I do everything on the Mac, but I can help with some of your questions . . .

madisonfinley wroteI have installed Kontakt, downloaded, installed and registered everything, and the three libraries all come up when I open Kontakt 6.

My problem is getting Notion to recognize the sounds. At most, I can get one sound - one instrument.

(1) You need to enable kontakt for use with NOTION. This is done with NOTION Plug-In Manager.

(2) There are several flavors of Kontakt based on the number of channels, mostly 8 and 16, but there also is a flavor of Kontakt that is general.

(3) Kontakt needs to know where its instruments and sampled-sound libraries are located, and this is something you do in Kontakt, not NOTION.

Kontakt is a VST Instrument in NOTION terminology, so ordinarily it will be on one staff and you can assign it to one instrument . . .

There is a way to use one instance of Kontakt to provide several separate instruments, and this is done using a MULTI, as explained later in this post . . .

madisonfinley wroteI also have Presonus Studio One 5 as my DAW. Must I take my Notion score into Studio One? Or can I get everything working without doing that, by staying in Notion?

You can do everything in NOTION, but there are limits to the number of VSTi virtual instruments that NOTION can host . . .

In fact, no matter how the VSTi virtual instruments are hosted (Studio One Professional or NOTION), there are limits due to the processing and computer resource requirements; but the general rule is that hosting the VSTi virtual instruments and VST effects plug-ins in Studio One Professional with NOTION only having ReWire MIDI staves for music notation is the best strategy, although it is more complex the first few times you do it this way . . .

It gets easier as you learn about ReWire and this strategy; and there are ways to create custom user-defined templates for the Studio One Professional "*.song" and NOTION score . . .

Basically, you configure the Studio One Professional project, where I focus on ".song" files, and then do a "Save As . . . " to create a custom user-defined template in a folder or directory you reserve for storing your custom user-defined templates; and you do the same thing with the NOTION scores, giving them meaningful names so the NOTON scores match the Studio One Professional "*.song" names . . .

For Studio One Professional, I use 20 Instrument Tracks as the comfortable limit per "*.song", and once the limit is reached for a layer, I record the audio generated biy the iInstrument Tracks to a corresponding set of Audio Tracks, followed by removing the Instrument Tracks to make room for another 20 Instrument Tracks . . .

I keep meaningfully-named archive versions, so if necessary I can go backward to change something; but overall the best strategy is to go forward . . .

This is one of my Simple, Stupid, and Silly genre songs done using the ReWire MIDI strategy . . .

[NOTE: This has approximately 50 to 75 Instrument Tracks and Audio Tracks, but there is not enough space to see all of them . . . ]



Project: Simple, Stupid, and Silly (PreSonus NOTION Forum)

If you plan to use a lot of articulations, dynamics, and other notation marks, then there are additional concerns, although people do this . . .

Here in the sound isolation studio, I avoid using articulations, dynamic marks, playing styles, and all that stuff--too much "busy" work . . .

Instead, I control dynamics with compressor-limiters; and I do articulations and playing styles by a combination of (a) using sampled-sound sets where the musician played the instrument in the desired articulation or playing style and (b) VST effects plug-ins for things like echoes, tremolo, and so forth, which for me is easier . . .

I do everything on treble staves, which NOTION supports via Transposition in NOTION Score Setup where, for example, you can specify that a treble clef for electric bass plays notes two octaves lower than notated . . .

So, here in the sound isolation studio there are 12 notes and 10 or so octaves, 2 of which are reserved to entertain or annoy bats, birds, cats, dogs, dolphins, porpoises, sea turtles, and whales, since they are the only ones that can hear the notes . . .

I use ReWire MIDI staves and host the VSTi virtual instruments in Studio One Professional 5 . . .

I work in ReWire sessions where Studio One Professional is the ReWire host controller and NOTION is the ReWire helper device . . .

Hosting the VSTi virtual instruments in Studio One Professional requires fewer computer resources and uses less overhead . . .

However, I work with Realivox Blue (RealiTone)--my favorite virtual female soprano--directly in NOTION, since she is controlled by keyswitches on a grand staff, and this is easier to do initially directly in NOTION . . .

Later, I record the audio in Studio One Professional to an Audio Track and then use the Melodyne Editor (Celemony) to make Realivox Blue sound more human, where the following YouTube music video is one of the experiments I did to make sense of Realivox Blue . . .

I's not perfect, but it was sufficient for me to discover the rules, at which time I stopped doing experiments . . .

One of the most difficult words was "taste", and it required a lot of work in the Melodyne Editor . . .

[NOTE: As with every music video I post--mine or other folks'--it's best to listen with studio-quality headphones like SONY MDR-7506, a personal favorite . . . ]

madisonfinley wroteWhen I try clicking on VST in Notion, it opens up another instance of Kontakt, but I never seem to be able to connect the one with the library to Notion; all I get is another empty Kontakt window.

When this happens, it's due to Kontakt not knowing where the instruments and sampled-sound libraries are located . . .

You can browse to them in Kontakt; and once you find them, Kontakt will remember where they are located in the future, although sometimes if you install an update to Kontakt or move to a different computer, you might need to locate them again . . .

madisonfinley wroteWill it ever be the case that I can have a template with an easy choice of available Spitfire instruments, like I have now with the bundled Notion sounds?

There is a way to do this on the Mac; but (a) it's an advanced, software engineering activity and (b) if you install an update to NOTION, it overwrites the custom in-app templates; so it's best not to do it that way, even if it's possible on a Windows machine . . .

