The Wave Editor

The Fix mode is intended for slicing material that has a very precise timing; it’s less ideally suited for sloppily played acoustic drums. Also, it helps to have your drum loop or phrase edited cleanly when you’re planning to use the Fix mode, with the first beat being exactly at the beginning of the Sample, and no silence after the last beat; this is not a requirement, though. When you activate the Grid on a Zone for the first time, it’s in Fix mode by default; if you’re currently in Auto mode, you can switch to the Fix mode by clicking on the Fix tab of the Grid panel.

The Grid Panel in Fix mode

The idea behind the Fix mode is that your Sample will be split up into Slices of equal length, which is determined by the tempo of the loop, it’s time signature, and a selectable note value.

To achieve a proper slicing, Kontakt first needs to know the native tempo of your Sample. It tries to guess this by looking at its total length and assuming that it’s a whole number of measures, played in a 4/4 meter. The resulting tempo is displayed in BPM at the bottom of the Grid panel. Note that this guess will only have a chance of success if your Zone has been cleanly edited, with the first hit or note being exactly at the beginning, and no excess space behind the last one. If you’ve made sure that this is the case, but the displayed tempo value is still incorrect, there can be two reasons for this:

First, your drum loop or phrase could be in a different meter than 4/4. This is easy to correct: next to the tempo readout, you’ll notice a Time Signature value. By clicking on either its numerator or its denominator and dragging your mouse up or down, you can specify a different meter.

If the Time Signature value matches the meter of your loop, but the tempo is still incorrect, Kontakt has estimated the number of bars in your Sample incorrectly. You can validate this by switching to the Sync / Slice tab and checking the value of the Zone Length field. For instance, if your Zone consists of one bar at a tempo of 50 BPM, Kontakt might misinterpret it as two bars at 100 BPM. In such cases, the detected tempo will always be a multiple of the actual tempo, or vice versa. You can correct this by halving or doubling the tempo value with the “-” and “+” buttons next to it, respectively, until the correct tempo is indicated. Note that this will change the length as indicated in the Zone Length field on the Sync / Slice tab as well; the tempo and (musical) length values are invariably tied to each other.

Of course, if you already know the tempo of your Sample, you can skip all this and just enter the correct tempo value after double-clicking on the tempo value. Alternatively, click the time line and drag your mouse horizontally; this will stretch or compress your Grid until it matches the tempo of your Sample. Provided that your Sample start is cleanly edited, adjusting the tempo directly will give you a perfectly set up Grid right away. If there’s any silence at the beginning, the Slice makers will all land slightly before the actual hits; you can compensate this by moving the first Slice marker, labeled “1” at its top, which will move all following Slice markers along, thereby adding a time offset to your Grid.

Once the tempo of your Sample is set to the correct value and you have compensated any possible time offset, you’ll notice that the Slice markers in the waveform view split your Sample into 16th notes. That’s because the Grid uses the length of one 1/16th note as the default width for Slices. You can change this value by adjusting the control labeled Width in the middle of the Fix tab. You can change both the numerator and the denominator of the displayed note value by clicking on it and dragging your mouse vertically; also, clicking on the -/+ buttons next to the note value will halve or double the denominator, thereby increasing or decreasing the size of your Slices.

Once you’re done with all required adjustments and made sure that the Slice markers are well-aligned with your beat, you might want to remove or add Slice markers to accommodate pauses or additional ghost notes outside of the Grid, or manually correct the position of some Slice markers. These actions will be described after the next section.

The Fix mode of the Grid works well for exact and predictable beats or phrases, possibly of an electronic origin, that follow a fixed pattern in tempo and articulation. It’s less practical with irregular beats or loops that were recorded live and played by a drummer with less than perfect timing: in such cases, most Slice markers that were placed in Fix mode will land slightly before or after the hits they were meant for, and would need careful manual tweaking to be corrected. This makes the Auto mode the better choice for such material. You can switch over to this mode by clicking on the Auto tab at the top of the Grid panel.

The Grid Panel in Auto Mode

In Auto mode, Kontakt detects transients in the waveform of your Sample and creates Slice markers at these positions. For instance, each bass drum and snare hit in a typical rock groove will be clearly visible as a level peak in its waveform; intermediate hi-hat hits will be visible as smaller peaks. By using the attack phases of these peaks as Slice positions, Kontakt can split these elements into Slices automatically. All you have to do is telling Kontakt the level above which a transient shall be considered for slicing; this level threshold is the most important parameter of the Auto mode.

