Kontol S4 + Midifighter questions
Kontol S4 + Midifighter questions Posted on: 26.07.2011 by Lorri Yar Hi All!I'm hoping you guys can answer a couple of questions for me to help me work out a live setup. I currently use Serato + control vinyl for traditional DJing, but I want to build a live performance setup for my own material that still keeps a loose "DJ" format. I'm looking at moving to Traktor and the S4, but since I don't have Traktor I'm not sure of a couple of things. What I want to do is: 1. Load up my own multitracks (songs split into drums / bass / vocals etc) and play back, loop and apply FX to those sections. -> This part seems pretty straightforward with the S4, having 4 decks to play with. 2. Record loops on the fly, including live stuff through a microphone. -> Again, this part seems pretty straightforward with the S4 and Traktor and perhaps a footswitch. 3. Play back single hit drum sounds using a controller during certain sections, and build up live beats via loops. This 3rd part is where I get a little uncertain. Do you believe getting something like a MIDI Fighter would be suitable for that kind of thing? I understand that Traktor has one-shot sample banks and I assume that I could map the MIDI Fighter to play back those samples. My concern would be how easy it might be to switch the sounds loaded in those banks from track to track in a live setting. I don't want to be touching the computer too much. Is there a better way to handle this kind of task through Traktor? Maybe putting in a naked kick, snare, hi hat etc sequentially on a single track, like a battle record, and then triggering the sounds using a MIDI Fighter via cuepoints? Is triggering cue points using a MIDI Fighter responsive enough to to build drum tracks on the fly like this? Might it be too CPU intensive to be jumping around cuepoints so much on a single track, whilst simultaneously looping and playing back other tracks in Traktor? Would I be better off getting Maschine or an MPC instead and using that to handle live playback of single shot samples? Hope you guys can help me out here. I'm just at the stage of trying to work out what's possible at the moment. | |
| Leeanna Ayla 27.07.2011 |
Originally Posted by On The Buttons
Originally Posted by On The Buttons
|
| Lorri Yar 26.07.2011 | Hi All! I'm hoping you guys can answer a couple of questions for me to help me work out a live setup. I currently use Serato + control vinyl for traditional DJing, but I want to build a live performance setup for my own material that still keeps a loose "DJ" format. I'm looking at moving to Traktor and the S4, but since I don't have Traktor I'm not sure of a couple of things. What I want to do is: 1. Load up my own multitracks (songs split into drums / bass / vocals etc) and play back, loop and apply FX to those sections. -> This part seems pretty straightforward with the S4, having 4 decks to play with. 2. Record loops on the fly, including live stuff through a microphone. -> Again, this part seems pretty straightforward with the S4 and Traktor and perhaps a footswitch. 3. Play back single hit drum sounds using a controller during certain sections, and build up live beats via loops. This 3rd part is where I get a little uncertain. Do you believe getting something like a MIDI Fighter would be suitable for that kind of thing? I understand that Traktor has one-shot sample banks and I assume that I could map the MIDI Fighter to play back those samples. My concern would be how easy it might be to switch the sounds loaded in those banks from track to track in a live setting. I don't want to be touching the computer too much. Is there a better way to handle this kind of task through Traktor? Maybe putting in a naked kick, snare, hi hat etc sequentially on a single track, like a battle record, and then triggering the sounds using a MIDI Fighter via cuepoints? Is triggering cue points using a MIDI Fighter responsive enough to to build drum tracks on the fly like this? Might it be too CPU intensive to be jumping around cuepoints so much on a single track, whilst simultaneously looping and playing back other tracks in Traktor? Would I be better off getting Maschine or an MPC instead and using that to handle live playback of single shot samples? Hope you guys can help me out here. I'm just at the stage of trying to work out what's possible at the moment. |
| Lorri Yar 28.07.2011 | Thanks for the help. It certainly looks like I'll be able to achieve what I want, albeit with a couple of compromises. The more I read about the S4's features, the more I'm impressed. Should hopefully be able to build something that stands apart from the current APC / Launchpad / Ableton crowd. |
| Leeanna Ayla 27.07.2011 |
Originally Posted by On The Buttons
Originally Posted by On The Buttons
|
| Lorri Yar 27.07.2011 | Thanks Merlin. I've grabbed the Traktor manual and it mentions being able to set the looper's input as CUE. This sounds like a solution for me - routing decks C + D to the headphone cue and then recording my live cue point triggering on both decks simultaneously in the looper. Can anyone confirm that I have understood this correctly, please? If so, would it be possible to assign buttons on the Midifighter (or similar) to switch the looper's input between CUE and MIC / AUX? Or cycle between inputs in the menu using a single button press? It would be great to be able to do this without fiddling with a mouse or trackpad. |
| Davida Marmet 27.07.2011 | I believe there is a loop recorder bank, which is kind of like a 5th deck. I'm believeing that you can set the loop recorder to only hit certain decks, which would technically solve your issue. will need to double check the ability to exclude decks for the loop recorder... |
| Lorri Yar 26.07.2011 | Thanks for the reply. I guess the downside of using cuepoints is that 2 sounds can't play simultaneously from the same deck, which means splitting live one-shot playback between 2 decks at once. Would it be possible to do the following?: - Have decks A + B playing back tracks - Build a beat using cue points on decks C + D - Record the signal from C + D as a loop I had a check for the S4 manual on the NI website, but can't find a download link anywhere. |
| Leeanna Ayla 26.07.2011 | Yep you want a midi fighter. I also believe what you want to do it would be better suited to build some tracks with 8 cue points each rather than just using the sample decks. Making C and D track decks with 8 cue points gives you 16 points on the bottom where as sample decks would only give you 8. |
<< Back to NI - Native Instruments S4/S2 Controller talkReply