Kontakt: Sample Start Modulation

A nice little Kontakt tip from waveformless.
Use a MIDI cc (eg the mod wheel) to vary the start position of your sample as you are playing. This works best if you are using a sample which has quite a bit of variety within it, especially in terms of timbre.

"1. Find a long, resonant sweep synth sample online, or if you have a hardware synth, record your own.
2. Import the sample into Kontakt and set the root key so that it is in tune.
3. Beneath the instrument header, click the small green box marked 'Modulation' in the lower lefthand corner. This will open the modulation section for the sampler module itself. In this section, the grey drop down menu on the left represents the modulation source (ie what you use to change the sound). The slider in the middle represents the amount of modulation this source will apply when it is activated. Finally, the drop down menu on the far right represents the Modulation Destination, or what you specifically want to modulate.
4. What destinations are available is dependent on which of the sampler types (ie DFD, Sampler, Time Machine, Tone Machine) you are using. In order to do sample start modulation, you have to select the Sampler module (assuming it is defaulted to DFD).
5. In the Modulation section, select 'midi CC' as your source and change the number in the window next to it to '1'. This selects the modulation wheel as your Source.
6. Move the modulation amount slider fully to the right. You may have to adjust this, as the appropriate setting depends on the speed and length of the sweep sample.
7. Finally, select 'Sample Start' as your Modulation Destination from the drop down menu to the right."

Scripting in Kontakt

Electronic Musician has an article on Scripting in Kontakt; it is aimed primarily at v3 but it seems as though everything would apply to v2 as well.

It takes you through how to declare variables, set up interface controls, handle note handling and MIDI controllers. It also gives you some basic example scripts that you can use as a starting point for your own custom scripts.



Another useful site is Nils Liberg's Scripting Tools. Here he offers a freeware script editor specifiaclly designed for handling Kontakt Script code - this is useful as it includes many helpful features such as highlighted syntax code which will make it easier to produce complex scripts. He also offers some of his own custom scripts for download which you can either use as is or edit/tweak them to suit your specfic needs. Nils has also written a fairly comprehensive scripting tutorial which you can access from his site.


Another useful resource is the Kontakt forum on the Virtual Instrument Composers Forum which has regular posts discussing scripting and other Kontakt based issues.