NI Komplete 7

[Transcend]

I got this around a month ago or so but never got around to installing it.

I just did so today and just had a mess around with with absynth & massive.

Theres some seriously good stuff in here that i think may have just given my creativity the good kick up the ass that its been needing (which is why i got it in the first place)

Does anyone else using this?

If so do you have any general hints & tips?

Hopefully i should have some new tracks posted up very soon

[Frank]

All the Native Instruments stuff is top notch, good sounds, not too memory-hogging and just nice to use. In all the years I've been using VST's I've never had a Native Instruments plugin crash on me and that's pretty good going.

I didn't buy Komplete but I've got a lot of the plugins that are included in it. Got a bit bored of Absynth, it's good for silly noises but I never found it particularly useful for songs and I've got no use for the 5.1 surround sound patches. Same for Reactor, good but not what I want for rock and pop music.

The Hammond gets the most use and Guitar Rig is fantastic for making sampled basses sound real. Battery is utterly brilliant for kit samples, especially if you trigger it from something like Groove Agent then chop the parts up and rearrange them into nice human-sounding arrangements. A real drummer will still laugh at you but it's good enough for most purposes.

I've only used a demo of Kontakt but people say good things about it - mostly I'll sync Cubase with Reason and use the Reason sampler with Electromechnical Refill for things like Jazz Basses and Fender Rhodes but from reading about Komplete you've got NI versions of those too. I might have to fork out for the full package sometime.

[Transcend]

All the Native Instruments stuff is top notch, good sounds, not too memory-hogging and just nice to use. In all the years I've been using VST's I've never had a Native Instruments plugin crash on me and that's pretty good going.

I didn't buy Komplete but I've got a lot of the plugins that are included in it. Got a bit bored of Absynth, it's good for silly noises but I never found it particularly useful for songs and I've got no use for the 5.1 surround sound patches. Same for Reactor, good but not what I want for rock and pop music.

The Hammond gets the most use and Guitar Rig is fantastic for making sampled basses sound real. Battery is utterly brilliant for kit samples, especially if you trigger it from something like Groove Agent then chop the parts up and rearrange them into nice human-sounding arrangements. A real drummer will still laugh at you but it's good enough for most purposes.

I've only used a demo of Kontakt but people say good things about it - mostly I'll sync Cubase with Reason and use the Reason sampler with Electromechnical Refill for things like Jazz Basses and Fender Rhodes but from reading about Komplete you've got NI versions of those too. I might have to fork out for the full package sometime.

aye it seems kompleten has absolutely everything under the sun ive barely scratched the surface.

Ive used kontakt quite a lot in the past with steven slate drums & east west voices of the apocalypse (choir vsti)

[Frank]

Just a few thoughts on Battery ...

Battery defaults to something ridiculous like 16 outputs, it's a good idea to lower this to save the mixer being filled with unused channels which just makes it unmanageable.

The Battery outputs are stereo so things like toms and cymbals can be submixed inside Battery then sent to a single stereo output, saves a lot of messing about and keeps the main mixer screen less cluttered. I have a BD output, Snare output, Hats output, Toms output, Cymbals output and I rarely use any more than that.

Then you can add insert compression and set levels/reverb sends for each drum track as normal. I like to send everything to a single Group fader called KIT so I can have one fader for general drum level and still go back to the individual channels if I want more snare or bass drum. A teeeeny bit of reverb on the KIT fader then simulates ambient mics or overheads, remember to use low frequency rolloff on the reverb plugin or your mix will rapidly turn to bass frequency reverb mush.

MIDI-wise, some of the kit mappings are non-standard BUT Battery has a really useful "Learn" button which lets you select a sample - say, open hihat - then click Learn, send it one MIDI note and it will map that note to that sample. Very handy if you trigger it from a groove synthesiser or if you import MIDI drum loops, saves you a lot of mucking about.

[Transcend]

Thats all very handy and kind of you to post it up letting me know.

I doubt i will use battery though as i already have far too many vstis including steven slate, bfd2, superior 2 etc

I could actually dump those samples into battery but i don't think i need to go learning new stuff that does the same as what i already have at the moment.

