Komplete Kontrol integration totally flawed?!

[Danny_DJ]

Hey guys,

I am unhappy because I cannot fully leverage the powers of my KK S61 keyboard with Ableton Onboard instruments.

1. I cannot quickly jump between track armings when using smart play features. I always have to arm two tracks: the one with the KK MIDI logic and my target internal instrument's track. Via Mouse and in a specfic order (what the heck?!) Otherwise the KK Display will lose it's connection to the smart play configuration mode (where you select scales etc.).
2. I cannot use ANY KK knobs with Ableton instruments. Nothing is responding.
3. When setting a track to listen to another track's MIDI out (for playing internal instruments w/ KK smart play), it isn't responding to Push's track selection for arming anymore.

This situation is highly frustrating since a great idea is massively hindering my workflow.

Who can help?
Which setup steps am I missing?

See my video for visual explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RP79Le--uBU

Cheers
Danny

[nowtime]

KK and S-series keyboards have so much potential and are wonderful in many ways, but I have to throw away 70% of my ideas and create workarounds.

I also cannot use the track navigate buttons. When I am recording multiple tracks, track navigation will un-arm my recording tracks.

Someone described the KK script as follows, maybe this will help;

1. If selected track is not armed, arm selected track exclusively.
2, If selected track is already armed, do nothing.
3. Auto focus feature works only when case 1.

good luck.
Here's to hoping for KK2 and a short bug fixing cycle.

[login]

Honestly I don't think it is even marketed as integrated with Ableton Live so i really don't see your "problem": it doesn't work like you want because it is not designed for that.

[Danny_DJ]

Sure it isn't marketed as integrated. But since were in a tech realm where progress is the base for everything why people work in this field, I don't see the point why I shouldn't bother this. Even my old M Audio Axiom Keyboard was cabable of basics like arming, knobbing around and such. As we are in the year of 2017 and well known mainstream DAWs are around for decades and lots of controllers have their custom scipts for integration, I also don't think that my complaints are somewhat exaggerated.

[login]

Yeah it would be desirable, but the fact remains that it wasn't advertised as integrated with the DAW.

You had expectations you didn't check the information properly and now you are frustrated, if thatfeature was so important to you then you maybe should have not buy it in the first place. Companies learn more from lost sales.

IMHo companies get lazy because consumers are not very rational buying stuff they don't even know if it does what they think it should do.

[Danny_DJ]

. Companies learn more from lost sales.

IMHo companies get lazy because consumers are not very rational buying stuff they don't even know if it does what they think it should do.

Correct in theory. If they do market research on this. But I wouldn't be able to investigate on that in such depth beforehand if I hadn't bought it. And I wanted a keyboard with a better keybed, flat profile and power switch anyway. There isn't much competition out there. The Novation Impulse is nice as well but lacks the latter two features.
And since I bought it second hand (as I do with moans things for price and sustainability reasons), it is likely that my purchase will not impact them anyway because it is unclear whether the seller will replace the unit with another NI device.

And since I am complaining in public with NI's eyes on me, this is kind of anti advertising that might people deter.

[Stromkraft]

And since I am complaining in public with NI's eyes on me, this is kind of anti advertising that might people deter.

How do you reckon NI have their eyes on you specifically?

Have you tried calling their support? Or posting the new NI forums? Or is it help section these days? I forget…

[login]

You could have asked in this or NI forum

[yur2die4]

Hi. I saw your video. This isn't much of a fix for all the problems and in a way it makes for a bigger mess.

One of your comments was that you could not allow multiple devices to play into one channel.

I made this workaround so that you can have 'All Ins' for MIDI From on an instrument channel


It requires that you add a midi channel for Each instance of an instrument channel.

This was done with Maschine, so apologies if this has nothing to do with using Komplete Kontrol.

I tried looking up options for KK in the controller editor and it seems that it would not support the scale and arp functionality of the vst. So this kind of complicated the potential for using both the key functions and controlling Live devices at the same time.


Edit: okay. I discovered that the KK keyboard acts More as a midi controller than Maschine. Especially for how it receives notes. It is different in that Maschine can do notes directly between the software and the hardware without them spilling over into or being observed by the DAW. Apparently for KK, it acts more as a standard midi controller which is enhanced by the vst. Hmmmmmmm

[jestermgee]

Like any "solution" there will be limitations to work around which can sometimes help spur on extra creativity. I think to a degree we take a lot of things for granted these days and simply have an expectation that everything should work in every way.

