How to create custom MIDI Templates with Kontrol S MK3
Comments
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Any way to create a MIDI template with more than 2 pages directly on the device without having to import/export and edit the JSON? I can't find a way to add a page on the device.
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You can make as many pages as you like now on the device. You have to install the hardware connection update from Native Access and complete the firmware update on the keyboard itself.
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When you have the Template editor open (Shift + Browser) and are in edit mode, press shift again which opens a menu to move, add, delete & duplicate pages (I just wish the KK NKS editor had this functionality too)
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My S61 mk3 is here, and it's a real beauty! Great design, very well built. The controls are all high quality and very responsive. The keybed is really nice (and seems to be much quieter than the mk1, which I'm pretty happy about). Just the right amount of resistance. The aftertouch is very smooth. This is my first keyboard with poly AT, and I already love it. I tried it with a few plugins, and it worked right away with my OB-6 too.
NI really knocked this one outta the park!
Anyway, I just made my first template. Editing on-device is not too bad…even naming things is easier than I thought. I'll be able to recreate all my mk1 templates (and will then share them).
The good stuff:
- Up to 16 pages of controls. Great!
- Being able to duplicate and move pages is handy.
- Import from/export to computer works really well.
- While editing templates on-device is actually pretty decent, being able to edit templates in a text editor is very helpful when building large templates.
I do have some feature requests though…
- Need to be able to name pages. This was possible on the mk1, and helps identify controls. For example, I could have VCA and VCF pages, each with Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release, and the page name tells me which envelope I'm editing. Without that, I have to add an "A" or "F" prefix to each knob.
- What would work even better is the ability to name groups of controls, like you can when editing the controls for an NKS preset. Like NKS, any control with a secondary label would start a new named group, so there could be multiple groups on a page.
- Parameter name font is too large. Despite the (awesome!) high res screen, because of the large font, parameter names can't be very long before they fade out. I was hoping to be able to use slightly longer names for some of them.
- Buttons that aren't on/off toggles need to show values. I have several controls that only have a few values. The "increment" mode does the job, but since the value is not actually displayed (and the on-screen button is just off for 0, and lit up for all other values), I can't tell where I am in the range of values. As a result, I ended up not being able to use buttons for almost anything.
- Option to always show values for knobs. Since knobs are just big empty circles, the values could always be shown in the center. Some might prefer less clutter, but an option would be nice.
- Knobs with small value ranges need to scale the movement range. When a knob has a range of only a few values, the knob movement is not scaled, so I have to be just as precise as I would if the range was 0–127, which makes those controls needlessly hard to use. The mk1 handled this better.
- Knobs with small value ranges should also scale the knob position graphic. If the value range is only, say, 0–5, 5 should show the knob position at max. This would go hand-in-hand with fixing the movement scaling. (You'd think the "%" display mode would handle this correctly, but it doesn't. The percentage is based on 0–127 regardless of the min/max values.)
- Named values would be awesome! For buttons with only a few values, the values often have names. For example, the Roland SH-01A has an LFO waveform knob with a range of 0–5, and the values are: ramp, saw, triangle, square, random, and noise. Showing that name under the button would be even better than just showing a number.
- Consider 4D encoder click for renaming controls. To me, it feels intuitive to click the 4D encoder to rename a control, but it actually turns the control on/off, and when you do that, it completely resets the control, losing all your settings. Maybe 4D click should enter rename mode, and the "Rename" soft button should be the "Disable" / "Enable" button. Less chance of accidentally losing your work, and it would also make it much quicker and easier to go through and quickly enable/disable a bunch of controls too.
Once again, really nice work on the MIDI templates. What's already possible is enough to cover my needs, so I was able to replace my old S49 mk1 with a beautiful new S61 mk3 and not lose anything important. It's great to have that extra octave, among all the other awesome improvements.
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Yeah, honestly the editing tools for MIDI templates are now more fully featured than the tools for editing NKS presets. Would love to see similar effort put into that side now, since that's the main reason you buy the keyboard.
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Yeah I agree, Play Assist is probably next but we also need some NKS editing love
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I understand. I just would like to say, for this price controller, there should be a MIDI Channel Out selection, that resides at the top level of controls, so that you can easily switch out channels. This should be present on any MIDI controller, and this was in my opinion a complete fail to omit for release of the original product.
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The active MIDI Template is exactly this: the top level configuration of your MIDI controls.
If you want to switch MIDI Channels, you can either switch MIDI Templates (save each one as a new MIDI Channel) or edit the setting in the MIDI Template itself. But either way - you're editing the MIDI configuration of the keyboard.
There is no concept of a MIDI Channel Out being separate from the MIDI Template itself.
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Nobody asked, but I generally think the MIDI template flow is well-designed and it's really got me thinking about what improvements could be made to the NKS editing flow to take NKS to the next level. In no particular order, my feature requests are:
1) Button Support for NKS Presets - I really love the button functionality of the MIDI templates, and I would love to see that ported over to NKS presets pretty much 1:1. Basically, you'd get twice as many controls in a single view, and it would be a much better experience. I'd be most excited to be able to set named keyswitch/articulation buttons that are mapped on a per-preset basis. This would be an absolute game changer, and is basically my dream setup for dealing with articulations. But also, it would be an improvement to things like on/off switches, toggles, etc. to push a button instead of turning a knob. Personally, I'd love to see buttons and knobs both be bankable separately, but it would still be a massive improvement if you just added the ability to associate 8 buttons per page that bank at the same time as the knobs. Similarly, I'd like the ability to associate pedal, touch strip, and lightguide mappings with an NKS preset just as I now can with MIDI templates.
