NI Interview: Radiohead + Kontakt Onstage
If you read this site, you’re probably also on NI’s mailing list, but I just wanted to point out a great feature on Radiohead’s onstage setup. NI interviews Radiohead’s keyboard tech Alan Russell:
Radiohead On Stage with Kontakt
The setup is really interesting: one Mac laptop (with one backup) runs a single instance of Kontakt. Kontakt then simultaneously plays instruments from the two keyboards onstage.
They use Kontakt in order to fill in with sampled sounds and to replace a lot of the hardware that would otherwise need to be hauled around. (I’ve been talking to a lot of artists, famous and less-so, who are using samplers to lighten their load on the road.) There’s even a Crumar Orchestrator preset in the library. Russ’s and Jonny’s laptops fill out still more computer-based sounds with Max and Pro-53, and you’ll see in the image above Kontakt is hosted in Live.
Well worth reading the whole story. It’s written by our friend at NI, Florian Grote, who is an accomplished computer musician himself. (I’ve noted his Pure Data workshop on CDM.) It makes a real difference having the person doing the interview knowledgeable enough to ask the questions you’d ask.
But, while this is obviously good advertising for NI, I think it’s equally nice to note that this is a setup you could duplicate, at least on some level. A lot of us even have an extra laptop we could run as a backup. That’s rarely been the case with tours as big as the Radiohead tour. Yet you could now set up a really sophisticated rig running computer software, with the kinds of timbral changes that previously required massive rigs of outboard gear and technical crews. That’s very good news for those of us who have to be our own tech!
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This article is really exciting for me as I am both a big Radiohead fan and a big Kontakt on the laptop fan.
One question it left me with: I see Live up on the screen as well and wonder how the boys are using that. I’m also a big Live fan!
Thanx
August 26, 2008 @ 11:17 am
Florian Grote
@continuous: As far as I was told, Live is only used as a sequencer in the song “15 step”. Kontakt is mostly used standalone, actually.
Best, Florian
August 27, 2008 @ 4:26 am
Red
Interesting to see Kontakt being used exclusively.
I recently had to put together a little rig for live keyboard performance with rapid patch changes, layers, splits, many samples. The impression that I got in asking around was that while Kontakt is an incredibly powerful sampler, it might not be great for on-the-fly program changes. Of course, perhaps it’d help if I had a dedicated keyboard tech.
Kore looked great for my purposes, but Kore + Kontakt was out of my budget, sadly.
I ended up getting a good deal on Logic, and have been using Mainstage. So far it seems to be quite good for my uses — it was very easy to set up the patches and be ready for the first rehearsal.
August 27, 2008 @ 9:02 am
poorsod
I’d like to contradict your sources there, Red. Kontakt, I find, is very good when it comes to on-the-fly reinstrumentation, provided you take the time to set it up properly beforehand.
If you put the instruments you want to flick between in a Bank you can use Program Change messages to operate different instruments at short notice. Obviously this takes up a fair amount of RAM or DFD memory.
I am also a fan of the MIDI channel/instrument relationship when it comes to real-time performance.
August 27, 2008 @ 9:48 am
Red
poorsod, thanks for the info. That’s good to know for the future.
It was actually somewhat amazing how hard it was to get info/opinions on the “best” software solutions for live keyboard performance.
Seems that live use is significantly in the minority among users. We’re starting to see more applications directed specifically for live instrumental use (Kore, Mainstage, Rax, etc.), fortunately.
Initially I didn’t understand the appeal of Kore, specifically in that it once again relied on the fairly tired paradigm of a MIDI controller comprising only knobs and buttons, rather than a physical gestural interface.
Though as I developed a need for accessing and tweaking sounds on the fly for keyboard performance, and as I investigated Kore more, it seemed like it and Kontakt (or Komplete) would be the ideal solution, yet, alas, as previously mentioned, not within the budget at this time.
I now give NI kudos for seeing and addressing the need for a host specifically aimed at making live performance powerful and intuitive.
August 27, 2008 @ 12:21 pm
obsoletekid
Hmm, it really appears to be hosted in MainStage.
September 1, 2008 @ 4:04 pm
Red
@obsoletekid:
It looks like you’re right!
Logic Mainstage is clearly visible above Kontakt.
September 4, 2008 @ 9:45 am
Peter Kirn
They’re probably using MainStage for access to one of Apple’s instruments, I’m guessing, since they aren’t available as plug-ins.
Actually, I hadn’t thought of hosting Kore in MainStage … that’d be an interesting way to go if, say, you really wanted Sculpture in a set.
September 4, 2008 @ 9:47 am
Red
To which Apple instruments to refer? (Generally, not necessarily that Radiohead use them specifically.)
Would they be hosting Kore or only Kontakt?
I see Mainstage, Kontakt, and Live in that view.
September 4, 2008 @ 11:17 am
davelister6
They use LIVE to trigg some loops to tempo, but they use MainHostage to host Kontakt.
November 17, 2008 @ 4:49 pm
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