How Do I Get The Sound From Kontrol49 To My Daw?

Hi All,

I’m a newbie to the forum and to setting up my Kontrol49 that I bought used recently. I know this will sound really stupid, but I’m trying to get the embedded sounds (mood, minimoog, etc) out to my DAW app (FL Studio) and am having a real terrible time making that happen. I can go the other way and have the Kontrol49 control the sounds I can select in my DAW (like from a piano, or other instrument in the app) but for the life of me I cannot get the scenes from my Kontrol49 to be heard in the app. I can open the Kontrol49 librarian and I can drag/drop the Moog k4s file to the control pad and load it up fine. But when I go to use that from the Control Pad to my app so I can hear Moog in the app - no joy. I’ve also tried this in LMMS (free app) and no joy there either. I’m controlling my Kontrol49 via USB-Midi and it seems to work great in one direction. I’ve been through various midi settings and I’m confused what I should use for the control and what I use for the In/Outs for Midi, too.

If anyone has any immediate suggestions that I can start playing with, please do reply to this thread. Ultimately this is for my teenage daughter - she’s the one that bought the keyboard…I’m just the geek Dad that’s gotten it to work in one direction (to the app playing from the keyboard) but befuddled how to get the Korg Kontrol49 ‘sounds’ or ‘scenes’ to play on the app. MANY THANKS FOR YOUR HELP WITH THIS!!

Marty

Well at least you’ve given us a hint your on Linux although you’ve provided no real details of your setup whatsoever to help us with trying to help you out!

Although I’ve just had a quick look on the Korg website and it seems to say what I initially though. That the Kontrol series are Controllers only. The have not onboard sounds to get off them. What are you going on about? Do you mean something different to the Kontrol? What makes you think it has sounds on it? Where did you get the patch names “mood” and “minimoog” from in your post?

Hi Marty,

Unfortunately, as kazakore has stated, your original post was a bit confusing.

However, it looks like you are new to the computer music world, so first of all, welcome!

Lets take each point in turn.

The Moog K4S file appears to be used for the librarian software that came with the Kontrol49. Does it look something like this?. If so, then there has been some misunderstanding. As mentioned before, the controller doesn’t generate any sound, it only sends the commands. The librarian is used to assign the different controls (pads, sliders, knobs) to send different commands. As some hardware uses different commands for the same functions, it is in the librarian that the different commands are allocated. They are not usually required for virtual devices (e.g. in FL Studio).

So, taking all the above into account it sounds like the device is doing exactly what it is supposed to be doing. A key is pressed on the keyboard, the controller sends a MIDI command to the software, the software inteprets the command and generates a sound. Thus, to create different sounds you specify this in the software (as you have indicated you have already been doing).

I hope this helps.

To get a further understanding of what it going on I recommend reading the first parts of the Tweak’s guide.

And sorry if I came across a little harshly, wrote in the last few minutes before I could leave work for the day. Let me welcome you to the community now at least.

Missed the FLoops bit when looking back over your post. Very well presented answer by mxb that explains the situation clearly. I thought after hitting Send that the K4S file was likely for setting the controllers to the right CC values for a variety of instruments but was shutting down for the day then.

Good luck with producing, there is a lot to learn but it is fun and rewarding if you put the time and energy/love in.

Right time to go eat some steak :)

Kazakore and mxb,

Thanks for your insight, and I was brief about my accounting of the issue at hand since I was madly typing that out over my lunch hour and came up close to work time again. I wasn’t sure how detailed I should be on this initial post and I can tell you from my 1 week of getting this (sort of) running for my daughter that setting up this Korg Kontrol49 has been like flying the Space Shuttle to me. I’m a Principal Engineer by trade (so I know my way around PCs and such) but this music producing is totally out of my area of expertise and so I’m (very likely) to sound like a complete dolt on the issue - please forgive me on that one…This is my daughter’s (newest) entry into music…I’m just being that supportive Dad trying to make it ‘hum’ for her. She’s not the hardware geek…I am.

Okay - a few (more) details: She’s using a Dell XPS laptop that has Windows 7 loaded on it and FL Studio she just bought. As a second (free) DAW, she found LMMS online compiled for Windows and we loaded it on as a means to do troubleshooting with this issue, too (if there was any reason FL Studio wasn’t working, we had the other DAW to bounce it off of). She convinced me (and again, guys, I know nothing about this stuff so I took it hook, line and sinker) that there were ‘sounds’ that could be downloaded from the Korg Kontrol49 Editor Library (like minimoog, moog, etc) and some others that are in that library. I figured that the midi would control a DAW (like mxb mentioned) and we have that working pretty solid now - - in fact that worked practically out of the box (so to speak, this is a used unit - nice shape I might add). But she convinced me that the Korg Kontrol49 had all these ‘sounds’ that could be downloaded from the Kontrol49 to the DAW so the DAW could sound like a minimoog, moog, or wahtever other k4s file was in the editor. I’m not discounting anyone’s opinion here, but some of the other k4s files in the editor look like synth types (and, God, don’t ask me to name them because I’m the dolt here - my daughter could name them off instantly). But if they’re used to control the pads and other controls for that type, then I’m totally good with that explanation and will put all that to rest. But just let me know if there’s some special mode where the Kontrol49 can/cannot download ‘sounds’ to the DAW. Once I have the info on that, I’ll sleep better at night…finally…!