2) Support For Different User Preset Modes - The idea here is that I, as an NKS user, sometimes have different preferences for how I want my user-generated presets to work. Generally speaking, my user presets fall into one of 4 camps:
- Fixing the NKS implementation of an existing NKS preset: This happens all of the time, particularly with certain vendors cough Spitfire cough. Where a vendor has NKS presets that they've generated, but they're broken in some way - sometimes for months or even years. In this case, I generally want to Replace the factory presets with my own versions
- Adding Functionality to an existing NKS preset: In this scenario, the vendor has created a mostly functional NKS implementation, but maybe there's a parameter they haven't mapped or something I'd like to remap. In this case, what I'd like to do is Merge my edits with their versions. Basically, this would allow me to still get updates to the NKS implementation from the vendor as they upgrade the plugin, but also to maintain my additional functionality as well. In the case of merge conflicts, I'd say a sensible default would be to prefer the user-generated part of the preset, but maybe this is an advanced global setting in the Preferences. Supporting this mode is probably the easiest way to allow users to add new functionality like buttons, custom lightguide, and touchstrip mapping for existing NKS presets without requiring every vendor to go in and edit all of their existing NKS presets. I know for a fact the User Library community would jump all over this.
- Creating Factory NKS Presets for a Plugin that has no existing implementation: In this scenario, the vendor has not created any NKS presets themselves. I'd like to be able to Create Factory presets myself with all of the functionality as if the vendor had created them. They'd show up as "Factory" presets instead of "User" presets. I could set up things like lightguide, advanced NKS2 "edit" pages, etc. that are not currently possible for user-generated presets. I'd also love to see better tooling made available to users for generating sound previews and images for presets as part of this experience. Some system that scans a plugin's native presets and automates some or all of the process for generating the NKS presets from these native presets would be ideal, but maybe that's a stretch goal.
- Creating New User Presets: This scenario is closest to the existing user preset experience, where I generate new presets for an existing instrument that aren't factory presets, but instead are the product of my own sound design that I want to be able to save and go back to in the future. In this case, I want to Create User presets that are treated differently from factory presets and can be filtered as such.
3) Better Navigation for Factory and User Presets - To better support these new modes for NKS presets, update the KK UI to allow for navigating/searching user and factory presets at the same time (still allowing for viewing them separately if so desired). It's 2024. It's time. Maybe it would be nice to have a little icon associated with user presets so when you're navigating factory and user presets in the browser it's easy to differentiate between your user presets and factory presets at a glance.
4) Bug Fixes - There are some features that just haven't worked in a long time (or ever?) like user-generated sub-banks, editing of vendor, author, etc. Please fix those.
5) On-Device Editing - Support for on-device editing of NKS presets similar to MIDI templates please.
6) Better Kontakt Support in KK - I'd love to see support for Kontakt multis and user-generated snapshots improve in Komplete Kontrol, in particular.
Those are just a few editing-related features off the top of my head I'd like to see. @Kymeia can you think of any others? @Matthew_NI0 -
Yes in particular we need what has been asked for forever - the ability to rearrange user pages - now MIDi templates have this but paradoxically the NKS editor does not. Apart from that opening up the ability to fully edit NKS metadata including the bank name field is long overdue. I would love to see being able to use buttons for plugin params that need buttons but also for navigating multi page NKS templates. Also to be able to apply a template to multiple NKS patches at once, and able to generate previews from NKS within Komplete Kontrol or Maschine.
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WOW! Thank you. Awesome + sauce = U :-)
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it certainly seems that NI’s launch narrative that no one used MIDI templates has proven to be false. Funny how that goes.
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@Matthew_NI it's not very clear to me how I can assign a template to a non NKS library in a way that every time I recall that library (let's say from the track archive in Cubase) it will be every time reloaded automatically with that template and that lightguide.
Also, some libraries have a different playable range on different articulations. If I use keyswitches to change the articulations I'd need also the lightguide to change according to the new articulation. How can I do that?2 -
Of all the things PC and Mac are bad at in music making, things like ‘making midi templates’ isn’t one of them. Why did you get rid of this functionality in the software? Or is that to follow in “an update” I’m not sure why the current thinking is to put us all back behind the curve of stuff covered in the previous 2 decades of DAW and VST technology. 😕
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If I understand your question correctly, you're asking about why we implemented MIDI Template editing on the device itself, rather than via desktop software.
Simply put; for reasons of longevity.
If you purchase a KSMK3 keyboard now, you will always be able to create and edit MIDI Templates in the future, no matter what happens, because it can be done on-device.
If the hardware was reliant on desktop software in order for this to function, that desktop software could break at the whim of an OS update or any number of other contributing factors. Of course, for as long as desktop software is supported, fixes to any such issues would follow. Even so, the lag is frustrating to users, and if ever the desktop software was discontinued (e.g. anything from NI announces end of life to NI goes out of business), then there would come a time where the hardware they've invested in is no longer as capable. It is absolutely my belief, and my mandate, to build hardware that lasts, and to reduce wherever possible any dependence on external factors.
I hope that helps?
If I may, anticipating a follow up question to the effect of "that makes sense, but why not offer both?"…
I would say simply, Step 1 was making the format entirely editable and open. MIDI Templates can technically be edited on the desktop, via any text editor. This is more future proofed than a dedicated software with a user interface, but if you're asking whether we'll do that at some point, the answer is maybe. There are no plans per se, but I can understand why people would ask.
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