIDI

A third alternative that lets you change the keyboard and velocity ranges of a Zone in an intuitive way is using your MIDI keyboard. After you’ve selected a Zone in the Zone grid of the Mapping Editor, enable one of the buttons depicted with a small MIDI jack and a double arrow in the control strip, or both.

Enabling MIDI Mapping

The button with a horizontal arrow lets you change the keyboard range, the one with a vertical arrow lets you change the velocity range.

When these are active, play two keys on your keyboard; it doesn’t matter whether you play them at the same time or in succession. Depending which of the two buttons you have activated, Kontakt will use the note numbers and the velocity of both notes as endpoints for the Zone’s new keyboard and/or velocity range.

The control strip is located at the top of the Mapping Editor and consists of two rows of controls. This is where you can find most utility functions for managing and editing your Zones.

The Control Strip of the Mapping Editor provides a number of options and utility functions.

Let’s take a look at the elements of the control strip:

Edit menu: This button opens a drop-down menu with utility functions that operate on all currently selected Zones, such as clipboard operations, functions for assigning Zones to Groups, and batch processes. You can find a thorough explanation of all entries in this menu in the next section of this chapter.

List View: This button switches the Zone grid to an alternate view mode that displays all Groups and their contained Zones in a hierarchical list structure at the left side.

This mode is especially handy when you’re working with lots of Zones that overlap in large areas, as Zones that are hidden behind others can be difficult to select and edit in the normal, flat view. The downside of the list view is that it doesn’t convey any information about the velocity ranges; the only way to modify these is by editing them numerically in the status bar after you have selected a Zone. Just like the default view, the list view can be moved around with the scrollbars and zoomed with either the zoom buttons or by clicking and dragging a “rubber band” zoom frame while holding the Alt key.

Select Zone by MIDI: If this button is activated, any incoming MIDI note will automatically select any Zone(s) that match its note number and velocity. The function works similarly to the Select by MIDI feature of the Group Editor.

Auto-Spread Zone Key Ranges: This function automatically fills “holes” in your key mapping by successively extending the key range of each selected Zone to both sides until it “touches” its neighbors. The algorithm ignores the root keys of the selected Zones; it simply uses the current key range as a starting point for extension. If you want the root keys to be accounted for, use the Auto-Spread Key Ranges via Root Key function instead. The Auto-Spread Zone Key Ranges function is also available in the Edit menu.

Auto-SpreadVelocity Ranges: This function works similarly to Auto-Spread Zone Key Ranges, but operates on the velocity range of each selected Zone instead of the key range. This function is also available in the Edit menu.

Auto-Map Selected: When you click the Auto button, the Auto-Mapping feature will change the parameters and placement of each selected Zone according to information it has derived from its Sample’s filename. This function is also available in the Edit menu. The Auto-Mapping feature is explained in detail in the previous section of this chapter.

Auto-Spread Key Ranges via Root Key (Root): This function works similarly to the Auto-Spread Zone Key Ranges command; however, it aims for the smallest possible maximum transposition that can occur in each Zone by accounting for the root keys and trying to keep them in the center of their respective Zone. This function is also available in the Edit menu.

Resolve Overlapping Key Ranges: This function eliminates key range overlaps between the selected Zones by successively shrinking the key range of each Zone until it doesn’t overlap its neighbor anymore. It aims for optimal utilization of root keys (and consequently, the smallest possible amount of transposition). This function is also available in the Edit menu and via the keyboard shortcut [Ctrl]-R ([Cmd]-R on Mac OS X).

Resolve Overlapping Velocity Ranges: This function works similarly to the Resolve Overlapping Key Ranges command, but operates on the velocity ranges of the selected Zones. It’s also available in the Edit menu and via the keyboard shortcut [Shift] + [Ctrl] + [R] ([Shift] + [Cmd] + [R] on Mac OS X).

