How to use Kontakt player with small Midi keyboard? // Key switches / Pattern scales

insertmesh

Hey there,

new to this community, first time I actually bought a sample library (Ireland spotlight collection) and LOVING it.
Sooo much better than anything free out there….:)

Anyways.
I´d say I´m a "Hobbyist-couch-laptop-performer" right now and I only have a small launchkey 25, so the setup with the key switches is both unfamiliar to me AND rather inconvenient.
I´m now using Ableton (started with cubase 20 years ago and then reason for a few years) and I´ve already built a bunch of instrument racks, where I use pitch in fold mode and scale midi effects with various chains to access the normal play mode vs the pattern play mode for example, so I can just start playing and don´t need to worry about transposing anything or switching octaves constantly on my small midi keyboard.
But I haven´t found a good workaround for the keyswitches just yet.

I don´t wanna add another midi device just to send out these 6-10 keyswitches for playing and I also don´t really like the idea of just doing it all in the piano roll.

So…anyone else facing similar issues and if so: How did you solve that?

Also, speaking of ableton…
For the normal play mode I can just use the kontakt player in an instrument with a scale effect set to global scale and I don´t need to worry about the scale either, but for the pattern it doesn´t work like that.
I know I can manually switch the root note for the patterns, but there seems to be no way to also midi cc that AND some of the pattern don´t work right with some scales, notes above or below the playing range get cut off and there is no way to shift them within that scale, so the pattern still works.
I even tried dragging the pattern to a track, folding it to the desired scale manually, exporting that and then trying to use THAT as a new pattern, still had the cut off issues…

Next plugin on my wishlist is the acoustic guitar player, especially for the patterns, so I´m also a bit worried this is a persisting issue.
I´m currently using the free AML guitar vst and that has a similar issue with certain patterns being cut off, if the chord isn´t within the specified range.

DunedinDragon

I had pretty much the same setup a few years back but with a 49 key MIDI controller keyboard. I'm slightly different in my setup since I use the full Kontakt and Komplete Kontrol rather than the player, but it should be close. I also just drop each instrument in individual tracks as an instance of a Kontakt or KK plugin in Ableton so they have their individual tracks in the project.

One thing I did with that configuration is my keyboard allowed me to transpose the keys on the keyboard up and down so I could move it down to where the key switches were exposed. I would then configure Ableton so I could record over existing tracks. I would then record over the track during playback engaging the proper keyswitches in the appropriate places in the track adding to the MIDI notes and it worked perfectly.

insertmesh

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/194070#Comment_194070

Hm, yeah, I´ve tried some other stuff today with instrument racks, but controlling the keyswitches with knobs or anything else I could use to control it with seems even less intuitive and helpful.
And I´m probably overthinking this and doing a session recording for just the keyswitches, after getting the melody in is probably working just fine.

Thats the thing…. since I suck at actually playing the keyboard, I tend to go overboard with automations and complicated racks to accomodate my lack of skills…:)

insertmesh

I´d still like to know how the acoustic guitar pack handles pattern switching, how it interacts with any global scale setting on the DAW side. I´ll try to find something on youtube or in the docs maybe, as its currently also on sale due to black friday…:)

DunedinDragon

All of the Session Guitarist libraries are laid out pretty much the same. Since I don't use global scale settings I can't speak to that, but the libraries themselves allow you to set the scale in the Auto Chords and it plays the selected pattern in that scale. You have 8 keyswitches you can define in a preset all preloaded and selected from C1 to G1 (C0 being the lowest C on an 88 key keyboard. The patterns are all played with just a single key. You're probably best off as far as functionality just seeking out some product walkthroughs on YouTube to get a feel for all the features and how to use them.

Personally I just record a segment at a time in Ableton, like the verse or chorus and then copy and paste it across the whole song.

insertmesh

Yeah, I´m still in a weird place after a 15 year music making hiatus, where I try to make up for lost time by most effectively programming my instruments, so I can basically "one finger band" everything and I´m able to just jam for a bit and get some ideas, without leaving my midikeyboard much…
So, couldn´t resist to try to make it work inside an instrument rack, without the need for any manual keyswitching and came up with a rather convoluted midi rack that uses a chain with everal pitch devices to fold any note to one of the key switch notes…and then using either a midi mapped knob to move around the keyswitches while playing…OR using a random expression device to control the switching, which works pretty well for an arpeggiator I´ve also included in the rack…:)