Slicing, Tweaking and Resampling in Kontakt

This is a video tutorial sharing some ideas on how you can import, slice, customize and do some resampling in Kontakt to take your sounds in new directions.

Many people think of Kontakt as the industry standard for high quality sample libraries and instruments. This is great, but it can also do a whole lot more than just playback samples! This lessons shares a quick workflow for resampling in Kontakt, which could mean working with your own sounds or 3rd part sounds. Either way, the idea is the same. Make your sounds better! Or different, at least. Bringing a new sound into Kontakt can be as easy as simply dragging and dropping the sound file on the empty rack. And once you have a sound in Kontakt, all of the features and tools are available to you to use however you like. There are certain intended uses and purposes for some features, but this does not mean that you can’t experiment with them and find new uses that work with your projects.

For instance, in this video Time Machine Pro is used, but Beat Machine or Tone Machine could have been selected, as well. This would have changed the outcome (potentially dramatically), but this could end up being a good thing it it works with what you are producing. Resampling in Kontakt can either be very experimental and surprising, or systematic and traditional in approach. Once you have a sound imported and a source mode selected, you can begin working in the wave editor to chop up your sample however you like, Here too, you are presented with preconfigured modes that have different intended purposes. In this case, the Sync to MIDI mode is used. An automated slice option can speed up this part of the process and get you back to creating quickly.

Once you click the Drag MIDI to Host button, your sample will be chopped and you will be provided with a MIDI region to add to your project in the DAW arrangement window. Now is a good time to begin really tweaking these sounds, now that they have been chopped up and assigned to MIDI triggers. There are three main ways you can apply effects in Kontakt. These are broken up in to Group Effects, Insert Effects and Send Effects. When resampling in Kontakt it is a good idea to experiment with each of these, but also keep in mind that it is a simple task to separate your different sounds into individual groups within the sampler and assign effects to the each sound. This provides an incredible amount of control and many opportunities for creative variations manipulation. By this point, I’m sure you’re sold on resampling in Kontakt so we’ll let you get to it!