Kontakt 8

Kontakt 7.10.6—released in late July 2024—works well with MuseScore 4.2 and above (on MacOS 13.5).

I haven't tried Kontakt 8 so I can't offer any advice on its functionality with MS4. And I don't see much reason to further consider upgrading to Kontakt 8.

I was hopeful about Kontakt 8 and Komplete 15, but:

• Kontakt 8's improvements seem superficial. I appreciate a basically improved browser, but there are musical areas (as mentioned below*) which warrant a sweeping overhaul.

• As a composer there's essentially nothing of value for me in Kontakt 8's main attractions:

    • Chords
    • Phrases
    • Leap

I'd say this underscores Native Instruments' desire to appeal to a wide audience. Kontakt 8 has particularly targeted people who want to generate automatic "music." I think Apple made the same mistake with Logic 11's Chord Line and its AI piano. It's a grand plan ... but one that leaves long-time supporters and composers with little to gain from recent updates, in this case, Kontakt 8 and Komplete 15.

Many of use would like Native Instruments to focus on:

    • improving its UI / UX—particularly on "under the hood" features
    • improved sampling—with attention to continuity and velocity layers
    • more and better acoustic instruments—we have plenty of synth and modeled options

And improve on the current v8 update with:

    • a more logical interface for the new generative features, options and controls
    •  a heaping helping of AI and scripted control over patterns and strums.

• I've found little that's compelling in Komplete 15's new offerings, particularly in the realm of realistic acoustic instruments and advancement in stringed instruments. Maybe the new standup bass and Valves. But really? The rest is about synthetic sounds, sound effects and building beats?

Overall the average quality of NI's acoustic sounds are deceptively problematic. For instance, every demo of Kithara has its sounds so drenched with echo and reverb that I'm unable to evaluate the fundamental quality of the basic samples—I guess that's intended It draws people in because everyone loves echo and reverb. Demos also conceal sample quality by making big arrangements blanketed with lots of percussion and surrounding instrumentation. The lack of transparency makes me want to wait ... and/or look elsewhere.

That said, I really appreciate Picked Nylon, despite its various velocity split issues and a number of other odd things. I'm able to make recordings like this:

https://audio.com/audius/audio/courante-robert-de-visee-mm-123-no-clicks

https://audio.com/audius/audio/st-james-infirmary-blues

 * With the advent of Komplete 15 I hoped we'd have deeper access preset pattern and strum functionality, like the option to import MIDI files generated from my DAW and use them a basis for a range of similar strums or fingering-picking patterns. Or that we'd have updated Komplete libraries with a built-in option for defining patterns and strums, including velocity, strum directions, width of strum ... presently we only have the option of moving pattens from Kontakt into the DAW. I've only found a few patterns I'd ever use, a couple with a muted strum, but the mute is too loud, and there's no way to attenuate that:

https://audio.com/audius/audio/mitchell-canyon-soloed-strum-ab

An example of a handcrafted generic guitar strum

I'd hoped that NI's Acoustic Sunburst or Picked Nylon would provide the necessary tools to internally defining strums of this detail. The secret is for a natural sound is:

Controlling the string range of a strum

    • not all strums cross all strings
    • up strums generally only span a few treble strings
    • down strums generally cover a wider range of strings
    • occasionally down strums brush only two or three of the bass strings
    • any strings should be targetable

Offsetting the onset of the various strings in a strum

Strums sound quite unnatural all notes sound at once:

    • on real up strums the treble strings sound first
    • on down strums the lower pitched strings sound first.

Timing the delay between onset

    • the onset delay should be tempo based ... or directly definable
    • the fastest part of the strum will naturally be in the middle of the stroke, though that may not correlate to the middle area of the strum! So it would be necessary to target the mid-part of the strum to a particular string.

The middle section of my recording has the Onset offsets removed, so all notes sound simultaneously, in a manner that sound unlike strumming and like a rigid interpretation of finger-picking. The effects were manually achieved in Logic Pro's piano roll editor, with NI's Picked Nylon instrument:

https://audio.com/audius/audio/realistic-strums-via-tab-ring-and-on-off…