Hello all,

I just joined the forum. I hope this is the right place to post this but please let me know if it is not.

I do use FLStudio (badly, even though I bought one of the very first Fruity Loops version which I upgraded to studio several years ago), but I guess my question would apply to Kontakt instruments in any DAW.

I am ok with the basic use of both FLStudio and Kontakt. My problem is really how best to use Kontakt instruments in a DAW, regardless of he kind of music I want to produce. Kontakt instruments vary from one shots to full loops, phrases with many articulations (e.g. strings) etc. I never know whether I should create FLStudio patterns with many instances of Kontakt, or record audio in the FL playlist "live" and layer the clips in the playlist.

I suppose what I am asking your advice on is the best workflow for FL/Kontakt. The question applies to any music genres but if you have advice which is tied to a particular genre, that's fine too. I just need help to get unstuck at the first hurdle.

I would value all your suggestions and please let me know if my question is too general or unclear.

Thanks a lot.

rem

 

Everyone will work differently, so what's best for me may not be best for you and vise versa. If you are creating then your are using it effectively. I use it for both live recording and when creating midi sequences, if it works then great. Don't worry too much about the heavy technical stuff. Look for some tutorials either over on the dark side or on youtube/google to get some better understanding on how to improve your Kontakt skills.

 

Welcome to the forums mate. First of all keep in mind that workflows are different and there isn't one correct way to work. I don't use FL Studio as my main DAW but I do experiment in it. Also keep in mind that Kontakt is multitimbral which means that it can play more than one sound at a time and you can route it to different channels in your DAW's mixer. Usually I will make patterns (or record them in and then edit) and later render them out to audio, if I need to free up resources in the middle of a session then then I use Cubase's freeze track function. Just open an instance of Kontakt load whatever instrument you're looking to use, route the channels to your mixer and you're off. If you need help with Kontakt then I suggest the Groove3 Kontakt video, it will get you situated in your dealings with the program.

 

Personally i prefer using FL to record, but this depends on the sound you are trying to achieve. If you are trying to make use of the effects panel in kontakt, then that is obviously the way to go. If you are making some crazy FM style bass then kontakt is probably one of the best ways to trigger one shots and create loop shots (works really nicely for reese basses). The reason i prefer using fl to record is that the interface is simpler, and when you are dragging a recorded file, the wave file is displayed in the sequencer, so the information displayed to you is instant, whereas if you use kontakt, you would always have to click on the kontakt instance to see what wave (or part of the wave) is being triggered. Also when using kontakt, you are forced to use the piano roll to draw a line for the one shot for it to play in the sequencer. In this case the visual feedback isnt as good because its just a green box.

 

Thank you both. That's really useful. I am starting to get a better picture. I really appreciate your help.

 

I'm not sure what happened: I replied to say thank you very much and the message disappeared. So here it is again: thank you!

 

I think the site is experiencing some issues, I got a bad gateway message just a minute ago. And no problem mate, glad it helped you out.

 

same here, just the NSA logging in

 

nope, this is my first time logging in today

 

Come on! The NSA never log off. NSA: Non Stop Audioz