Again, seems to be working pretty nicely with either DAW itself (FL Studio or LMMS) where the Korg Keyboard is the controller to the DAW and we select whatever sound in the DAW to produce. It’s just that nagging issue if the Kontrol49 has any way to download its own sounds into the DAW that’s left open-ended for me.

Okay, back to the forum - you guys are the greatest for helping me along so far…but have no fear that I’m out there to produce any music - that’s up to my daughter…! Let me know what you think about the (remaining) issue above - THANKS MUCH!

Marty

Oh, and one more - - If anyone can explain what these k4s files are used for on the Korg Kontrol49, I would greatly appreciate it. I know I can drag and drop them onto the pads to load them to the pads…but then what?

Thanks and let me know…!

Marty

Can I ask why you are posting this on the Renoise forum if your daughters DAW of choice is FLoops, you’ve used LMMS (not Renoise Demo) to try and prove it is not the fault of the DAW and the issue seems to be with Korg equipment?

Basically I believe the K4S files are Scene files. In the MIDI standard you have 128 7bit controllers (CC values) some of which are standardised, the majority of which can be assigned by the synth manufacturer to whatever they wish. These scene files will set your knobs and sliders to be sending on specific CC values to control the important parameters for the synth they are named under, probably trying to always have similar functions (eg filter cutoff) on the same physical controller between scenes.

You say you know you can drop them onto Pad of the controller? From my very quick glancing of the Quick Start Guide they can then be loaded (you can have up to 12 scene files on different pads ready) by holding the Scene button and pressing the pad of your choice.

Unlikely to be very helpful for what you want though, and the Kontrol series are only controllers, not synthesisers, so there are no onboard sounds.

Kazakore,

Thanks for the reply back - much appreciated. I think I can finally rest on the issues that I’ve raised here regarding the Kontrol49 and the k4s files and their function. All this info I’ve received confirms what I thought - but then again, I’m not an expert on any of this by a long way.

When I was searching for info on the Kontrol49 using Google, the Renoise forum seemed to have the best responses for common/typical issues with the Kontrol49 - kudos to you fellows for that. I wasn’t aware that there’s a Renoise DAW and will certainly look at that, too. FL Studio is something that my daughter picked up from collaborating with other users of the Kontrol49 she knows - so that’s why she selected that DAW to start on (and didn’t work until I was able to get the USB midi channels lined up). When I got into troubleshooting the keyboard/midi issues using her laptop, I used LMMS to bounce off of to see how other DAWs handle midi as a means to troubleshoot the original issue - getting ‘sound’ out of the Kontrol49 (which I now know is impossible - the scene files are there to lock controls on the Kontrol49 to the particular synth being used as you’ve pointed out in this thread). So I may, since I’ve been researching this quite a bit for her, look into the Renoise app and see what advantages there are. When I joined the forum I thought it was more for other producers collaborating - imagine my embarassment that I’m posting things about FL Studio (as well as LMMS) on a competitor’s forum . The take-away from that is I’m helping a newbie get started…and I’m the bigger newbie here. But we will look at Renoise as an option, too.

Okay, that all said - Again, I appreciate the info you’ve given me with regard to the original issue and can finally get her launched in the right direction. This is a great forum and the members seem to have a keen interest in music production, so this may be a good place for my daughter to collaborate with other producers, too. I’ve already mentioned to her that this group seems like a good one to learn from.

Thanks again for the help, Gents - greatly appreciate it.

Marty

Renoise is a DAW (although some would argue to class it as a Tracker rather than a full-blown DAW so shall we call them all Sequencers instead? Splitting hairs now…) and the reason (m)any of us are on this forum is because it is often out tool of choice.

As I say to anybody who is starting producing there really is not any best software out there! All have their pros and cons, the majority being related to workflow and learning curve, how your brain works, what you are comfortable with, what other kinda of environments you have used in the past. I generally try and get them to try at least a few before spending any money on anything.

Renoise (obviously.)
Ableton Live
“Classic” DAW (Logic/Cubase/Reaper)
FLoops
Reason(/Record)

Or if they are wanting to do more experimental stuff, soundscapes etc, even interacting with external transducers (light, motion sensors etc) rather than producing/recording music the likes of Audio Mulch, Max/MSP, Reaktor and PureData might get a mention but I very much doubt that’s what you’d be looking into for the moment!