I created a template many moons ago for doing Orchestral stuff which I have recently updated for easy KK integration and I really did not want to unload 70 tracks of loaded and configured instruments just to load in a KK wrapper to get scale/arp features so I did this:



- I have 1 track loaded with an instance of KK (track 1) and no instrument (just a blank kontakt).
- I then set the MIDI Monitor to always monitor the input so controllers will basically always trigger this track.
- For all instruments set the MIDI From to the KK track
- All you need to do now is press the track REC button to receive MIDI.

Things to note:

- Using Push will no longer "auto arm" a track to play when you step through but you can arm a track easily by holding the REC button then pressing the track select button. Using the KK keyboard will arm the track you select.

- If you use the KK keyboard you will lose focus from the Track 1 instance of KK when you activate REC on a track (meaning you cannot easily adjust the Scale/Arp settings while playing an instrument) but if you leave the KK VST open you can just press the little "connect hardware" piano icon button to connect the keyboard controls to track 1 while playing a selected track instrument. This allows easy change of the Scale/Arp settings while playing but does require the mouse.

- When you record a clip or to arrangement you will get ALL notes played from the KK software not the key you press. Also on Push you will see all notes light up. This is actually a good thing.

- Of course you will not have automatic parameter control like when you load a KK instrument in KK but you will have MIDI control over a track. I personally am not fussed here and if I need dedicated track controls for the instrument I will load a KK enabled track.

- You can setup a second "control surface" instance in Live for KK in MIDI mode and select ANY controller template as long as you know what MIDI CC controls it uses for the "blue hand" auto-control of a track. Setup a custom MIDI template for the KK keyboard setting page 1 controls to the CC numbers the control surface script is watching for (can also create your own custom MIDI template for this). When using a non KK loaded track you will see MIDI CC controls on the KK which page 1 should access the first 8 parameters or 8 macro knobs automatically. Subsequent pages can then be learned to anything you like (hopefully this makes sense).

This has allowed me to quickly integrate the main features of KK into any existing templates I created without having to load an instance into every track. I also have Cthulhu loaded onto track 2 which I can switch tracks to using the same method for even greater combinations of chords. Well worth spending some time with this kind of solution as it can be very useful when you get a feel for how it all works. Live makes it very easy to setup and understand what is happening too.

[aklisiewicz]

I was gonna try your sulution but I got into 2 problems:
- no volume sliders in midi tracks
- how am I supposed to get plain KONTAKT into KK (Select) ?

Could you create a little video on how to do this setup ?

ART

[jestermgee]

I was gonna try your sulution but I got into 2 problems:
- no volume sliders in midi tracks
- how am I supposed to get plain KONTAKT into KK (Select) ?

Could you create a little video on how to do this setup ?

ART

Of course there are not volume sliders in midi only tracks (no audio to control) but the only "midi only" track is track 1 in my example. The method I am using is a bit different than having a separate MIDI track for every audio track... I have only a single MIDI IN track that takes the incoming midi from any controller into KK then all other tracks receive their MIDI from the KK track which is processed through the KK software so they receive scale/arp notes. Think of it as simply inserting track 1 between all other tracks like an insert effect.

In regards to loading an empty Kontakt, you can really use anything you like as the dummy instrument. I chose Kontakt since when it's empty it doesn't use anything in terms of resources.

You can manually load it like this:


That allows you to load any VST (including the NI Select/Komplete instruments) manually instead of using the presets.

I am thinking of creating a small video to show how it works, even if it's so I personally remember ths in 6 months when I move into something else again.

[eddiejag]

Make sure you've followed all the guidelines by NI on getting the integration to actually work. It involves installing a couple things on your system. Once you have that load the KK from the instrument rack, not as a plugin. This will let you scroll through all different tracks. Also, if you get to a point when you have a maschine track targeted, but KK is not responding to the Maschine plugin, click the keyboard on the top right corner and it will activate KK for the Maschine plugin.

[aklisiewicz]

thanks, I got that part setup, but still not sure where do I load instruments. in this scenario.
I see you have "KK-Instrument_Rack" loaded in one track then you have "KK+KONTAKT" (with no instruments) loaded into another track.

Is it possible to load more than one instrument into KK itself OR I have to drop them one after another on the instrument rack (lie we used to do "Ableton way") ? I know we can do this in KONTAKT and I like using KONTAKT for that except the fact I have knobs and sliders for each track in Live but have to use KONTAKT controls.

ART

[jestermgee]

I have some videos coming that may make it easier to understand