When you’re working in the studio or designing sounds, navigating complex parameters with a mouse makes some sense. But when you want to focus on sounds — while playing an instrument in private or (especially) live — you really want hardware control.

Kore 2′s controller does let you do this. The trick is to learn how to navigate different levels of sounds, since you may have different instruments in a performance you want to control. Here’s a quick reference guide to how to do it.

This comes off a little like those old text adventure games. (You’re in a dark dungeon. There are entrances to the LEFT and RIGHT. There are SOUNDS. You can hit the CONTROL button.) But walk through these steps with a performance open, and it’ll make sense — and with a little practice, you can do this quite quickly.