Session Guitarist tuning

Dolphran · 2024-02-26T13:09:08+00:00

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I play guitar and have just started using the various Kontakt Session Guitarists that came with Komplete 14 Ultimate. My personal guitars are almost always tuned to Eb (each string a half step down from standard tuning). What is the best way to use Session Guitartist to imitate my guitar parts? I have been using the Tune knob in the Instrument Header set to -1 (down a half step), so that open strings in the acoustic models will be tuned like my guitar. Is there a better way to do this?

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stephen24

No the tuning knob has nothing to do with MIDI - it bends the sound (see my comment about vinyl discs).

So using it to tune down one semitone will use the same samples, and give you your open string sound on the appropriate notes, but as though you had tuned your instrument a semitone lower, which I understood is what you want. Would using a time machine instead of the tuning knob do this significantly better? Try the experiment at the end of my first post to find out. (I would think unlikely.)

stephen24

To be absolutely clear

Using the tuning knob changes the pitch by playing the samples at a slower (or faster) speed.

Using a time machine changes the pitch but with clever computer magic tries to keep the quality of the sound the same.

All comments

Milos

Nope, unfortunately there is no feature for tunings.

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/27051/session-guitarist-tuning

quote : "Is there a better way to do this?"

Depends on what you mean by better way ? The way you do it now (Tuning , The Guitar Settings Page , page 24-25) I imagine could be replaced by placing something midi processing into chain before feeding into Kontakt. Alas , no matter how much I wish I were , then I am not well versed enough myself in the use of modular synthesizers but again I imagine both that one could build something in Reaktor to process and place that into signal chain , or what I know is really easy to use but alas not free would be to use Cherry Audio's otherwise free Voltage Modular (comes as both stand alone and plugin) and in VM open the Kontakt as a plugin and then in Voltage Modular place the appropriate midi module(s) (maybe one of these , not sure) in the chain inside VM ahead of the (paid) Plugin Host Module hosting the Kontakt with the Session Guitarist library ! To see simplest use of Plug-in Host module in CA VM then see this picture !

stephen24

The way you're doing it is simple and I would have thought would give an excellent result. It is the equivalent of playing a 33.3rpm vinyl disc at 31.4rpm. There are however several ways of doing it better in Kontakt if you are allowed to edit.

In the Source Module. change every group from DFD to tm pro and adjust tuning down a semitone. (This will have implications for RAM and loading time). Or . . .
In the Mapping Editor, switch off "auto move root key", lasso and slide all the samples 1 space to the L. Switch "auto move . ." back on and slide them back again. In the Source Module leave it in DFD and select HQ mode/perfect (it'll reduce the number of voices you can have but you can change this in Instrument Options.) This will give you higher quality tracking.

If editing is locked, fiddling with the MIDI will do no more than you are doing already. You would have to process the audio, not the MIDI. zplane make a plugin called Elastique which would do an excellent job but set you back £140. (I believe Kontakt's tm pro is based on it)

If you're not sure whether it's all worth it, make a .wav file of your playing, put it in a new instrument with tm pro, tune it down a semitone and compare it with what you're already doing.

mykejb

The way you're doing it is probably the best and simplest as it looks like it applies the tuning before the samples. If you play an E and your tuning is set to -1 it seems like it's playing the Eb sample. If you use audio processing which applies tuning after the samples you'd have an E sample down-tuned to an Eb so you'd be introducing artifacts. I guess that'll mean that if you play an A the sample that's played is Ab, so won't be an open A string sample though.

EDIT - Corrected !!!

stephen24

Make a recording, say, of a human voice talking or singing. Make it into a Kontakt instrument. Detune it with the Tune slider in the instrument header up or down one or two semitones. Then change to tm pro and use this facility to detune it the same amount.

Guitar sounds are much more tolerant of stretching than the human voice, and I doubt if a time machine would produce any great improvement over simple stretching a single semitone. But if you want to do it, that's how.

mykejb

Actually the tuning/samples thing might be incorrect! I was looking at one instrument that sounded exactly the same with a 12 semi detune and the note played an octave above. Might just have been on that instrument, the pattern ones just seem weird!

Unfortunately you can't tinker with the sample mapping on the guitars as you don't get the editing options, so it looks like the tuning knob is still the only way to do it internally to Kontakt.

Dolphran

So, is the tuning knob is just affecting the incoming midi and not the samples? And therefore, when using the tuning knob, any open string sounds that Session Guitarist does, will still only be for the standard (EADGBE) notes? If so, there would be no reason at all for me to use the tuning knob - my issue isn't with MIDI. I haven't had the time to do much experimenting yet. It looks like stephen24's mini tutorial on changing the samples would be required to get the open string sound I want. But that sounds like deeper water than I'm ready to wade into at the moment. Do any of the Session Guitarists even have (low) Eb samples? It sounds like they only sampled standard tuning.

stephen24

No the tuning knob has nothing to do with MIDI - it bends the sound (see my comment about vinyl discs).

stephen24

To be absolutely clear

Using the tuning knob changes the pitch by playing the samples at a slower (or faster) speed.

Using a time machine changes the pitch but with clever computer magic tries to keep the quality of the sound the same.

PoorFellow

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/136374#Comment_136374

Reading your post I am once again reminded how incredibly little I know about music theory and how much I wish that I had understood more of the same. Also , noting that there were a Guitar Rig newer than mine I really didn't bother to ever even open my Guitar Rig .

But still , I'd like to ask a maybe 'stupid' question : could Guitar Rig possibly help in audio processing here if used in e.g. a DAW ? I noticed that it comes as both stand alone and as a plugin I think , and page 52 in the manual have a tuner section , quote : "Tuner is an electronic tuner that can be used to detect the pitch of the notes played by an instrument. Additionally, it provides a number of different tuning modes"

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