Hey, does anyone use BIAB, Reaper and Kontakt for their MIDI tracks? I am having no luck and I'm hoping someone can tell me what I am doing wrong.
First Test to demonstrate Reaper and Kontakt work together ---------------------------------- in Reaper Insert virtual instrument on new track in Reaper choose Kontakt for the instrument and choose any Kontakt piano in Reaper set record output to MIDI click Record and play the built-in Kontakt keyboard MIDI is indicated on the track and it plays properly
2nd Test to try and use BIAB MIDI in Reaper with Kontakt ---------------------------------- in Reaper Insert virtual instrument on new track in Reaper choose Kontakt for the instrument and choose any Kontakt piano in Reaper set record output to MIDI in BIAB choose a piano RealTrack with notation and generate in BIAB drag the Piano track to MID from BIAB drag MID to Reaper track (the one with Kontakt) MIDI is indicated on the track but it does not play
I'm sure I am missing something simple but I cannot seem to figure it out. Thanks in advance for any help.
3J, Pipeline beat me to this one. I am not sure what part of world he lives in, but he is quick on these types of questions.
The Omni midi input in Kontakt can simplify a workflow. Keep in mind, a single instance of Kontakt on a single track can service multiple midi instruments across multiple Reaper tracks all at the same time. This minimizes CPU usage. In the early days I took advantage of this using templates which configured each midi channel to a specific Kontakt instrument. In this way you need to specify the individual midi channels (0, 1, 2 ...) for each midi track. But it does get to be complicated! So in more recent times I tend to simply put a different instance of Kontakt on multiple tracks, one for each instrument. With this no need to know or care what midi channel is being used, so Omni work great.
So if you don't want to use Omni and do want to use a single Kontakt you need to remember the BIAB midi channel map: Bass - ch2 Piano - ch3 Drums - ch10 Guitar - ch6 Strings - ch7 Melody - ch4 Soloist - ch8
The other thing you need to be aware of is the octave of the midi data. Different Kontakt instruments utilize different areas of the keyboard for playing their instruments. BAIB tends to import its MIDI data at the low end (C1 - C2) and you need to transpose the notes up 1 or 2 octaves (C3 - C4). You can do this in Reaper with a click of the button.
I'm still not clear on the channel assignments as I had tried changing channels in Kontakt and also tried changing channels in the Reaper MIDI editor and none of it worked. But, as these things often go, once I got deep into areas I know little about I'm sure I was doing something wrong and couldn't get it to work.
But once I set Kontakt to omni...OMG! The heavens opened up and my BIAB-generated piano MIDI from a RealTrack sounded amazing! I spent the rest of the evening auditioning tons of Kontakt instruments on that one track! It was a delightful breakthrough for me as I knew (hoped) this was possible but had never gotten it to work in the occasional brief attempt.
At the end of the evening I briefly went back to trying to get drums exported as MIDI from notated BIAB RealTracks to work using the various drum kits I have in Kontakt. But I was unable to get it working properly. They made sounds but didn't sound right compared to how they sounded in BIAB. Maybe time of night? Maybe that transpose thing you mentioned?
Tonight I will try the transpose technique you suggested. Would I do this in the Reaper MIDI editor?
Thanks again for your help! This is opening up amazing pathways I suspected were there but had not yet been able to traverse!
I work in Studio One Pro 5 but I believe the process would be the same in Reaper. When I drag and drop MIDI files from either the BiaB DAW mode or the BiaB VSTi NO channel data is included in the transfer. I have to add a channel number to the track then match that channel number in Kontakt.
Omni is great BUT as been previously mentioned any other Kontakt preset/sound that is choosen will play on the same omni channel. You can have 16 different presets/sounds playing at the same time on different channels using the method I just proposed. In Omni all channels will respond to the same note, volume change, etc. When on separate channels each channel is independent of the others, thus a volume change on one channel will not affect the other channels/sounds.
I hope this helps.
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