When you switch the Grid into Auto mode, you’ll notice two dotted, horizontal lines that appear at the top and bottom of your waveform view. By moving the horizontal slider on the Auto tab, these lines will change their position; they indicate the peak detection threshold graphically. Any peaks in your waveform that cross these lines will result in a Slice marker being placed at their respective position. As an example, reconsider the straight rock groove mentioned above: adjusting the threshold so that only the strong bass drum and snare hits cross the threshold will create large Slices, possibly at the length of 1/4 and 1/8 notes. Slowly lowering the threshold will gradually add more Slices, until all hi-hat hits and ghost notes will be marked separately.

When you’re using this function frequently, you’ll sooner or later encounter a drum loop where no threshold setting seems to work just right: on higher settings, hits that you’d like to be included will be ignored, while lower settings will add too many unwanted bits to the Grid. There are two ways to deal with this problem: if a low threshold tends to add lots of very small slices (for instance, on snare flams), try increasing the parameter labeled Min Slice Duration below the threshold fader. This will ignore all slices that would be shorter than the specified length. If this does not work, try to find a compromise threshold that covers most of the hits you’d like to be included, and then add or remove Slices manually as needed. This process will be explained in the next section.

Note that even if you’re using the Grid in Auto mode, Kontakt still needs to know the tempo of your Sample if you want to use one of the features for automatic synchronization. Therefore, the tempo control is still visible at the bottom of the Grid panel in Auto mode and might need manual adjustment as described in the previous section. In contrast to the Fix mode, though, it won’t affect the position of your Slice markers; it’s only important if you use the Beat Machine or Time Machine to adapt your Sample to a new tempo.

You can manually modify or delete any Slice, including those that were generated by Kontakt, and add new Slice markers to your Sample. This allows you to fine-tune automatically generated Slices, or manually slice material that’s not suitable for being processed automatically.

Note that whenever you move an existing Slice or add a new one, it will be automatically locked. While Slice markers that were created via the Fix or Auto mode will change their positions or disappear when you adjust the tempo or switch the Grid mode, locked markers will always remain at their absolute position within the Sample until you change their position or remove them manually. Locked markers will appear as gray vertical lines in the waveform view.

There are several ways in which you can engage in the slicing process:

The Beat Machine, which is one of the playback modes provided by Kontakt’s Source Module, plays all Slices of your Zone in succession via an internal sequencer. This retains the original pattern of your drum loop or phrase, but allows you to adapt it to your song’s tempo, or freely change the playback pitch of the Slices. To use this feature, make sure your Grid is correctly set up, and enable the Use Beatmachine button on the Sync / Slice tab. Depending on the contents of the Group to which your current Zone belongs, one of two things will happen:

Once the Source Module that plays your Zone is in Beat Machine mode, any key to which the Zone is assigned will trigger the tempo-synchronized playback of all Slices in succession. When you look at the Speed knob of your Group’s Source Module, you will notice that it displays the keyword Zone instead of the usual numeric value. This indicates that it uses the Zone Length value (as displayed on the left side of the Sync / Slice tab) to determine at which speed it has to play the Slices so that the phrase will span the same length at your song tempo. This is the same mechanism that allows you to select a note value from the drop-down menu of any time-related control in order to synchronize it, and in fact, the special Zone keyword appears among the usual note values in the drop-down menu of the Speed control if you use the Beat Machine via the Sync / Slice tab. Of course, nothing prevents you from selecting a different note value from the drop-down menu, or selecting the Default entry in order to adjust the playback speed independently from your tempo. You can always return to synchronized mode by selecting Zone again.

Note that all changes to the slicing of your Sample will be immediately picked up by the Beat Machine, which lets you hear any modifications instantly. For example, you might notice during playback that some ghost notes are not properly marked in your Sample and are thus being played back with incorrect timing. Just add the respective Slice markers, as explained within the Grid section of this chapter — the Beat Machine will adopt your changes right away, even during playback.

As an alternative to the Beat Machine, Kontakt can also use the more conventional time-stretching algorithms of the Time Machine mode to sync your Sample to the tempo of your song. While using the Beat Machine or one of the Slice mapping features explained below is usually the better choice for percussive material, the Time Machine can be very useful for tonal phrases.

