'ello everyone, hope you've had a good week!

Right, I REALLY could use your help, I'm sure there's going to be a way of getting this to work, it's just a faff!

So, I want to put my Kontakt drum kits into Ableton Live drum racks, so I can have named cells and when I'm using the piano roll it'll make writing drum patterns a LOT eaasier, here is my routing plan.


Drum Rack
a Cell with an "Instrument Rack" containing Kontakt.
Then drum racks on each cell as "busses" so for example "Snare Bus" which contains all of the articulations for snare hits
and within those busses, "External Instruments" routed to respond to the correct MIDI key.

I've done with with BFD2 and it works perfectly, however with Kontakt (GRRRRR) the issue is that the external instrument only recognises 8 outputs, so if I'm running kontakt with 8 mono outputs and 2 stereo, I can't get the stereo outputs to work to allow panning of overheads/room mics etc.

Can ANYONE think of a way to get the kontakt drum kits, into a drum rack nicely named and with mostly mono but some stereo outs for panning O/Hs etc.


Thanks everyone in advance, appreciate any input or suggestions :D

 

It'd be time consuming, but you could just take Kontakt out of the equation. Each pad on the drum rack would contain a Sampler (or group it to Instrument rack if you want macros), program the chain selector to play back different samples at different velocities. I'm not sure if Sampler has a round robin function, but if you want to randomize multiple samples within a velocity range you can probably make a workaround by assigning a random LFO to the selector.

There isn't much that Ableton's native devices can't do with enough effort and a little creativity. I guess it depends how important this venture is to you. It's a commitment for sure. I personally see library organization as the most crucial preparatory workflow activity

 

I'm quite sure they won't.
NI has introduced a new "encrypted" format in K4.2 just for one reason (imho):
Denying access to .nki files for anything else than Kontakt.
Remember the little "unnks" utility?
It allowed owners of a library to extract all samples from an .nks container.
Even times before K4.2, NI forced the dev to take the utility offline. He posted the letter he received from NI representatives on his site so everybody could see why he stopped development.

Many other sample manufacturers like Synthogy, Aria, East West, UVI etc do the same.

They want you to pay good money for their sounds, pay extra for inconvenient dongles, but they also force you to use their stuff exactly in the way they want you to.
How musically inspiring is that?

 

I'm using Kontakt for drums a lot, and I would rather do the mixing and F/X in Kontakt.
See NI Studio Drummer, AbbeyRoad Drums, Shreddage Drums, Drumdrops etc. - they all include more or less sophisticated drum mixing desks that really work well. And Kontakt has its own mixer you could use too.
This has another advantage: You keep the drums separate from Ableton Live, so anytime you want to use them standalone or in another DAW, you're free to use Kontakt over there.

You could still create a drum rack template with "dummy samples" named like the Kontakt mappings and route the MIDI OUT from the drum rack to Kontakt, so you have your names in the piano roll and still use Kontakt as a sound source.
Name the template exactly like the Kontakt drum lib and later on just select it in the rack.

 

Hey everyone,

Thanks for all the replies and thoughts, you are all very awesome!

I can't get the hang of the multi-quote thing but:

Cav Emp - I completely agree, a well sorted library really helps when you have a good idea, the time spent helps so much when you're getting ideas down

Arctic - That might be something I look into in the future with using the sampler instrument... The NI lock down on .nki files is so stupid though, grr at them.

Fiction - thanks so much for the dummy sample idea! I'm currently building something now, I don't think it's the most efficient method but it definitely works. I owe you a beer or two mate

Cheers everyone, really appreciate all your help

 

You hit +Quote on every comment that you want to respond to and then in the lower left corner under the comment text box there will appear an Insert Quote button. When you click it, it will present you with a screen of the quotes that you added. Click the Quote These Messages button and you're off. Then just respond to each one.

 

Thanks mate! I see it now! :D