Award Sounds

So you've got Kontakt to work with Logic and now one of the instruments is a bit too loud in one section so you want to automate.

Great, reduce the volume (using track automation in arranger) for that instrument. Only thing is, one of two things happens:

1. All of Kontakt's instruments change volume
2. None of Kontakt's instruments change volume

There is a way to control each instrument separately. It takes a bit of setup, but once it's done, it will soon become second nature.

Templates

I introduced why I setup a few Logic templates for Kontakt in the previous article. If you haven't already done so, it's worth creating at least one template while you try out these ideas. The key point is that you want a multi-output instance of Kontakt (not several instances - that'd be cheating and extra overhead) connected to an instrument channel plus as many stereo auxes as you need.

To ensure you've got the correct set-up for Kontakt, try this test. You should be able to highlight the Kontakt track in the arranger window, then select "New with Next Midi Channel" from the Arranger window menu. That should provide you with the same instance Kontakt, but also accepting events from the midi channel for the track that's just been created in Arranger.

Automate

Firstly, set up Kontakt to have at least two instruments (best if they're tonally different and easy to spot which is which)

1. Open up the Browser pane in Kontakt
2. Select Auto tab
3. Choose "Host Automation"
4. Drag #001 to the Volume slider of Instrument 1 in the right-hand pane of Kontakt (if the font's too large, then it may just look like #0, so pick the first in the list)
5. Drag #002 to the Volume slider of Instrument 2 in the right-hand pane of Kontakt (pick the 2nd if the font's too large to see all the text)
6. Back to Logic's Arranger Window
7. Select the first instrument's channel and View Track Automation
8. Select the attribute to automate (it usually shows Volume as default) and change this to Kontakt2 #001
9. Select the 2nd instrument's channel and change the automation attribute to Kontakt2 #002
10. Draw in some volume curves on each instrument
11. Play the song with Kontakt open and watch the sliders follow the volume curves.

Extensions

You seem to be able to use the automation for anything that requires a slider or a knob in Kontakt, e.g.

• the signal amount to feed to an aux send
• volumes
• pans
• and on some effect controls, e.g. flanger depth

I've never been able to get it to work with on/off switches, so I can't just turn a flanger off (but I could set it up as a send and automate the amount I send).

Hint

I rarely use effects in Kontakt (other than convolution for piano samples) because I can't automate them as well as I can within Logic. I find it a lot easier to route the basic sound out of Kontakt into Logic and then apply Logic's effects and processors to achieve the sound I'm looking for. That way, I can automate the effect level, switch effects on and off, etc as the song progresses.

Additional Thought

Logic 8 doesn't seem to care about the order of channels in the mixer. I'm going to play with moving each aux channel to a position directly below (or alongside) its respective instrument channel.

Why I found it messy in Logic 7.2

In 7.2 I had to automate the volumes of each aux. I never managed to get the host automation working properly. I don't actually know if it was what I was doing (or wasn't doing) or whether that was just the state of play at the time. Instead I automated the aux channels.