Re: [komplete-kontrol-access] Have had my figurative eye on a KK keyboard for a while, but I've recently heard things that make me suspect the software isn't as accessible as I thought it was

[Christopher Gilland]

Wo! I've never heard of a 49 key setup. Is that a standard? I thought it usually went from 32 then jumped to 61, then 76, then 88.

Chris.

On 6/30/2022 10:12 PM, John Isige wrote:

Ha! The First time I heard one of Andre's videos, I think it was the one with the KK 2.1 update, I went and bought KK that night, that's how excited I was about it. I bought the M32 and just used a midi controller I already had as a larger keyboard. I eventually bought an S61 because I'm dumb and can't count, I thought my larger controller was a 61, but it turned out it was actually an M-Audio Axiom 49.

On 6/30/2022 7:59 PM, Sharni-Lee Ward wrote:

I spent the evening listening to your videos and I. Am. In love. I was already, but I fell more in love with the keyboard the more I heard from it. I wish I could have it now but we still gotta save some for what is required. And acquire an appropriate PC for it. I use Windows and will never get an Apple product if I can help it. My poor humble laptop that I got on sale in 2019 only has 8GB of RAM and its harddrive is not an SSD, which I am sure would be a problem even if I did have the funds to get it right now before the June sale ended. As it is I'll probably still have to wait several months, but I wanted to get started on my research.

I'm still thinking of that exquisite ARKHIS library you did the one-and-a-half hour stream for because I swear I got transported to several higher planes and a dozen different fairy worlds just with those sounds.

And you have over 18k different sounds in your arsenal and I am supremely jealous!

On 30/06/2022 3:08 pm, 'Andre Louis' via Komplete Kontrol Access wrote:

Hi there. Chris focuses on the written side of things, I focus on the audio side of things, so on my channel, you will find exactly what you're looking for, in-terms of demos using the Komplete Kontrol boards and even demos of lots of sounds.
You'll either see it as a shameless plug, or a helpful resource, either way, I'll drop it here for your perusal anyway.

My channel can be found here:
https://nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fyoutube.com%2FTheOnjLouis&data=05%7C01%7C%7C102806aeff434a3efa3308da5a569bee%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637921625321013108%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=jWQYTRs9xy%2BEvMKLLbWrw6LGi%2FyZj7iUxqP6FVlweOM%3D&reserved=0

If you want to hear many places where I've used Komplete Kontrol in music, or even to break down things I've written, click the Playlists tab, and then find the playlist called #InspiredBySound.

Here, I go through either single libraries and show off some of the sounds (yes including quite a few pianos over the years) and in other cases, entire musical breakdowns of things I've written using Komplete Kontrol.

Another playlist is called 'Native Instruments and Komplete Kontrol' with a focus entirely geared towards the use of NI products and how the various keyboards work, and other related demos.

I've done demos on the A and M series keyboards, and one on the S MK2 series, which go through loading sounds, loading effects, playing with the in-built sampler, and much more.

I hope this will give you some useful info and hopefully be a method to help you decide for or against Komplete Kontrol in your life.

Thanks.


----- Original Message ----- From: "Sharni-Lee Ward" <sharni-...@hotmail.com>
To: <komplete-ko...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 30, 2022 3:00 AM
Subject: Re: [komplete-kontrol-access] Have had my figurative eye on a KK keyboard for a while, but I've recently heard things that make me suspect the software isn't as accessible as I thought it was

My goal is to make music, and make it sound nice. To do this, I need good samples of instruments, which I can't always get from soundfonts, and an actual keyboard instead of the onscreen keyboard in Reaper, which is manipulated via the computer keys. With this feature and in Quick Windows Sequencer, which I tried several years ago and which is why I have so many soundfonts in the first place, the notes are cut off abruptly, I can't get chords and things sounding right, and adjusting velocity to mellow the instrument lowers the volume, so I can't hear it over other instruments I put in the composition.


I additionally wanted to get one of the S series, which doesn't seem to have a tutorial on the KK-Access website, but which has aftertouch on the keys, to give me greater control over the emotion I can inject into the music I want to make. I can also get the most out of the piano tutorials I'm watching on Youtube.


I have always loved keyboards since I was little. It was, and is, a delight to go through a sample library, be it Soundfont or keyboard-based, and listen to all the options available to me. With KK, I want to hear everything. I want to know all my (hopefully) many thousands of instrument/preset options. I want nice guitars of both acoustic and electric varieties for one particular project I want to attempt, and suitable presets for orchestral arrangements. I have yet to find a nice pan flute in the soundfonts I have available to me right now, but I hope KK does have one. I of course want at least one beautifully dynamic piano, because piano is wonderful. I also want to do background sounds for atmosphere when reading things for certain other projects.


