Kontakt and the Komplete Collection is a great deal. Not cheap, but worth the price of entry.

But understand what it is.... and what BB/RB can and cannot do.

You will really like Kontakt if you're into good quality synths. It takes you into the low end "professional quality" synths.... perfect for working up synth parts to be used in commercial projects for film & TV.

It will easily replace the basic patch synths in BB or RB with a sampled synth giving you better quality parts to work with.
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If I can get a quality instrument sampler along with a quality guitar amp simulator then maybe some of the MIDI tracks in BB and RB could be used with more regularity.

I love what is in Real Band, however it's chief limitation for me is not being able to play the melodies and or notes one wants specifically.

This is what I would be trying to achieve, or get closer to with the combination of these tools...


Therein, lies the problem.

The amp sim works with AUDIO tracks only. You could convert a midi tack to audio and process it, of course. I'm also not a fan of amp sims. I find them to mostly be stiff and harsh. others will disagree. I like a hardware solution with either the POD or the Mesa.

Real Band will NOT let you play a specific melody or a custom lick. I have tried every way I know to get a track out of RB, using the real tracks that played a freaking amazing piano part, converted to midi and played with a high quality piano sample in Kontakt..... it doesn't work. Oh it will convert to midi BUT, it becomes a generic track at that point that doesn't play anything even close to the real track part. So.....You either have to be able to play that part on guitar or keyboard and then you can use the tools in Kontakt to replace the synth with Kontakt and a sweet sample.

I find that Real tracks work extremely well for fills and solo's where they do NOT need to follow the melody. That's how I use them in my songs and projects. If I have a theme or need to have the solo instrument follow a singer's melody, I play the parts live into my DAW.

Actually, in a proper DAW, you can play Kontakt live, which is what I do, and I'm fairly sure you can do that in BB/RB as well.

BB is limited to a few tracks...... Real Band lets you use many tracks. So using Kontakt in it is the way to go.

If you're running a commercial studio, I'm curious which DAW do you use?

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www.herbhartley.com
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