Kontakt instrument humanization

Tegera · 2023-02-04T09:24:41+00:00

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Last October I made a kick drum instrument that uses just two samples because there is no more available. From what I recall, there's no way to add EQ/filter and effects that change with the velocity of the instrument samples and the variation only comes from the samples themselves, right?

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Kontakt 6

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Gee_Flat

You can use 'Group Insert Effects' to add EQ/Filters and then add modulation to those effects, such as velocity, envelopes, LFOs etc.

Also, 'Send Effects', which are limited to delay, reverb and others, can also be modulated at the Group level.

And let me add that I would hardly call something that was 'real world', then manipulated by technology, "humanization' 😀

It's actually been de-humanized.

Tegera

Thanks for your tip on the group effects. The nitpicky part of your reply was odd as you don't even know if they're real recordings of acoustic drums, but I guess one would probably be inclined to use something else than custom Kontakt instruments for synthetic drum sounds.

Like yeah, they're "de-humanized", but they need to be re-humanized.

Gee_Flat

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/51717#Comment_51717

Well, like most millenials, my condescending nitpicking is based on my delusional sense of self-importance and entitlement.

I"ve been de-humanized! 😛

Now go read the manual!

Tegera

In my experience it's mostly boomers who comment on something totally irrelevant and they don't even nail it.

Gee_Flat

https://community.native-instruments.com/discussion/comment/51723#Comment_51723

Touche!

But this old boomer seems to be more relevant and in tune with reality. And I nailed like an 18 ounce hammer.

But hey, most millenials wouldn't know how to change a tire, let alone hold a hammer! 😉

When it comes to entitlement, I'm very sensitve to what it meant for another generation to sit in foxholes with no food crying for their mothers. Your generation has no appreciation of it, but you're about to learn.

PEACE!

Tegera

So I looked at the manual and I remember reading it last year. At no point in the Group Editor manual does it illustrate clearly how to do what I had in mind, with Zones. It doesn't even explain what a Zone really is. It even says "Once you’ve gotten the hang of how the Group concept works..." after giving stupid examples like "distribute the Zones on each [velocity] layer across four Groups". Most people probably read that and just have more questions like what does it mean when it says layer ("oh, it just means different recordings for different velocities..."), how does distributing Zones on them look like, et cetera.

This is why people do video tutorials and I found this, which helped. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFwQK9Vjkdc . Within one minute I knew how to modulate filters with different "velocity layers" after making those layers with the same samples on each.

By the way the youngest millennials are like 28 and oldest are 43. You're probably thinking zoomers.

Gee_Flat

When I got Kontakt 2 it came with an interactive DVD tutorial. Even with it, it took me months to learn the ins and outs, and now 15 years later I'm still learning.

At its core you have Source -> Groups -> Zones (each zone holds a sample) -> Amplifier

A Group can have one Zone(sample) and it can span the entire velocity from 0-127. But lets say you have a kick recorded soft, medium and hard. Those 3 samples dragged to the Mapping Editor will become Zones and you can place them all at C2 and at different velocity levels. Soft at 0-40 etc.

Now they are all in one Group and you can go nuts with all the effects and filters and apply velocity to those effects. But you can also have velocity at the 'Amplifier' level (Volume), which will trigger any of the samples in the group, depending how hard you press C2.

If you want all 3 samples to have different EQ, then they would have to be in 3 separate groups.

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