I've also been under the impression that having a keyboard controller means I can at least play with other synths or soundfonts in Reaper using it, even if it's not native to the controller. I don't expect to be able to add effects, just to be able to hear the sounds when I press keys. If this doesn't work for KK, I'm best off knowing now, though I should have enough options with the keyboard itself that I won't need to worry over much.


All other things I can do would be a delightful bonus to me. All other presets not on my immediate wishlist have their place and I still want as many options as I can feasibly acquire. I will need a system with a sufficiently large SSD for best results, I know, and there might be some samples I despise (I'm very picky about choirs as a rule, since most I've come across are either too breathy or don't sound human enough, and synth presets are often hit-and-miss for me depending on the pack) but having thousands of options, many with flexibility in the form of effects, would provide endless hours of creative delight even before I did anything resembling musical compositions.

On 30/06/2022 2:19 am, John Isige wrote:

Let me talk about accessibility first.


Once you have KK set up, you load the plugin in Reaper. Then, you use buttons on the keyboard to browse for an instrument, and load it. When you load an instrument, if it has NKS mapping, the eight knobs on the keyboard will control certain parameters, whatever's mapped, and usually there are multiple pages of parameters.


Now let me talk about the lack of accessibility. If you don't have NKS mapping from a manufacturer, there are some instruments with third-party NKS mappings available. But if you don't have that either, you're probably going to be limited to whatever presets you can load. So for example, you might be able to load and play a piano, but not change anything about it.


A lot of the Reaper people use synthesizers where you build your sound from scratch. So they're used to being able to change every little thing. Some of them feel like KK is overhyped and that the people who recommend it don't give enough information on what you can't do.


So yeah, there's stuff you can't do. For example, you can only use the NKS mapping for effects if they're on an instrument. So if I load a piano in KK, and then put a reverb effect in the next slot, I can manipulate that effect with the NKS mapping it has, with the knobs on the keyboard. But if I load that effect on an audio track, that is, I have audio and I load the KK plugin and just pick the reverb because I want it to affect that audio track, I don't get access to its parameters with the knobs on my keyboard.


Basically, what you get with KK is a bunch of awesome instruments, and an ability to build new sounds off of those presets. But if you want to load your own samples or an instrument that doesn't have NKS mapping, that's harder or in some cases not possible, depending on what you're trying to do. So in that sense, the KK software isn't fully accessible. I absolutely think it should be, and I hope that's the goal Native Instruments is aiming for, it certainly sounds like it is. But I'm with the other poster, sorry I'm terrible with names, it was a huge change for the better for me.


If the Reaper folks are making you question your decision, that's fine. But make them tell you what their issues are then. Because it might be entirely true that they can't do the thing they want to do with KK as it now stands. But it also might be true that it's nothing you'll need to worry about due to the way you work. I think the people who question KK are right to do so, if that means we give an honest evaluation of what it can and can't do and let people make their own decisions.


Unfortunately, I think for some of them, because they're sick of what they perceive as overhyping of KK, it turns from that into just running down KK and seeing it as a waste of money. That might be true, if you want to load a bunch of synthesizers and build your own sound from scratch, sighted people can do that in KK, and we can't, to my knowledge. But there's also a lot of stuff we can do, and that might be fine for a lot of us. I love what I've got so far. I hope we eventually get access to everything, so we have the full capabilities of Native's products. But like I said, for me at least, what we have now is light years ahead of where I was.


If you tell us what kinds of things you might want to do with it, or if you give us examples of the kind of thing the Reaper folks are talking about that has you worried, we can probably respond to that. They may be right, maybe you will want to do something that needs OCR or that just can't be done yet. But I'm guessing you'll be fine.


On 6/29/2022 4:10 AM, Sharni-Lee Ward wrote:

Hi,


I'm a lover of music, but I don't currently have the best setup with which to make truly lovely music. I try but it sounds stilted and unnatural even after quantising in Reaper. I'm probably being a perfectionist, but I can't make it sound as nice as I want it to with just the onscreen keyboard and some free soundfonts, and I like what I've heard of KK's libraries.

I heard that KK was the most accessible keyboard controller out there, and even watched a friend's unboxing and testing of his keyboard, which was about the time I fell in love.


However, recently I've started reading up on certain Discord channels and emails from the Reaper list, and I don't know if I like what I'm hearing, particularly with regard to OCR. I don't know how to do that and don't like the imprecise nature of it. It's the same reason I rarely use a mouse and never use the touchpad on my laptop. I feel all at sea if the cursor isn't exactly where I intended it to go.


I suppose my first question is, how complicated is it to set up KK on my computer to work with Reaper, my DAW of choice? How much OCR is required for it?

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