LOOK BEFORE YOU LEAP!
WAHT THE BRAND NEW KONTAKT 8 LEAP FORMAT MEANS FOR BLIND USERS
Those who have taken the plunge and upgraded or installed Kontakt 8, might well have noticed a new file format and entry in the file menu that was hitherto not present previously.
The .NKL file format, which refers to Kontakt Leap instruments, is a new built in Kontakt performance tool for quickly adding user samples and loops to keys on your midi controller, which in theory at least, allows users to rapidly almost on the fly, with no great fuss or experience, trigger vocals, beats, fx and the like, without needing to roll up their sleeves to dig down and create a Kontakt sample instrument in the more traditional sense of the word.
To get you started, Native Instruments have thrown 12 Leap expansions into the Komplete 15 cooking pot, which offer users a reasonably diverse cross section of genres to play with, from Acoustic Drums, 80’s New Wave, Afro Beats, & Vocal Licks.
At the moment, they do not show up within Komplete Kontrol under the instrument browser, however as the sample sources are wav file based, you are still able to find them under loops or one shots, loading them from here only imports them into the existing Komplete Kontrol sample or audio module though, so they will not exploit the full potential as a true Leap kit.
To do this, you will need to load them directly into Kontakt 8 outside of the KK environment. Thankfully the Kontakt file menu has now become accessible, as of the later versions of Kontakt 7, so this part at the very least is not a total showstopper in terms of being able to load them.
From the blind and visually impaired perspective though, it’s all a bit perplexing as to how we can make too much creative use of this new feature at the moment.
The provided Leap sample kits are certainly loadable in the .NKL file format, and after doing so, you will find a set of samples assigned in the default group mode to an octave or so of midi keys (C2 to D4).
Samples can then be played, or rather, get triggered from the white notes, whereas the black keys are instead assigned as keyswitches to instantly invoke various FX such as machine gun stutters, flanges, phasers, pitch shifts, and other such delights, which come courtesy of the Kontakt 8 FX racks which contain versions of these well known Native Instruments stock effects.
These Leap sample sets are loaded into a sample slot, of which it seems there can be several, for example having loaded Acoustic Drums and then Hot Vocals, both of these Leap kits were being played simultaneously, and I could not find a way to remove or purge one of the instances.
Looking at the available parameters for a Leap kit when viewed from a DAW parameter list, (in my case Reaper), there were 16 controls available that are not otherwise accessible via the onscreen GUI.
The first 8 relate to those FX that had been factory loaded by default into the .NKL preset, these will vary from kit to kit, but Cut-off, Delay & Reverb did appear to be a constant among all kits.
Next came Play Mode, which allows you to select between Group, or Single.
In Group Mode, the 16 samples are assigned across the keyboard between C2 & D4 as previously mentioned.
In Single Mode, there is a Sample Selection control which will enable you to choose any of the 16 samples, and here they will then be spread over the range of your keyboard, and they will be pitch playable.
Other parameters include Tonality Lock, Scale Key, Scale Mode, Input Quantize On/off, Input Quantize Time, and Keyboard Scale Snap.
As for creating your own Leap Kits, sadly just like Kontakt as a whole it’s not at all accessible, the process generally involves dragging & dropping, which for us is entirely hit & miss, mostly miss, and there is not a current option to load a wav sample from the file menu, which is something I and others seem to have been requesting since the now long extinct Woolly Mammoth last drew breath!
Unfortunately, at this early initial stage for us, it’s a little difficult to envisage greater creative potential for the Leap feature.
One would assume that Native Instruments will not miss the opportunity to release further Leap expansion Kits, and just like ordinary Kontakt libraries, third party Leap Kits could be distributed by third parties, either commercially or by users for use in the full rather than Player version of Kontakt 8.
In terms of flexibility, perhaps when we eventually gain access to the Kontrol MK3 keyboards, it may be possible with the Kontakt integration to load a Leap Kit into a chosen area of your keyboard, for the instant performance triggering of one shot samples, whilst the rest of your keyboard is occupied with another loaded instrument, we simply do not know right now.
Finally, and although purely in the realms of speculation on my part, it might be feasible to add the Leap module into Komplete Kontrol, just like the sample and audio modes that we currently have, which originated as a part of Maschine, they could be further developed and integrated to incorporate some of the desirable Leap features that we cannot access within Kontakt itself, and in doing so integrate the .NKL file format into Komplete Kontrol.
For further reading on what Leap can potentially offer , checkout the following link:
Kontakt 8 Leap Expansions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOUjOdFw4iA
(c) Chris Ankin
KK-Access
29th September 2024
KK-ACCESS 