Ask me anything: Kontrol S-Series MK3

There you go! The mk2 is for sale if anybody is interested hahah

You may notice the big space for the the keyboard I'm waiting on from the manufacturer...

I would add, I never have the lights on, so I should probably make it look like this more often.

Especially when it comes to price. The Console 1 Channel mk3 somehow costs more than the Kontrol S61 mk3. (It includes a bunch of Softube plugins, which is cool, but I already own all of them and there's no discount if you do.)

To Matthew_NI's suggestion, here's what I'm looking at at home. I recently removed second tiers of keyboards from my studio because, as my back ages, I don't like reaching up or looking at monitors mounted higher. I *may* go back to multi-tier above the JX-8P and Wavestation, though, just to get more of the kit in play.

All that said, the S88 Mk2 is the center point of my everyday playing. You'll see the little Novation LaunchKey mini there, but it's mostly used for action triggering only since I wanted more buttons; I had it and space for it. I prefer drumming on regular keys instead of pads and can barely use those mini keys. Also, pro tip: wall mount putty works great to attach and things from moving on the keyboard. For the fader and pad people, putting something in that space is a pretty easy solution. I personally prefer endless encoders that sync to the current state (same reason I use an iPad on the Roland JX-8P in the picture for parameter control instead of a hardware programmer, although I would like physical knobs I guess).

Generally, I use templates for recording and playing that pre-load Komplete Kontrol on several tracks and, with some templates, I preload an instruments (e.g. Noire) onto track one to make it even faster. And those template shortcuts are on my desktop to make getting started really quick.

Out of view are countless other random acoustic and electric instruments that are brought into the room or mic'd from another room (I don't move the acoustic piano, lol). But ~70%+ of my own playing these days is right there at the S88.

May not be the prettiest or most elaborate setup, but it works just fine. :)

FWIW, I'm excited about polyphonic aftertouch on the Mk3 (last used on an old Ensoniq where I built some reasonable skill before moving on!) and I'm super intrigued by the workflow possibilities in NKS2. I guess I'm not asking things anymore, but I am super impressed by how the team at NI handled this AMA. Very nice!