1. Select new instrument from the loadsave menu and click on EDIT.

Next click on mapping editor.

2. The mapping editor is where you will assign your WAV file to the keys on the keyboard. Find the wav file from your hard-disk using the file explorer in the far left portion of Kontakt. When you find the file, drag it across to the mapping window. You will notice that as you drag it over by moving up and down you can increase the spread which the sample will have. For the sake of this tutorial we will assume that the sample will be across all of the keys, so drag to the top of the window so that the whole area is highlighted in light green, and let go of the mouse button.

3. If you select the zone you will notice that one of the keys on the keyboard is highlighted orange. This designates the key which the sample will playback at its normal pitch. The default is C3, which is the middle of the keyboard. If you wish to change this simply drag the orange key to the desired root note.

You will notice on this image that the zone no longer goes all the way down to keyboard. I have done this to demonstrate another important feature of the mapping screen. This designates the velocity range that the sample will respond to. The top end reprents maximum velocity, and the bottom minimum velocity. To change this you select the zone and hover your mouse over the edge of the zone until it turns into an up down arrow. You can then click and drag to the selected velocity range.

NOTES: Velocity range is useful when you have more than one sample in an instrument (multi-sampled). The idea is that you can recreate acoustic instruments by sampling them being played hardsoft and then setting the velocity range so that hard notes will only play when you hit the keyboard hard and vice versa.The wav which you have downloaded already has a loop point and so we will not be looking at the loop editor in this tutorial. Chances are before a wav makes it into kontakt it already has a loop point assigned. However this will be covered in a separate tutorial in the future.

PART 2

In part one you learned how to map a wav file to the keyboard, how to change the root note and set the velocity range. Now you need to put the sound through an envelope so that you shape the volume over time.

1. On the Amplifier module, select the first + (Modulation) and select Envelopes and then select AHDSR

2. Now you have an envelope which you can alter the attack, hold, decay, sustain and release. You manipulate the values by using the appropriate knob, and you can see the envelope change. Here is a brief guide to what each does;

Attack: This affects how the note will begin. If it is set to zero then the Note will sound at its fullest volume at the beginning. Setting the value higher results in the sound fading in by the amount of time in ms.
Hold: This value determines how long the sound will stay at the volume reached at the end of the attack setting. Decay: This setting allows you to specify how long it will take for the sound to pass from the max volume reached at the end of the hold to the sustain value (The next setting)
Sustain: This value dictates the volume at which the sound will end up until the key is released.
Release: The final stage of the envelope sets how long in ms it will take for the sound to fade away once the key has been released.
NOTE: You can also use envelopes for other things within Kontakt, for example you could assign the envelope to the source to alter the pitch of the sound over time. You would do this as outlined above but you would click the modulation menu on the source box.

3. Finally one more thing worthy of mention at this point is the velocity amount, and envelope amount. The Velocity amount dictates how velocity sensitive the sound is. If you set this all the way to the right, then the sound will play quietly when hit quietly, and loud when played hard. If you slide it all the way to the left it will reverse this so that hitting the key quietly will make the sound play loud.The envelope amount makes the whole envelope reduce in volume but retain its shape, the default is maximum. If you take this in to the negative value it will invert the envelope, so that each stage has the opposite effect on the sound.

PART 3

In part two we assigned an envelope to the instrument, now we will add a filter.

1. On the source module, select the first + (Modulation) and select Sample Filters and then select 4-pole low pass filter. Once the filter is in, turn the resonance up to about 75% so that it will highlight the effect. Next take the filter cut-off to around 75% also.

2. Next we will now pass the filter through an envelope so that we can change its cut-off frequency over time. You could create a unique envelope for it to pass through, however for the purpose of this tutorial we send i through the existing one we created in part two. The benefit of doing this is that it will be tied to the volume and so the filter will react in the same way. This is a common way of making an instrument behave more like an acoustic instrument.Select the modulation menu, select the existing option and select the AHDSR envelope. If you now play with the envelope you will see how it effects the cut-off frequency of the sound.

PART 4

In part three we assigned we added a filter and passed it through the envelope. Next we will add an LFO and use it to modulate the filter.

1. Go to the Mod Tune Page and look at the modulation section. This is where you can assign source modulators by amount to any destination in the destination list.

For this tutorial we will be using LFO1 to modulate the filter cutoff. In the first column (Source) select LFO1, in the second select amount 2, and then on the third select cutoff.Next move the amount up to 100 for maximum depth of the effect.

2. It should look like this

3. Now move over to the LFO1, and play with the parameters to hear the effect, Here is a description of what each does:

Freq: This is the speed at which the LFO oscillates
Delay: This adds a fade in time before the LFO takes full effect.
Sine: This box allows you to select the shape of the LFO
Sync: When selected this syncs the LFO speed to the sequencers bpm which is very useful!Now you have done this you will be able to create new mappings in the available boxes, for example Aftertouch to Pitch.
Notes:You can duplicate this parameter and use LFO 2 as the source in another box, and create interesting interaction between the two LFOs particularly if they are both synced.