no, this is not my own idea by any means, but it cost me two days of experimenting and web research to get this running, so maybe it's useful for some of you, too.
-- I'm a guitar player myself, and I wouldn't leave any guitar samples in a final mix, no discussion.
-- Writing / arranging is different, though. I simply hate having to rerecord the acoustic rhythm every time I change something in the arrangement - what a pita !
-- Wouldn't you like a great sounding strummed steel string in Kontakt ?
You already got it, but NI did a stellar job of hiding it from us lowly customers.
-------------------------------------------
-- Load one of the four Akkord Guitar presets, they only differ in the amount of included chord types.
-- click the "edit wrench", the script window appears.
-- The 1st tab is active with that completely useless step sequencer gizmo.
Immediately press "Bypass" in the top left corner.
-- Select the 2nd tab, "key trigger", activate it, done !
-- Create two MIDI tracks both routed to that Kontakt patch, one called "chords" and the other called "groove".
-- The "chords" track contains the harmony information, entered anywhere below C4 (essential !).
If you want 4 bars "am - G - F - E7" for example, enter one 1/1 note of A and C each in the 1st bar, 1/1 note of G in the 2nd and 1/1 note of F in the 3ed bar, and finally one 1/1 note of E and D each in the 4th bar - voila !
Chord recognition like in those auto accompaniment thingies, in doubt experiment.
Root only means major, root + b3 means minor, root + b7 means dominant 7 ...
-- Still, you don't hear anything.
Insert the desired down- and upstrokes into the "groove" track.
The velocity determines the volume of that down- or upstroke, the length determines, well, guess what ?
C4 Downstroke - normal
Db4 Upstroke - normal
D4 Downstroke - loud
Eb4 Upstroke - loud
E4 Leftoff
F4 Downstroke - muted
F#4 Upstroke - muted
G4 Leftoff release: play and hold e.g. D4, then hit G4
and release D4: the leftoff sample is played
G#4 - D6 Noises
-- That's it, great sounding strummed acoustic for you !
-- In case you encounter problems when changing chords, simply shorten the notes of the chord track by a few ticks
-----------------------------------------
-- Thanks to all those whose little bits of information combined finally led me on the right track, and to NI for creating this fantastic sample set and hiding it so well !
-- Have fun,
susiwong