[Modular1]

I have komplete too. NI make the best stuff of this kind.

My personal favourite is FM8. Do yourself a favour and spend some time with it. It's FM synthesis which is a different type of synthesis to Massive which lends itself more to dance music trance leads and drum and bass baselines. Absynth lends itself more to film soundtrack and computer game music type sounds.

FM synthesis is the kind loved by Brian Eno. Real ethereal type stuff. Try out some of the pad sounds in the library and just hold down some chords and let the sounds evolve. Try playing chords in the background of your demos. They sound great.

[JJretroTONEGOD]

I have komplete too. NI make the best stuff of this kind.

My personal favourite is FM8. Do yourself a favour and spend some time with it. It's FM synthesis which is a different type of synthesis to Massive which lends itself more to dance music trance leads and drum and bass baselines. Absynth lends itself more to film soundtrack and computer game music type sounds.

FM synthesis is the kind loved by Brian Eno. Real ethereal type stuff. Try out some of the pad sounds in the library and just hold down some chords and let the sounds evolve. Try playing chords in the background of your demos. They sound great.

+1 it's an amazing virtual synth, for me the best NI one, was going to say the same thing but you beat me to it

[JJretroTONEGOD]

Also get FM7 is great if you can even get hold of it, another superb synth

[Transcend]

FM was the next one to check out on my list.

I think im going to need to get a midi keyboard/guitar to make the most of this as so far ive found the effects arent really the sort of thing you can compose as they mutate in such an unpredictable way so its going to have to be played live on the tracks.

Thanks for the input guys

[Modular1]

Also get FM7 is great if you can even get hold of it, another superb synth

a bit pointless if you have fm8. fm7 is just an older version. all the presets are included in fm8 (as are all the preset packs you could buy for it online).

[Modular1]

FM was the next one to check out on my list.

I think im going to need to get a midi keyboard/guitar to make the most of this as so far ive found the effects arent really the sort of thing you can compose as they mutate in such an unpredictable way so its going to have to be played live on the tracks.

Thanks for the input guys

m-audio do some great cheap keyboards. simple and effective. the novation ones look great on paper but their automap technology is far from perfect and more of a pain in the ass than useful (from somebody who does not find midi/synthesizer tech daunting).

[Frank]

I think im going to need to get a midi keyboard/guitar

Even if you only have very basic keyboard skills it's much easier to record from a MIDI keyboard than a MIDI guitar. I've got the Roland GI-20 and it's pretty good but you still need to go back into the MIDI parts and take out all the double triggers and bum notes every time. I tend to use it for triggering bass samples, makes them sound like a real (ish) bass player rather than a keyboard player.

[JJretroTONEGOD]

Also get FM7 is great if you can even get hold of it, another superb synth

a bit pointless if you have fm8. fm7 is just an older version. all the presets are included in fm8 (as are all the preset packs you could buy for it online).

really?

[Johnny Mac]

I've got Komplete 6 which i use with Kore2. Its a great way of managing sounds and finding them quickly. I did buy the Kore2 hardware controller too which is good for tweaking sounds. Its well worth the extra imho.
There is a huge amount of sounds in 6 and I've read 7 has even more, its just immense. The synth sounds are incredible I think. I find myself playing around more with those than recording guitar. Its nice blending the two up as well. I do think that that the drum sounds in Battery are not as good to the sounds in Superior Drummer 2 but its still a great program.
A midi keyboard is a must and they are very cheap these days. Midi guitar is a lot of money. I've got the Ghost system in one of my guitars linked to an Axon AX100 MKII. Its great fun but like Frank says, you do have to erase all the unwanted triggers out but it does help get parts down you can't play on keyboards. You can play any of the sounds in Komplete on the guitar!
If you use all this with Logic 9 then you get a huge amount of loops to mix all the the stuff up with too. It can be a bit of a head$%&# with all those options!
I wish i had more time to use it. What with work, my woman who has a child time has became even more scarce.