Set Key Range via MIDI: If this button is activated and a Zone is selected, Kontakt will use the next two incoming MIDI notes as the endpoints of a new key range for the selected Zone. This function is described in the previous section.

Set Velocity Range via MIDI: If this button is activated and a Zone is selected, Kontakt will use the velocities of the next two incoming MIDI notes as the endpoints of a new velocity range for the selected Zone. This function is described in the previous section.

Lock Zones: When this button is activated, the key and velocity ranges of all Zones will be protected from being changed graphically inside the Zone grid. This can be handy when you’re doing editing tasks that require you to switch between Zones a lot, and want to avoid accidentally moving one of them or changing its key or velocity ranges.

Zone Solo: This button will mute all Zones in your Instrument except of the currently selected one(s). Once activated, the solo function will follow your selection, so you can quickly check out the contents of specific Zones acoustically.

Selected Groups Only: When this button is activated, the Mapping Editor will only show Zones that belong to the currently selected Group. To help you keep the overview, other Zones will be displayed dimly in the background, but won’t be able for selection or editing.

Auto Sel Grp: When this button is activated, the Group selection will follow your Zone selection. In other words, selecting a Zone will automatically select the respective Group to which it belongs in the Group Editor.

Sample Field: This text field displays the filename of the Sample that’s assigned to the currently selected Zone. When you hover the mouse pointer over this field, Kontakt will additionally display the full path to the Sample file. Using the arrow buttons on the right side of the field, you can assign a new Sample to the selected Zone; the buttons will switch to the previous or next Sample within the folder of the current one.

This drop-down menu contains utility functions that operate on your currently selected Zones. In addition to clipboard commands and functions that allow you to re-assign Zones to different Groups, it also contains a range of batch functions that are designed to operate on multiple Zones, commands for controlling the Authentic Expression Technology (as described in section AET Filter), and some options that affect the display and editing behavior of the Mapping Editor. Let’s have a look at what you can find in the Edit menu, from top to bottom:

You can find these tools in the Batch functions submenu of the Edit menu. In addition to functions that place root keys in relation to the respective Zone borders, the menu includes several utility operations that let you create crossfades between Zones, which needs a brief introduction.

When you create Sample sets of tonal instruments that don’t include a Sample for each note, the notes that haven’t been sampled need to derive their signal from the Samples of nearby notes. This is usually done by transposing these “native” Samples upwards or downwards. This method has a downside — the necessary re-sampling process can “skew” the sound character of your instrument, especially when transposition over a wider note range is required. Consequentially, this means that two consecutive notes on a scale which happen to cross the “border” between two Zones, and thus are both transposed versions of different Samples, can sound dissimilar.

The same problem can arise with velocity switched Sample sets; suppose you’re using four Samples per note, each assigned to one of four equally large velocity ranges. Especially when you’re sampling an acoustic instrument, it can easily happen that two consecutive notes with only marginally different velocity values still happen to fall into two different velocity ranges, thus resulting in noticeably different timbres.

Crossfades provide a way to counteract these effects. The basic idea is that overlapping your Zones and creating a crossfade between them, thus making them blend into each other within the overlapping parts, will mask the difference in sound for notes that fall “between” them.

Crossfades are being depicted with colored gradients.

Consider this example: You’re sampling an instrument in minor thirds and have just sampled D and F. You create two Zones out of the Samples and extend them a major second to both sides. Now, Zone 1 covers the key range between C and E, with its root key being D. Zone 2 has its root key on F and covers the key range between D# and G. Notice that the Zones overlap on D# and E, where both will be transposed. Now you create a key crossfade on both Zones; as a result, D# and E notes will play a blend of both Zones, with the D Zone’s Sample being predominant on D# notes, and the F Zone’s Sample being predominant on E notes. Of course, this method works just as well with larger sampling intervals. Just make sure that your Zones overlap in ranges you’d like to be crossfaded, whether in key (horizontal) or velocity (vertical) direction.

With this knowledge, let’s get back to the contents of the Batch Tools sub-menu: