Today, I cover the Battery 3.05 (beta) and Kontakt 3.5 updates. For both tools, you get 64-bit support under Windows, which lets you get into terabytes of addressable memory (theoretically), plus a much-needed fix for compatibility with Pro Tools 8 on Mac. On Kontakt, you also get a range of improvements, including “zero-memory” functionality when streaming from disk, multicore and multi-processor improvements, improved library management, aftertouch KSP support, and more MIDI assignments. Kontakt also supports up to 32GB of memory even on the Mac – which doesn’t yet do true 64-bit memory addressing for audio apps – thanks to something called the Kontakt Memory Server.

Now, not all of the Kontakt improvements are relevant to Battery, but it’s worth stepping back and looking at the two apps. There’s a reason there’s both Battery and Kontakt, even though they share some core technologies.

NI explains to CDM how the engines differ – some subtle differences that can make Battery the right tool for certain jobs:

The core engine technology is the same in Battery 3.0.5 and Kontakt 3.5, but Battery uses a “lighter” version because of its typical use case as a drum sampler.

It doesn’t include the Memory Server and the multiprocessor/multicore support because these features really only become necessary with multitimbral operation, high polyphony and a huge number of instrument samples (and heavy effects usage) like in Kontakt.

More on the updates at CDM, but I thought this was the perfect place to make the comparison clear.

Kontakt, Battery: Enhanced, More Compatible, 64-bit Memory

Since we have some hard-core users of both these tools reading this minisite, I’m curious to hear your mileage!

Note that, yes, we will generally be posting a lot more of our NI-related content on CDM moving forward, and that community contributions we expect to start appearing on our community platform noisepages.com, now in early testing. I’ll make a full announcement about this soon.

When I look back at the Kontakt features we’ve done here at Noisepages, I notice that one feature of the software that keeps coming up is scripting. We’ve used scripts to:

• sequence and re-tune music box samples
• create a constrain-to-scale MIDI insert effect for Kore and other hosts
• Latch incoming notes, and dynamically pan voices in stereo

As well, we’ve looked at the creative potential of the scripts that ship with Kontakt. I’ve also pointed readers towards some fine scripting resources for Kontakt users. With one exception – stereo panning – these have all been stock factory scripts, prewritten scripts from third parties, or very slightly modified versions. Now that everyone’s toes are wet it’s time to dive in and splash around with some scripting from scratch. The water’s warm and we won’t venture too deep. I guarantee there are no sharks.

Last time we looked at Kontakt I showed you how to import and slice up a sample, and create new music out of an old melody. Now let’s pick up where we left off by exploring the scripts and performance views in some Kontakt and Kontakt-based Kore library instruments.

The Urban Beats collection that ships with Kontakt includes 49 instruments, each with a different set of percussion loops and samples. I’ll show you how to use the sequencing and effects scripts to create endless variation in each instrument. As well, we’ll have a look at creating and managing zone envelopes to repitch and pan loops.

If you’re looking for some drum sounds to spice up projects, there’s a really lovely set of samples from Orange Tree of jazz drum sets. I enjoy the warm sounds here – and they could be ripe for reinterpreting, coloring patterns and such. They’re already pre-built for Kontakt; Battery would have been an obvious drum-centric choice, but I find some of Kontakt’s deeper scripting powers make it my go-to sampler, even for drum/kit stuff.

Here’s what they sound like:

jazzfunkdrumsdemo.mp3

There doesn’t seem to be any information on Orange Tree’s site, but here’s a direct download link:

JazzFunkKit.rar

Note that you’ll need a rar decompresser; Windows users probably already have one (like my fave, 7-Zip), but Mac users, try:

UnRarX

Orange Tree has some other sample libraries, as well, including Kontakt-focused guitar and bass libraries:

Orange Tree

Big shout-out to Synthtopia for catching this one.

Ed.: When you think of sample design, you may think of hours spent painstakingly multisampling hundreds of audio files. Of course, that’s not the way most of us work (or have time to work). More often, you have a short recording you like that you want to manipulate. Kontakt’s functional depth need not intimidate you: you can use all that horsepower to get your sounds doing interesting stuff right away.

Here, Peter Dines walks us through in a few quick steps taking a simple sample and turning it into a complex instrument. He’s got a free download to round it out. Even if you’ve seen very little of Kontakt beyond its presets, you should be able to pick up some quick skills. And yes, you’ll even do some scripting – though thanks to the presets, you won’t have to know about scripting yourself to take advantage of this feature. (We will make all of you scripters soon, though.)

In this video, a basic set of Kontakt skills that could apply to lots of ideas:

• Creating a sample from a file
• Slicing up bigger samples into mapped slices with the Wave Editor
• Correcting slice points
• Using Script Editor performance presets to get advanced features
• (without having to write your own scripts)
• Simple script modification – even if you’re afraid of code

But the whole thing started (appropriately enough in the holiday season) as a gift. Peter recalls:

My brother in law came back from Vienna with a great gift for me – a music box mechanism. I recorded its output and imported the file into Kontakt. In this video, I demonstrate some of the ways you can manipulate and script your way to creative results.

Music-boxing in NI Kontakt from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Here’s the Kontakt instrument I created in this video:

If you’re looking for folksy, retro, and acoustic sounds without all that pesky wood and wire, you should check out Pendle’s Grand Thrift Auto(harp).

It’s a Kontakt 2- and 3-based instrument that multisamples an autoharp and a plucked grand piano. What does it sound like? Something like a cross between a zither, a harp, and a hammered dulcimer. Listen to the embedded sound player on Pendle’s page for examples.

After playing with the Grand Theft Autoharp for a few days I can honestly say that it’s the last autoharp sample set you’ll ever need. There are four different multi-sampled layers, including a muted layer with a nice pizzicato thump, and you can mix the four layers freely. This eats up a fair bit of polyphony – by default, it’s set to use 60 voices, which in turn eats a bit of CPU, but the sound is worth it. You can always decrease polyphony and let voice stealing kick in sooner.

Want more retro Kontakt goodness? What about the Dulcitone1884 on the same page:

Originally designed and manufactured in Scotland in the 1800′s, and with allegedly only 2000 in existence the DULCITONE is a portable keyboard that was made for missionaries to hump around remote african village churches to help perk up hymn services. It has a very basic piano action with spring loaded felt covered hammers striking small magnet shaped tuning forks. Its a bit like a Fender Rhodes electric piano without the electric bits, and has a very lovely woody, clonky glockenspiel/celesta kind of sound.

Some of the higher-velocity Dulcitone samples have an interesting rattle, and this varies from one note to the next, giving the instrument an appealing organic quirkiness.

Both instruments are available in Kontakt 2 and 3 format for £15. There are some other intriguing instruments on Pendle’s site, including a free sf2 (soundfont) sample set of fireworks sounds. This imported nicely into Kontakt 3 for me and provides some creative percussion possibilities. Makes me want to try my hand at something like Astrobotnia’s Lightworks.

Digital software instruments give you opportunities to explore new sounds and timbres, so why not add tuning to the list? Kore@CDM contributor and sound designer Eoin Rossney helps us navigate the potentially intimidating world of microtuning. Microtonal sound simply refers, generally, to tunings beyond the now-standard 12-Tone Equal Temperament we find on modern pianos. First off, microtuning doesn’t have to sound dissonant or “out of tune” – like other choices with synthesis, it can simply give you some new sonic abilities. Native Instruments’ synths are well-suited to the task, as many having tuning capabilities built-in. If you’re using plug-ins to assist your microtonal voyage, Kore is a natural with its plug-in hosting capabilities. But the most important thing is just to dive in somewhere and see what happens – with no physical instrument to retune, it’s something anyone can do.