As the Time Machine treats your Sample as one contiguous region with no regard to Slices, you don’t necessarily need to have the Grid activated in order to use this feature. However, Kontakt still needs to know the length (and therefore, the tempo) of your Sample in order to determine how far it has to be stretched or compressed in time to match your current tempo. Therefore, you need to specify the correct (rhythmical) length of your Zone in the Zone Length field of the Sync / Slice tab. If you don’t know the length, you can alternatively activate the Grid and specify the tempo of your Sample instead. Kontakt needs to know only one of these values, as the respective other one can be derived. Note that specifying the Zone Length value explicitly will only change the tempo correctly if the end marker of your Zone coincides with the actual Sample end; otherwise, it will change the end marker position to match the length that you entered. In such cases, you should therefore adjust the tempo in the Grid panel instead.

Once the Zone Length field displays the correct length, enable the Use Timemachine Pro button on the left side of the Sync / Slice tab. If your Zone is not the only one in its Group, Kontakt will move it into a new Group first to avoid disrupting the playback of other Zones. The Source Module of the Group that contains your Zone will then be put into Time Machine mode.

Just like the Beat Machine, the Time Machine will have its Speed control set to the special Zone value by default when you’re using it via the Sync / Slice tab. This means that your Sample will be played back at your host or Master Editor tempo right away when you trigger it. The meaning of the Zone keyword and how you can override it to freely adjust the playback speed is explained in the previous section of this chapter.

Once you have placed Slice markers across your Sample via the Grid, you might want to trigger these Slices directly with your keyboard or from within your sequencer. The manual mapping feature of the Sync / Slice tab lets you do just that.

Provided that you have correctly set up the Grid for your Sample and selected the Sync / Slice tab, you can select Slices that you want to map to your keyboard simply by clicking between two Slice markers in the waveform view. Kontakt will highlight any selected Slice in blue. To add more Slices to your selection, either hold the [Ctrl] key ([Cmd] on Mac OS X) and click further Slices one at a time, or hold the [Shift] key and click a second Slice to select all Slices in between. For instance, if you want to map all Slices of your Sample to keys, click the first one, then hold [Shift] and click the last one; this will select all Slices and highlight the entire Sample.

Selecting Slices

Once you’re happy with your Slice selection, make sure the Mapping Editor is visible above the Wave Editor. Now, click one of the selected Slices, and drag it over into the Zone grid of the Mapping Editor; all other selected Slices will move along. You’ll notice that while keeping your mouse button pressed, Kontakt will highlight a range of keys in the Zone grid, starting from the key below your mouse pointer. This allows you to position the Slices you’ve selected on the keyboard. The process works exactly as if you’re dragging a number of Samples from the Side pane into the Mapping Editor — the horizontal mouse position determines the key at which Kontakt will begin to map the Slices, while the vertical mouse position within the Zone grid determines the number of adjacent keys each Slice will be assigned to.

While you keep your mouse button depressed, Kontakt will indicate where it would place the new Zones on the keyboard.

If you agree with the displayed assignment pattern, release your mouse button. Kontakt will now create a new Zone for each Slice in your selection, and place all Zones in succession in the order in which they appear in your Sample. Each of the new Zones will reference the original Sample from which it was created, with its Sample start and end markers set to the boundaries of the original Slice. You can now trigger these Zones from your keyboard or within your sequencer, create new patterns with them, or adjust the playback or effect parameters of each Zone separately via Zone Envelopes.

While mapping your Slices manually in the way described above works well if you want to place only specific Slices or a range of Slices onto keys, the more frequent case will probably be that you’d like to put all Slices on adjacent keys and then trigger them from within your sequencer. Of course, you can do this manually as well; there’s a better way, though. The auto mapping feature of the Sync / Slice tab allows you to automatically map all Slices of your Sample to adjacent keys. What’s more important, it can generate a MIDI sequence for you that, when placed in your sequencer, will trigger all Slices in exactly the same pattern as they occur in your Sample. As your sequencer will obviously play MIDI sequences at the song tempo, the pattern will always be in sync, thereby replicating the functionality of the Beat Machine. The feature leaves more room for creativity, though: once you have imported the MIDI sequence into your arrangement, you can go ahead and make modifications to this pattern. Of course, you can also discard it altogether and build your own patterns from scratch, thereby reassembling your drum loop or phrase in an infinite number of ways.

Before the auto mapping can take place, you may need to adjust some parameters first that affect where the new Zones will be placed and how Kontakt will handle the Zone creation process. You can find these parameters in the middle and on the right side of the Sync / Slice tab.

The Auto Mapping parameters

After adjusting these parameters, you can go ahead and start the auto mapping process. You’ll notice a rectangular field labeled Drag’n’Drop MIDI at the right side of the Sync / Slice tab. From here, you can “pick up” the MIDI sequence that corresponds to your Slice pattern; just click inside the field and drag its content onto either your desktop (which will create a standard MIDI file) or into the arrangement window of your MIDI sequencer (which will insert the MIDI sequence right into your arrangement). If you’re sure you won’t need the MIDI file, you can also just click the field instead; this will only create the mapped Zones.

