Review: Native Instruments Kore 2 Music Workstation
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4

Managing from the Kore

Playing Kore 2 with the preset sounds can already take you a long way. But the real fun begins when you start building your own.

In Kore 2, sounds are constructed in the Sound Matrix. This Matrix is made up of rows of channels containing channel inserts. There are three types of channels:

1. Input channels that accept audio input(s) from an external source or another sound matrix level;
2. Source channels without inputs (used, erg., for audio generators like soft synths or samplers); and
3. Group channels, which provide busing functionality for the Sound Matrix row in which they're used.

Each of a channel's inserts can accept a component: a Kore sound; an effect or MIDI plugin built into Kore 2; but also a third-party plugin in AU, VST, or RTAS format. Let's have a closer look.

Figure 3 shows one Input channel at the topmost matrix level (which is the root level, as the Matrix is oriented from top to bottom) containing the Blue Medicine sound as its sole component. This sound, in turn, is made up of five components that are displayed in the Source channel in the bottom Matrix level.

Fig. 3: A sound with five components in a source channel. Note the red corners that indicate the selected component (Room), and that component's editing panel at the bottom of the window. Usually, the selection corners are yellow; they're red here because learning mode was enabled — I was about to assign a parameter to one of the control knobs.

To expand this sound by adding more sounds or effects, all you have to do is add a Kore sound, or internal or external plugin, to an empty channel insert. To keep things organized, you can freely create empty channels of any of the three types mentioned above.

Sticking with the previous example, I created a new Source channel in my performance and added the Low Smash bass sound in one of its channel inserts. After switching to Kore 2's Sound Manager to bring up a hierarchical view of this setup, I set a split-point between the two sounds in the Channel Mapping panel by simply dragging the left and right edges of the layers as needed. (See Figure 4.)

Fig. 4: Managing layers and splits by dragging and dropping keyboard zones for individual components in the Sound Manager.

Fig. 5: Kore 2's output channel setups (shown in Apple Logic).

Kore 2 allows for multitimbral use, too: each component has its own MIDI configuration, so that you can freely assign MIDI channels to individual sounds and, thus, to their own track in your MIDI sequencer. What works for the input side also works for the output. Kore 2 offers several output channel configurations for use as a plug-in: configure the audio routing as desired, record onto different audio tracks, and post-process those audio tracks as needed. Very useful! (See Figure 5.)

The only limitation is the power of your computer, so you can build truly complex multi-layered soundscapes and split-sounds this way. Again, you can save these complex creations as a Kore sound: the whole structure, including all plugins, their respective settings, and MIDI and audio routings are encapsulated in a single component in the Kore 2 sound library, and will take up just a single channel insert when used.

Figure 6 shows what the Blue Medicine/Low Smash performance looks like as a single component:

Fig. 6: The multisound consisting of Blue Medicine and Low Smash encapsulated as a single component, using up just one channel insert (Blue Smash Med).

A big part of the appeal of this software is using the controller to tweak sounds in real time. Assigning a plugin's parameter to one of the controllers is as easy as activating learn mode, clicking on the desired onscreen controller knob or button, "touching" that parameter in the plugin's UI, and deactivating the learn mode.

That procedure works for all of the effects and MIDI plugins that ship with Kore 2, but not with the Kore sounds — unless you own a license to the respective Native Instruments software package, e.g., Absynth or FM8. In that case, you have full access to edit any of the sounds in Kore 2: double-clicking a channel insert brings up that plugin's own user interface. The same is true for third-party plugins.

For testing, I used Arturia's Jupiter-V. The controller assignments went perfectly smoothly, although there was one minor issue: the names of the parameters given out by the Jupiter-V plugin were rather cryptic. The NI developers have obviously seen this coming, so they made the labels next to the controllers editable. (See Figure 7.)

Fig. 7: Assigning a third-party plugin's parameters to a Kore 2 controller knob. Note that the names of the knobs are editable.

Kore 2 does not have any presets stored for third-party plugins. For some plugins, Kore 2 can import their presets and add them to its library automatically. Unfortunately, the Arturia plugin apparently was not among those supported by this feature.

Plugin parameters are not just available for tweaking directly inside Kore 2: the program also supports full automation by making its key controllers available to host software. When using your sequencer's learn mode, recording and fine-tuning parameter sweeps and morphs is a snap. There is just a minor hiccup in this feature, as a seemingly endless list of page/controller pairs appears in Logic's automation menu. (See Figure 8.) That causes a noticeable delay in opening that menu in Logic, which is a bit of a nuisance.

Fig. 8: Assigning parameters to automation tracks via Learn mode works fine, but due to the long list of generically available parameters, there is a noticeable delay before the main automation menu opens.

I also ran into another annoyance with Logic: its soft-synths — like Sculpture and ES2 — are off-limits for Kore 2. In fact, they are off-limits for any software other than Logic itself, because Apple built them right into the Logic application instead of implementing them as standalone AU plugins. Of course, this is not Native Instruments' fault, but you should be aware of this limitation if you use these Logic plugins a lot.