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NATIVE INSTRUMENTS Kore 1.0.2 (Mac/Win)

Oct 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By Len Sasso

           

Apparently, Kore's mission is to be all things to all people. Native Instruments Kore 1.0.2 is a standalone plug-in host that can turn your laptop or spare desktop computer into a rack of gear. It's a USB 2.0 MIDI and audio interface that, along with a MIDI keyboard, makes your laptop a roadworthy synth. It's a plug-in that can load and save layered combinations of virtual instruments and effects called KoreSounds. It's a KoreSound librarian that, when combined with Native Instruments Komplete 3, includes roughly 11,000 factory KoreSounds. Finally, it's a high-resolution hardware control surface for mixing KoreSounds and tweaking their settings.

You can use the Kore hardware's MIDI and audio interfaces without the Kore software, but you can't launch the software without having the hardware attached to the computer. That is unfortunate because the software could be quite useful on its own — for example, when working on a laptop in a limited space, or in a 2-computer setup with one computer hosting a Kore Performance rack and the other using Kore as a plug-in in a digital audio sequencer.

The Kore software is a cross-platform application requiring Windows XP with Service Pack 2 on the PC and Mac OS X 10.3 or later on the Mac. It is compatible with Intel Macs, but not all the Native Instruments plug-ins that it supports are Intel compatible yet. The software runs both standalone and as a plug-in. It is provided in VST, AU, and RTAS formats for the Mac and VST, DXi, and RTAS formats for the PC. It hosts VST, AU, and DXi plug-ins.

FIG 1: The KoreSound mixer offers three views: Rack, Mixer, and Combined (shown here).

The KoreSound

The core of Kore is the KoreSound. A KoreSound consists of virtual-instrument and effects plug-ins, metadata categorizing the KoreSound, keyboard mapping information, MIDI files, mixer routings, and hardware controller assignments. Aside from metadata, most plug-in hosts (digital audio sequencers, software plug-in racks, and so on) combined with a MIDI hardware control surface are capable of similar setups, so what makes Kore special? Read on.

A new KoreSound starts with an empty mixer into which you can insert three types of channels: Source, Send, and Group. You can have any number of Source and Group channels, but at most four Send channels. Each type of channel has an instrument plug-in slot followed by four effects plug-in slots. The instrument slot receives MIDI messages; the others do not.

Kore's graphical user interface affords three views of the KoreSound mixer. Rack view shows the modules as they would appear in a gear rack, with a minimal complement of mixer controls at the right edge of each module. Mixer view arranges the channels as vertical channel strips, giving you more mixing controls and fewer plug-in controls. I found the Combined view to be the most useful; it displays the rack-style module for the selected channel strip along with abbreviated channel strips for each channel (see Fig. 1).

The only real difference between the channel types is how they receive audio input. Source channels receive audio from the Kore software's audio inputs. Send channels receive audio from the KoreSound's four built-in send buses, and any type of channel can send to each of those buses. Group channels receive audio from group buses, one of which is created automatically for each Group channel. You can route the output of any channel to any of the group buses.

Although any channel can host a virtual instrument, Source channels are intended for that. The purpose of the instrument slots in the other channels is to allow effects to be controlled by MIDI. For example, you could use a virtual instrument's filter to process audio and have that filter track the MIDI keyboard or be controlled by a MIDI-triggered envelope generator.

MIDI Matters

Each KoreSound channel has a MIDI file player and a MIDI filter. The MIDI file player does not record MIDI, but you can load one or more Standard MIDI Files and trigger them from a MIDI keyboard. They can be played one-shot or looped, and you can set the loop's length, though not its start position. You can also quantize playback start and stop to beats or bars, and you can designate a separate note to stop playback.

With the MIDI filter, you can disable specific MIDI message types, select a MIDI channel, and specify MIDI Note Number and Velocity ranges. You can also choose a Velocity curve and set an overall transpose value. You can use the MIDI filter to split and layer virtual instruments, and you can use the Kore hardware, which I'll cover in detail later, for hands-on mixing of those splits and layers.

A KoreSound can be very complex in terms of both signal routing and MIDI options. When you save a KoreSound, you save the complete setup along with metadata for locating the KoreSound in the Kore browser.

Browse Awhile

The Kore browser gives you several views of the KoreSound library as well as a means to categorize its content. Kore maintains a database of all KoreSounds in the library, based on metadata stored with each KoreSound. In addition to cataloging the factory presets for all Native Instruments effects and virtual instruments in the Komplete 3 bundle, the Kore library contains roughly 200 KoreSounds, called Multi Sounds, that combine plug-ins in the Komplete 3 bundle. They show the true power of Kore, and although more would be welcome, those provided represent a significant creative effort.

FIG 2: The Kore Browser classifies KoreSounds in five metadata categories as shown in the columns on the left. You can add search text in the fields on the right.

Besides Kore's five fixed metadata categories — Instrument, Source, Timbre, Articulation, and Genre — you can enter author information, a rating, and comments in text fields (see Fig. 2). Selecting entries in the five categories narrows the browser's display of KoreSounds to those matching the entries. Typing queries into a search field narrows the display to those presets with matching text in one of the text fields. Unfortunately, you can't use both means at once to, for example, search a category-narrowed list for specific text.

You can use the browser's file-tree view to manually locate KoreSounds on your hard drives. The file-tree view has Sounds, Plugins, MIDI Files, and Performances tabs for displaying files of only those types. Once you find what you're looking for, you drag-and-drop it into the appropriate place in the rack or double-click on it to have Kore decide where it should go.