We’ve got a massive set of resources here to get started. It’s a bit stream-of-consciousness, but take a browse; there’s surely something in here to get you started. We’ll follow up with some specific microtuned instrument examples. Enjoy! -PK

Introducing Microtonal Sound

Before we begin, there are one or two things you should know:

Forcing incoming midi to a scale isn’t necessarily microtuning. Ableton Live’s Scale plugin, for example, maps incoming notes to a scale, but that scale will still have only 12 intervals per octave: Microtonal scales have notes between the western 12 note-per-octave pitches.

Microtonal doesn’t necessarily mean dissonant. In fact, in classical music, some ‘subtle’ or meantone tunings can sound more “in tune” than conventional tunings. Ed.: That’s because composers in previous centuries didn’t use the 12-Tone Equal Tempered tuning we generally use on pianos today – on the contrary, many of them would likely think your Steinway grand sounds out of tune. -PK Depending on how you play the scale, some harmonies can sound beautifully pure, but hit a wrong note and things get nasty.

Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it. Going through some of the available tunings out there, results can vary from making sound almost inaudible to making your instrument sound quite “alive”, with pitches changing depending on what notes are held.

Quick Tip: Instant Microtuning on PC

To get started, here’s a quick hack for trying out microtonal sound. The easiest way by far to retune your Windows synths is to grab Tobybear’s MicroTuner.  This basic VST allows you to load Scala .scl tunings by drag and drop and then imposes them on your synth. (Scala is the standard format for tuning tables.) This is more of a hack than a proper retuning, but it works.

Here’s how it’s done:
Step 1: Download/install the Tobybear Midibag plugins
Step 2: Download/extract the Scala scale library
Step 3: Place Microtuner in front of your instrument
Step 4: Drag the .scl file onto the GUI
Step 4: Olé!

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!

Speedy J, aka techno/minimal pioneer Jochem Paap, has made a sort of software version of himself in Kontakt player form, with 4 GB of sounds and one of the crazier-looking Kontakt skins I’ve seen. I love the idea of making a software externalization of your musical ideas. (See also: Richard Devine’s recent loop collections for Sony, which I need to write up one of these days; Richard’s another Kontakt and Reaktor guru and can regularly be found among the NI presets.)

In the library:

• kits
• hits/tones
• loops
• sequencer-based instruments (using Kontakt’s sequencer capabilities)
• FX, Konstrukt scripting instruments

Samplers like Kontakt are capable of streaming from disk, but when it comes to loading from (faster) RAM, standard 32-bit memory addressing on Mac and Windows restricts them to about 2-4 GB of memory. That’s about to change for Kontakt users, with the free update to Kontakt 3.1 with 64-bit support in the works. You’ll need Mac OS X Leopard or 64-bit Windows to run it, but if you choose to put more gigs of RAM, Kontakt will be able to use a lot more memory. In case you missed the announcement, I covered this yesterday for CDM:

Kontakt 3 Free 64-bit Upgrade Soon on Mac, Windows

I’m working on getting some other details. For instance, at the moment, no hosts on Mac support 64-bit, so presumably you’d have to either wait for that to change or run Kontakt standalone. On Windows, you have to boot the 64-bit operating system, you need 64-bit drivers, and you again need a 64-bit host, like Cakewalk’s SONAR.

That said, let me ask it another way — show of hands. Who here wants more RAM? Do you use big sample libraries that require it? Anyone already running 64-bit SONAR / Windows?

I’m also talking to NI and wrapping up a story I’ve been working on regarding 64-bit and memory. Got questions you want answered? Stuff that confuses you? I’m happy to pass it along and share what I learn!

(Geek-only side note: I’m also curious if the Windows emulation that allows Kontakt to run on Linux, as it does on the Muse Receptor, will do 64-bit. The ASIO drivers for the WINE compatibility layer on Linux is presently 32-bit only.)