G UITARTRACK S
KORE Recording Concepts
Are you the kind of player who likes to use
different effects at different parts of a song?
Maybe an EQ boost for a solo or a dash of
chorus for the bridge? It’s a fair bet that
you will end up changing your guitar tone
at least a bit at some point in the song. The
question is, how?
note” to “turn on this light” to, say, “load
this guitar amp preset.” MIDI data is easily
recorded and played back.
Enter Native Instruments’ KORE. KORE
is essentially a management tool for your
software processors and virtual instruments.
Traditionally there
have been two ways
to record a song using
multiple guitar tones.
The first is to record
the song in chunks and
change your settings for
each section. This takes
several passes to get
one take and can really
take away from the
flow of the song. It can
also be a pain trying to
remember your settings
if you need to re-cut
something. The second
way is to switch the
effects in real time. This
has its advantages as
far as recallability (since
you have presumably
memorized all of the
settings by the time you
are ready to record) and
it lends itself to recreating the recording
in a live performance. The only problem
is that the switching has to become part
of the performance. Wouldn’t you rather
focus on the guitar part instead of the
pedal work? We don’t know about you, but
we took guitar lessons when we were kids
– tap dancing was down the street.
remember, all MIDI data can be recorded
and played back at any time. So you would
record a simple MIDI sequence into your
DAW and assign it to the key switching in
KORE. Your sequence would play a low C at
the beginning of the song, telling KORE to
load up all of the amps and effects that you
specified in Preset 1. Then, just
before the point where you
want to change tones, your
MIDI sequence would play a
low D, which will tell KORE to
load up Preset 2.
Native Instruments’ KORE offers tons of software processing power and control.
Basically, your MIDI sequence
is just a series of commands
that will tell KORE to change
to the appropriate guitar tone
presets at the appropriate
times. Now when you go to
record the guitar part, you
will have your own virtual
engineer to change the tones
for you, allowing you to focus
on playing the guitar part.
Freeing yourself from having
to remember and match earlier
parts of a song – not mention
eliminating the switch dance
– will help you get a better
feel for the song and result in
better takes.
Ultimately, there are tons of amazing things
that a guitarist can do with software, especially KORE. We hope that this gives you a
starting point to begin exploring the possibilities of controlling guitar technology
using MIDI.
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to record
your song, start to finish, without playing
any instrument besides your axe? There is
a solution, but it does involve the M-word.
That’s right – we’re talking about MIDI.
Now, before you go diving out of windows,
let’s dispel a myth. MIDI isn’t just for tweaky
keyboard players or old video game music
and it isn’t difficult to use. You can use MIDI
data for almost anything, musical or otherwise. A MIDI signal is just a command that
tells some piece of gear to perform a task.
That could mean anything from “play this
Within KORE, you can assemble multi-part
effects chains using numerous, different
plug-ins and store them as a single preset.
In this case, you would probably be using
some sort of guitar amp emulator like Guitar
Rig and possibly an effect or two. Dial in
the tone you want for the first part of the
song using as many different processors as
you like. Save that sound as Preset 1. Then
dial in the sound that you want for the next
part of the song. Save that as Preset 2, and
so on. At this point, all of your sounds live
within one instance of KORE. This makes it
surprisingly easy on your computer’s processor since the entire setup is only seen as
one plug-in by your DAW.
Here is where it gets cool. KORE has a
unique feature called “key switching.” What
it does is read a certain MIDI command as
a cue to change presets. In other words,
you can assign a low C to “load Preset 1,”
a low D to “load Preset 2,” and so on. And
Sean Wooldridge has numerous engineering
and production credits in Nashville and has been playing the guitar for over a decade. A graduate of Berklee
College of Music in Boston, Sean is now a Sales Engineer
for Sweetwater Sound. Reach him at 800-222-4700 x1346
or at sean_wooldridge@sweetwater.com.
Nick Schenkel has been playing guitar since he
was 12 years old. Over the past 15 years, he has worked
in several professional recording studios and as a monitor
mix engineer for live performances. An honors graduate
from Washtenaw Community College’s Music Production
and Engineering program, Nick works as a Sales Engineer
at Sweetwater Sound. Reach him at 800-222-4700 x1399
or at nick_schenkel@sweetwater.com.