Using Drag Midi to Host

At the same time, Kontakt will create the required Zones, map them to the keyboard, and put them into a new Group. If you’ve placed the MIDI sequence on the correct track of your arrangement — it has to be sent to the MIDI channel of your current Kontakt Instrument — and play it back, you should hear your drum loop or phrase played back at your song tempo. If you want, you can now proceed with modifying this MIDI sequence. Of course, should you decide to delete the sequence, the generated Slice mapping will stay in place, so you can build your own patterns from scratch as well. To get rid of the mapping, just delete the Group that was created in the process.

Similarly to normal Group-level modulation assignments, the first step to create a Zone Envelope is to tell Kontakt which parameter you’d like to modulate. For this purpose, the Zone Envelopes tab provides three assignment buttons, labeled Volume, Pan, and Add. These are located in the middle of the panel. Each of these buttons creates a new Zone Envelope for a specific parameter and selects it for display; if an envelope for the selected parameter already exists, an info message will appear instead.

The upper two assignment buttons create a Zone Envelope for volume and panorama position, respectively; using the lower button, you can create a Zone Envelope for any Group-level parameter.

The upper two buttons create envelopes for the playback volume and the panorama position, respectively; as these are parameters that you will probably want to modulate frequently, they are provided here for quick access. The third button, labeled Add:, allows you to create Zone Envelopes for any parameter that appears on a panel of a Group-level module. Whenever you click the control of such a parameter, the Add: button will pick it up and display its name. By clicking on the Add: button then, you can create a new Zone Envelope which modulates the chosen parameter. For instance, you might want to modulate the cutoff frequency of a filter that resides in the Group Insert Effects chain of your current Group; just locate the Cutoff knob on the filter panel (you may have to double-click the filter module in the chain if you don’t see it) and click it — you don’t need to move it. The lowest assignment button on the Zone Envelopes tab of the Wave Editor should now read Add: Cutoff. When you click this button, a new cutoff envelope will appear as a straight horizontal line within the waveform view.

In theory, you can create a Zone Envelope for every Group-level parameter, all within one Zone. However, Kontakt will only display one of your envelopes in the waveform view at any time. In order to select a Zone Envelope for viewing and editing, click the drop-down menu button on the left side of the Zone Envelopes tab, and choose an existing envelope from the menu.

The selection drop-down menu contains all Zone Envelopes of your current Zone. Selecting one will display it in the waveform view.

If you want to get rid of an envelope, first select it for editing via the drop-down menu, then click the Delete button below. This will remove the envelope from the list and return the respective parameter to its unmodulated state.

There are a few adjustable parameters that change the way in which the Zone Envelope’s shape will affect the modulated parameter. For this purpose, each Zone Envelope that you create will add an entry to the Modulation Router of the module that contains its target parameter. You can jump to the corresponding assignment parameters of a currently selected Zone Envelope by clicking on the Modulation Quick-Jump button that’s located next to the assignment buttons on the Zone Envelopes tab.

The Modulation Router of a Zone Envelope

A Modulation Router entry of a Zone Envelope looks and works exactly like one that belongs to a normal modulation assignment — it provides a modulation intensity slider, an Invert button, a Lag control, and an optional Modulation Shaper. To find out what these controls do, refer to section Assignment Controls of this manual. In contrast to normal Modulation Router entries, though, entries that pertain to Zone Envelope assignments can’t be created in the usual way of assigning other modulation sources; the only way to add them is implicitly by creating a Zone Envelope within the Wave Editor.

After you have created a new Zone Envelope, it will be selected right away and displayed within the waveform view of the Wave Editor as an orange, horizontal line. Zone Envelopes work similarly to flexible envelopes (refer to Flexible Envelopes) in that they consist of a series of breakpoints, which are connected by either straight lines or curves. The minimum length of a Zone Envelope is predetermined by the length of your Sample, though. At the beginning of the envelope, you’ll notice a small rectangle; this is the first breakpoint of your envelope. Click this breakpoint and drag it up or down to change the envelope’s initial level.

To add a new breakpoint, right-click ([Ctrl]-click on Mac OS X) somewhere within the waveform view. Kontakt will connect the new breakpoint to its neighbors with straight lines. You can change each breakpoint’s level and position in time by clicking on it and dragging it around; the waveform display in the background provides visual feedback if you want to align it to features of your Sample. The envelope display will always keep in sync with the waveform; thus, zooming in and out of the waveform or scrolling the view, as described at the beginning of this chapter, will change the envelope view accordingly.

