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  • Kontrol Accessibility
  • Using Komplete Kontrol

Using Komplete Kontrol

Your Kontrol S-series keyboard offers a high degree of accessibility when used with the Komplete Kontrol software. Much of this functionality is provided by NKS (Native Kontrol Standard), which allows instrument, effect and sample library developers to provide tagging data about their products.

This tagging means that Komplete Kontrol and Kontakt can provide easy browsing of presets and accessible parameter adjustment. The following sections describe how NKS browsing works in Komplete Kontrol.

Loading an Instrument

Komplete Kontrol allows you to create a complete plug-in chain that is under the control of a single DAW track. The chain is made up of a number of plug-in slots, each of which can contain a single plug-in.

The first slot has to contain either an instrument plug-in, a sample loop or a one-shot sample, as the first slot acts as the source of audio for the slots that follow, which are all restricted to containing effects plug-ins.

We will be making use of the Knobs in the instructions below and it is useful to know that tapping any Knob at any time will announce its current function and value, so please experiment with this feature as you follow these steps to find an instrument preset that you like and load it into the first plug-in slot.

Please note that if you interact with a Knob and you hear the word “disabled” at the end of the knob’s function name, this means that there are no available options for that knob to choose from. Interacting with other Knobs may change this condition, so it is important to experiment.

The following example provides instructions for loading an instrument plug-in, but they still apply for loading a loop or a one-shot sample into the first plug-in slot:

  1. Add an instance of the Komplete Kontrol plug-in to the selected track.

  2. Press the Browser button on your Kontrol keyboard. This will allow you to find instruments, loops, one-shot samples and effects that you want to use. Once you are in Browse mode, the Buttons and Knobs above and below the screen display change their functionality.

  3. Buttons 1 and 2 move you between the previous or next plug-in slots. You can ignore these buttons for now, as you do not have any plug-ins loaded at all.

  4. Press Button 3 or Button 4 to select if you are going to use an instrument, loop or one-shot. For this example, press either button until you hear “instrument”.

  5. Turning Knob 1 Allows you to select an instrument from a particular brand (manufacturer). For this exercise, please turn the knob until you hear “Native Instruments”, as you should definitely have some Native Instruments products available to you, if you have completed the Prerequisites to this guide. If you turn Knob 1 and hear “empty”, this means that the following steps will include instruments or effects from all brands that are present on your computer, so turn the knob clockwise until you hear “Native Instruments”.

  6. Turning Knob 2 allows you to select a particular product from the brand that you selected with Knob 1. Please feel free to select any product by turning the knob. Again, if you hear “empty”, the following steps will apply to all products.

  7. Turning Knob 3 allows you to select a bank of instruments from within the selected product, or choose “empty” to allow the following steps to choose from all available banks. Please note that not all products provide instruments organised into banks, so you may find no entries using this knob.

  8. Turning Knob 4 allows you to select a sub-bank of instruments from within the selected product, or choose “empty” to allow the following steps to choose from all available sub-banks. Please note that not all products provide instruments organised into sub-banks, so you may find no entries using this knob.

  9. Turning Knob 5 allows you to select an instrument type from the available types offered by your previous selections. Depending on your selected product, you might hear types such as “Piano”, “Organ”, and so on. Again, “empty” allows the following steps to choose from all available types. Not all products classify their sounds using types, so you may not encounter any entries using this knob.

  10. Turning Knob 6 allows you to select an instrument Sub-type from the available Sub-types offered by your previous selections. For example, if you selected something like “Pianos” using Knob 5, you might hear sub-types such as “Grand Piano”, “Upright Piano”, “Electric Piano”, and so on. Again, “empty” allows the following steps to choose from all available sub-types. Not all products classify their sounds using types, so you may not encounter any entries using this knob.

  11. Turning Knob 7 allows you to choose from any available sound “characters”, such as “Sample-based”. “Empty” allows you to select from all characters. Not all products will offer a range of characters to choose from and the names of the available characters is up to the plug-in’s developers.

  12. Turning Knob 8 or the 4-D encoder allows you to choose a preset based on the selections you made with the other seven Knobs. You should hear your computer’s speech announce the name of the preset as you turn the knob or 4-D encoder and you should also hear a sample of the sound come from your main speakers or headphones. The PreHear function controls whether you hear these samples as you browse – you can toggle the PreHear function on or off by pressing Shift+Button 8.

  13. Press Button 8 or the 4-D encoder to load the currently-selected preset into Komplete Kontrol’s first slot.

  14. Play some notes on your keyboard and you should hear the selected instrument preset.

  15. Repeat steps 4 through 13 if you do not like your chosen preset and wish to change it.

  16. Press the DAW button on your Kontrol keyboard to return to DAW mode.

Loading Effects

Once you have an instrument, loop or one-shot loaded into the first slot of your plug-in chain, you can add effects to its audio, as follows:

  1. Press the Plug-In button or the Browser button on your Kontrol keyboard.

  2. Buttons 1 and 2 move you between plug-in slots. Press Button 2 in order to move to the next plug-in slot and you should hear the speech announce “empty”. If you press Button 2 again you will hear “empty disabled”, which means that you are not able to move to the third slot because slot 2 is empty and you must add a plug-in to it before slot 3 becomes available.

  3. If you are in Plug-In mode, press the Browser button on your Kontrol keyboard.

  4. Use the Knobs to find an effect preset that you like, just like you did for finding an instrument preset. The only difference that you may notice will be that you do not hear samples of the effect as you move between presets.

  5. Load your selected preset by pressing Button 8 or the 4-D encoder and you will be able to hear the result of your selection by playing the keyboard.

  6. Inspect your updated plug-in chain by moving between the slots using Buttons 1 and 2.