Remotely Change Kontakt Instruments/Patches?

ripeart

Mac Studio, Apollo x8p, x4

I play and record keyboards live with a band and I'd like to be able to switch Kontakt patches and instruments without having to walk 15' over to the computer between each song. The closest I've got is sharing the DAW screen with a macbook air setup at my Roland keyboard. This is workable but not ideal.

I found Voltimusic Kontakt Smart Controller which seems like it will get me close (using an iPad) but it looks a little wonky. NI doesn't seem to have any kind of remote control app. Any thoughts about how I could better my situation? Will network MIDI help me here?

Thanks in advance!

LostInFoundation

There are many ways to achieve this.

Since you asked for a direct way to do it inside Kontakt itself, I will list the 2 that in my opinion are the most direct ones

If your midi keyboard has the ability to switch midi channels onboard, it is enough to have every instrument you opened responding to a different midi channel. At this point, selecting to output on channel 1 on the kb will play only the instrument assigned to ch 1, selecting to output on channel 2 just the one assigned to channel 2 and so on and so forth.

If the midi kb can’t switch channels on the fly, in Kontakt you can create a New Instrument bank, assign the different instruments you use to the different slots and having the keyboard sending Program Change messages to Kontakt. You can chose if utilizing only one button (or an infinite dial) of the kb to scroll trough the slots one by one, but you’ll have to remember at which position the instrument your looking for is (or hear what sound comes out) or assign different Program Change messages to different buttons to use them to select a specific instrument (message 0 will be the first slot, message 1 the second,…), so that pushing a specific button will always allow you to play the same instrument.

It depends on how many assignable buttons you have at your disposal on the kb.

In any case, every time a slot will be selected, the keys will play only that instrument. You can also create 2 or more instrument banks, assign them at the same midi channel and at this point the instruments assigned in the same slots number but in different banks will play together (to stack multiple sounds playing together with a single key stroke)

The other ways to achieve this is by loading multiple Kontakt instances in a DAW’s tracks and use the keyboard to select the desired track (usually DAWs play the instrument loaded in the focused track and automatically mute the midi input from the kb for the others). Or using Komplete Kontrol