Using Komplete Kontrol s61 mk3 with Kontakt and CHANNELS

Raz Koller

Hello.

I just purchased the new Kompltete Kontrol s61 mk3 last week, and it's terrific for the studio and working with your daw, but I'm not sure about live performance.

I want to be able to switch plug-ins or sounds on the fly by changing midi channels. When I perform I usually need at least 2 different sounds per song, usually more.

I can start Kontakt and set up different plug-ins on different channels, but I can't seem to switch between different channels with this keyboard.

Which is weird, considering I can do that with my WAY older Roland a-800Pro.

So am I missing something? Is there a way switching between channels on this keyboard?

Matthew_NI

MIDI Template editing is in progress - will hopefully be in beta by March for release some time after that.

Jeremy_NI

@Raz Koller It's not possible to edit the MIDI channels at the moment but this will be implemented soon.

Raz Koller

@Jeremy_NI

Can you please define 'soon'? Are we talking in the current month? In Q1?

BIF

I'll let Jeremy respond of course, but to me "NI soon" means "maybe this year", but "the good Lord willing and the creek don't rise". Any emergencies, real or imagined, will probably delay it, along with everything else.

If he had said that the devs were "working on it", then I'd say maybe within 3-6 months.

If he had said it was in beta or "about to go to beta", then I would call it "sometime in the next 0 to 3 months".

I could be way off, of course. But probably not. 😉

All flood and creek rising warnings still apply of course. What kind of emergencies could happen? Well, anything from a local severe weather event anywhere where NI has team members, all the way up to some new Euro-zone drama. Or expanding war in the mideast. Or the US Congress forcing companies to replace all touch-screens with windmills. Hey, stranger things have happened.

Company leaders can also create emergencies, with orders like "Drop everything! We have to change the paint for the new Komplete!" to "Drop everything! We need to audit all employee potty breaks!"

Why yes...I've been in business for so long that the Dilbert cartoons aren't just humor pieces. They're outright DOCUMENTARIES!

Raz Koller

@Biff

Gotta say, I'm a fairly new NI customer. I recently started purchasing some sounds because I liked them and was gearing up for a new project, and when I was in the market for a new midi keyboard, I saw a demo of the s61 mk3 and thought 'you know what? I already own a bunch of their plug-ins, and that looks like a really cool keyboard that integrates amazingly with these plugins, so why not?'. Even though it is on the more expensive side of midi keyboards.

And I don't really feel I got a product that matches its' price point.

I just assumed it would be able to do what keyboards that cost a quarter of its price can do - and more.

I guess I should have read more reviews, because after purchasing the keyboard and looking in forums here and in other places, I see that the underbaked condition in which they've released it is nothing new, and I would have been better off buying from another company or waiting a year or so for updates.

Hell, the 88 M-Audio one costs less than half than this one, and it integrates perfectly with all DAWs and allows you the magic of changing midi channels...

I know, you must be saying 'a midi controller that let's you change midi channels?! Sorcery! Surely you are jesting, sir!', but I swear, it's true! I saw it with my own eyes.

Joking aside, I'm going to give them a little bit more of my patience before I move on to other companies, and if @Jeremy_NI wants to tell me that Biff is off and that we are talking about an update that is coming really soon, as in in the coming month, that would be great to hear and would restore the trust.

Jeremy_NI

@BIF I understand what you mean. Maybe @Matthew_NI can share a timeline for these features to be implemented?

Matthew_NI

MIDI Template editing is in progress - will hopefully be in beta by March for release some time after that.

Raz Koller

@Matthew_NI Hi, any update on that?

Really, all I want to do is to have several instruments in Kontakt, each set to a different midi channel, and then switch between them with a push of a button (or a twist of a knob).

I can do it with other much cheaper keyboards, but even after the latest update, this still seems to be impossible with this one.

Will it be possible in the future?

Matthew_NI

MIDI Template Editing looks like it will hit beta in April, a few weeks later than planned.

I wonder - have you tried the Kontakt 7 multi workflow, using Direct Connection? That may get you some of what you want?

Raz Koller

@Matthew_NI not sure what you mean.

I know I can load multiple instruments at once, but if they are set to the same channel it blends them together, and that is not what I'm looking for.

Or am I misunderstanding?

MorrisEd

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/142894#Comment_142894

No, you are not misunderstanding. The Komplete Kontrol MK2 could do this perfectly, in fact. NI told us for years to use one instance of Kontakt in order to gain processing efficiency then…they released the MK3 and removed the midi template functionality. They went on to say that now we should change to using multiple instances of Kontakt and that it wouldn’t be slower or less efficient, but it is very much so. Unfortunately, I wouldn’t hold your breath on a resolution. They have been pushing out the delivery timeframe since the MK3 was released. Very annoying, but the MK3 is not much of a midi controller. I am not sure exactly what its purpose is at the moment. It doesn’t really do much of anything.

DunedinDragon

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/146875#Comment_146875

Quite frankly this all depends on your perspective about "new" products.

IMHO "new" products should be just that...NEW. That means testing and expanding the limits of what the product can technically do. I've been through such things many times in various areas of music technology. The BIG differences come when you make significant architectural changes in the hardware, especially when it's necessary to embrace changing industry standards such as is the case of VST2 and VST3 and the expanding MIDI protocols and such.

What excited me most when I first began looking into the MK3 keyboard was the idea of it having its own embedded and programmable computing power. That opens a very wide door into a future of amazing capabilities a "dumb" MIDI keyboard simply can't do. I didn't expect this to be ready day one because it seldom is in this industry or most others. You get the basic stuff working on the new architecture then, as it stabilizes, you expand it to do things formerly impossible. The advantage to this approach is you get to really see what it is that will best utilize the new standards and over time to tend to really create amazing new features.

I went through this once before in the guitar modeling area in 2015 when the Line 6 Helix was introduced. It had some slight improvements over the Line 6 POD systems but it's architecture was VASTLY improved. Because the Helix has it's own memory model and functioning/programmable internal memory it wasn't long before we experienced updates that gave us capabilities that could never have been achieved by the POD architecture. Nowadays the features are so broad and vast and technically improved it still dominates the modeling scene after almost 10 years. The same can be said of progress that's been made in electronic drum kits with more intelligent controller modules, USB sensors and more memory to get closer and vastly exceed the capabilities of organic drums using mics and traditional sensors.

I see this as another example of such things. The difference being I'm old, so I've been through a lot of this and have more patience to see where this will all end up. I'm relatively certain it's going to eventually exceed what I could imagine it doing just like all the other examples I cited.