Komplete Kontrol and Cubase 11 - best practices for key changes.

HeWhoWantsJeans · 2022-03-03T04:17:21+00:00

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I've been using a Komplete Kontrol S61 with Cubase 11 for about a week on a composition and I have a question: what is the best approach for writing key changes for instances of Kontrol?

For some background - let's say I have a dozen Komplete Kontrol instances in the composition. I'm looking to use the Scale functionality of the S61 across both Keys and Types (the composition goes from B-minor to D-major). The only way I've found for Komplete Kontrol to update to reflect the change is to automate the parameters of the Kontrol VST as such - but across 12 instances that is fairly tedious.

A dream integration would be for all instances of Kontrol to observe the Cubase 11 Chord Track and update their Scales as necessary, but I'm not sure if that is possible.

Thank you,

Erik

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Comments

JesterMgee

There is no way to automate the scale change and I suspect that would be rather difficult to implement for the very few that would utilise it.

HeWhoWantsJeans

I guess I'd be surprised if few people would use such a feature. Imagine if you were working on a piece of music that has fourteen instances of Komplete Kontrol. You could change the Key and Scale in the DAW and one to fourteen instances (if each instance had the option of 'listening' to the DAW for the key and scale information) of Kontrol would be updated to match, instead of having to update each instance manually.

JesterMgee

But can't you just play in the different key as opposed to have to set the key in each instance? I know it is a useful feature but if someone is professionally writing and has to deal with key changes surely they can just play in the key they have written in?

HeWhoWantsJeans

As someone with little music theory background I am using the Scales and key guide for education during my composition process. In time the feature may be less used but I think it would be beneficial to have greater integration across Komplete Kontrol instances (and potentially with their Host) for people who are also learning theory or are disinterested in learning theory.

JesterMgee

Yeah that is what I suspected and the issue is if you make the tools do too much of the work, you make the user less likely to be proficient without that tool. While it may be something nice to have, I doubt it would be possible since it would be a lot of work. Better to just learn theory and then you can adapt to anything.

HeWhoWantsJeans

I hear 'ya. But if tighter integration between the DAW and Komplete Kontrol for Scale / Key information isn't possible then I'd advocate for Komplete Kontrol being able to communicate setting changes across multiple instances.

I'm thinking of a situation where you have 12 instances running and want to change the Scale (or any Instance-type setting that you may want updated across all 12 instances). This would be a neat way for the user to quickly flip into a different Key or Scale and to more or less 'preview' what it would sound like. I feel like communication between VST instances is possible - as I've used it with the izotope Neutron 3 tools.

JesterMgee

i'd advocate for Komplete Kontrol being able to communicate setting changes across multiple instances.

Now that is something I would imagine should be possible. Even a simple toggle on an instance that can "follow scale change" so any instance toggled on will follow this change automatically with any other change.

That is a good idea, but discussing in another thread about how all good ideas have been ignored for 8 years, I highly doubt it will ever become reality.

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