Zone Envelopes allow you to create arbitrarily complex modulation shapes.

In the middle of a segment between two breakpoints, you’ll notice a small, filled circle. Clicking on this circle and dragging it up or down will change the curve shape of this segment. To remove a breakpoint from your envelope, right-click ([Ctrl]-click on Mac OS X) on it.

If the Grid is active, all breakpoints will snap their position in time to the nearest Slice marker when you move them. This allows you to create rhythmically useful modulation patterns very quickly. Also, the Pencil Tool explained below allows you to create straight envelope lines for each Slice.

When you use this function in combination with the Beat Machine, as explained in section Using the Beat Machine, it opens up a whole range of possibilities that were only possible in previous Kontakt versions if you separated each Slice into its own Group: since straight lines, as created with the Pencil Tool, set the target parameter to a value that will remain constant over the duration of the Slice, you can easily adjust parameters for each Slice separately. As an example, suppose you’re playing a sliced dub drum loop via the Beat Machine and want to add reverb to a single snare hit. To accomplish this, add a reverb module to a free Instrument Send Effects slot first, then insert a Send Levels module into the Group Insert Effects chain of the Group that contains your drum loop. Now, with the Sample being displayed in the Wave Editor and the Zone Envelopes tab selected, click the send level button in the panel of the Send Levels module which corresponds to the reverb. The name of this send parameter should now appear in the Add: button on the Zone Envelopes tab. Click this button; a new envelope will appear in the waveform view. Now select the Pencil Tool and click inside the Slice of the snare hit that you’d like to process; a new “plateau” will be added to your envelope at this spot. Clicking and dragging it allows you to adjust the reverb level of this slice in isolation. With a little creative thinking, the possibilities of this approach are virtually boundless.

Using the Pencil Tool and/or the Randomize Env function, you can quickly change Group-level parameters for each Slice in isolation.

You can cut, copy, and paste regions of your Zone Envelope. For this purpose, the waveform view provides a selection feature and a paste cursor. When you click anywhere in the waveform view and drag your mouse horizontally, Kontakt will highlight the selected region; you can change an existing selection by clicking and dragging one of its borders, or move it across the envelope by clicking inside it and dragging your mouse horizontally. To put the contents of a selected region into the clipboard, click either Cut or Copy in the middle of the Zone Envelopes tab — Cut will remove the selected region in the process, while Copy won’t change your envelope. To insert the clipboard contents into your envelope, click the Paste button below; Kontakt will insert the clipboard region at the position of your edit cursor, which is indicated with a vertical red line that you can position by clicking anywhere within the waveform view. This method also works across different envelopes.

The right side of the Zone Envelopes tab contains a number of utility functions that change the behavior of your currently selected Zone Envelope in various ways:

Cut: Puts the currently selected region of your Sample into the Sample clipboard, removing it from the Sample in the process.

Copy: Leaves your Sample intact, but copies the selected region to the Sample clipboard for later use.

Crop: Removes all audio data outside the selection; in other words, the selected region will become your new Sample.

Delete: Removes the selected region from the Sample, without putting it into the clipboard.

Paste: Inserts the contents of the clipboard into your Sample. The insert location depends on whether a region is currently selected: if so, it will be replaced with the clipboard contents, which erases the previous contents of the region and will change the overall length of your Sample in most cases. If no region is selected, the contents of the clipboard will be inserted at the location of the edit cursor; this location is indicated with a vertical blue line, which you can position by clicking into the waveform view.

Duplicate: Inserts a copy of the selected region right after the region.

Fade In: Creates a smooth fade in from silence that spans the selected region.

Fade Out: Creates a smooth fade out into silence that spans the selected region.

Silence: Replaces the selected region with digital silence, i.e. a series of zero values.

Reverse: Reverses the selected region, so that it plays backwards.

Normalize: Amplifies the selected region to the greatest possible level without clipping. The Normalize function analyzes your Sample region and applies a gain factor that makes it utilize the entire available dynamics range; in other words, after you’ve used this operation, the highest peak in the region will just hit the 0 dB mark.

DC Removal: Detects and removes any DC bias from the selected Region. DC bias appears as a constant offset between the sample values and the zero line. While it’s inaudible, it can reduce your headroom and cause problems at mixdown. Usually, you’ll want to use this operation on your whole Sample.