Overview of Kontakt Urban Beats Instrument from Native Instruments

The sample libraries that come with Kontakt are full of great sounds and instruments. This quick tutorial shares how to get more out of the Urban Beats instrument.

Sometimes it seems like Kontakt was made for drums. Other times it seems as though there could be no better sampler for orchestral work. The fact is that Kontakt happens to be what most people need in a high caliber sampler no matter what you happen to be using it for. Highly flexible and fairly intuitive, this beast can do a lot more than most people realize at first. But once you get going, it becomes a true source of inspiration and will consistently help you deliver unique and quality sounds to the masses. This lesson focuses on one of the instruments that a lot of people simply overlook, the Kontakt Urban Beats instrument from Native Instruments.

At first glace, it may just seem like a loop player of some kind, but the Kontakt Urban Beats instrument is actually a highly dynamic and flexible tool you can use to make your life in the studio a little easier. It provides you with easy to use templates to get started. But you can choose to twist and tweak these until they are truly yours. You also have the entire backside of Kontakt available to you to shape and modulate the sounds in your kits. You can trigger individual sounds or program complex sets of loops that can change over the course of your song. The biggest limitation here is probably your own imagination, so once you understand how to use the tools you can really unleash the potential of the Kontakt Urban Beats instrument.

When it comes to actually programming the Kontakt Urban Beats instrument, you can set up a total of 64 steps in up to 8 different tracks for ultimate control. So if triggering loops is what you prefer to do with your projects, this is an excellent choice. You also have parameters like pitch, swing velocity to manage. And the ever-so-cool Remix tool, which allows you to change up your grooves with the push of a button.

If you prefer to use one shots in your projects, then the Kontakt Urban Beats instrument is still a powerful contender and should not be overlooked. You can manipulate the sounds in your kits with the many parameters available, like filters, voicing, envelope, reverb, delay, saturation, EQ and more. Add to that the potential of the sample editor, and various modulation and effects tools that Kontakt offers, this is an unstoppable option for beat creation.