However, there is another way to do this . . .

(1) Create a new NOTION score with all the VSTi virtual instrument libraries you want to use.

(2) Save the NOTION score with a name containing "template", for example "MyFavoriteTemplate.notion" or whatever name is meaningful to you.

(3) Now you have a custom template that you control.

(4) When you want to create a new score, open your custom template and immediately do a "Save As . . . " to give it the name of the new score. This way you do not overwrite the custom template.

(5) This strategy can be used for different sets of instruments, VSTi virtual instruments, and other combinations of VSTi virtual instruments and VST effects plug-ins.

MULTI

Generally, a VSTi virtual instrument will be focused on one instrument; but you can create a MULTI and assign several instruments to different channels . . .

Kontakt supports this . . .

In NOTION, you can put a MULTI on one staff as Channel 1 and then create more staves for other channels in the MULTI; but you also can switch from one MULTI channel to another MULTI channel on the same staff . . .

[NOTE: This was done when NOTION 5 was the current version, so some of the NOTION graphic user interface (GUI) will look different, and the NOTION 6 Mixer is a bit different; but the concepts are the same . . . ]



There is a way to make the NOTION staff names meaningful, so that instead of "Kontakt (1,2)" or whatever, the display name will be "Alto Saxophone" or whatever the instrument happens to be . . .

I have a video on this, but at the moment I can't find it . . .

REWIRE

I do everything in ReWire sessions where Studio One Professional 5 is the ReWire host controller and NOTION is the ReWire helper device . . .



Add more instruments and singing; and 25 versions later this is the completed song, which is one of my political allegories from a few years ago . . .



SUMMARY

Doing digital music production with Studio One Professional, NOTION, and a virtual festival of VSTi virtual instruments and VST effects plug-ins is on par with flying a spaceship or running a Fortune 100 corporation, but so what . . .

It's a lot of stuff to learn; but it makes sense with a bit of focused work . . .

Once it all makes sense, you can compose a virtual festival of something, which here in the sound isolation studio currently maps to lot of Simple, Stupid, and Silly songs . . .



Lots of FUN!

P. S. There are more "How To . . . ." videos on ReWire and other topics in my YouTube channel (see link below). . .

At present, my "How To . . . " videos are more popular than my songs, many of which I post in step-by-step versions so people can see one way a song is constructed in layers in sequential steps . . .

[NOTE: If you sort the YouTube videos based on "Most Popular", it's easy to find the "How To . . . " videos . . . ]

I think some of the songs are very good; but with two exceptions most of the songs get only a handful of views . . .

Occasionally, I compose something elaborate; but if a reasonably good, high school garage band with what eventually will be skilled musicians and singers can play one of my songs, then I'm happy . . .

My song about Angela Gossow's underpants is the biggest hit song, so far; and it was done with real instruments before I discovered NOTION, 11 years ago . . .



My version of "Sweet Hour of Prayer" is getting more views, perhaps because I added synthesized cat purring based on the idea that people like cat purring . . .

The number of views makes no difference to me; and I enjoy composing and recording songs--real instruments, real singing, and virtual instruments . . .

I am working on a book about digital music production; and sometimes I do the writing in this forum and then copy parts of what I write to Pages (a word processor for the Mac), where I do a bit of editing . . .

There is information in the book that is not found in my posts to this forum, of course; but I probably have posted most of the information over the past 10 years or so--just not in one topic in a focused way, which is fabulous . . .



Project: "Sweet Hour of Prayer" (PreSonus NOTION Forum)

Fabulous!

Matt, what I'm hearing you asking is how to set up Kontakt in Notion to respond to playing techniques or articulations that it finds in the Notion score?

The answer to your question is no, you don't need to export to S1 to utilize these instruments, it can all be done within Notion.

This isn't necessarily easy but it isn't that difficult either. I use a three-instance Kontakt player setup for each of my Spitfire Studio Strings sections. It looks like this:

Each Kontakt instrument contains the following patches: Core Techniques, Decorative Techniques, and Legato Performance (so this is a Kontakt Multi with three instruments in each, and it can be saved as a Multi for easy recall later for use in other projects, one way to address the template issue). This covers all the techniques and articulations I'm likely to need for everday work.

To get them to play correctly when they encounter score instructions in Notion, I use this ruleset:


Check the user manual on how to load and apply rulesets to Notion staves, or let me know if you need help with that. This ruleset uses UACC MIDI CC to control art/tech changes, not keyswitches, so in addition to assigning the ruleset, you have to set the instrument in each Kontakt player to respond to UACC control. You do that in the tiny little lock dropdown at the bottom left of each Kontakt instrument by selecting "Locked to UACC"(if you can't find the lock button click the wrench at the top of the same window):

Once you assign the instruments and tell them to use UACC control, they should happily and magically, really select the appropriate technique and playing style from the available list for whatever it finds in your notion score!

I don't know how it does it, but it will jump from Core Techniques for regular playing to Legato Performance when it encounters notes under a slur, or to Decorative techniques when it needs to play a trill. It will also recognize Con Sordino and Sans Sordino instructions if you notate them and the techniques will change accordingly.

I hope this helps and gets you up and running!

madisonfinley wroteI also have Presonus Studio One 5 as my DAW. Must I take my Notion score into Studio One? Or can I get everything working without doing that, by staying in Notion?

And this is the alternative to the fine advice you've received above. It's not actually that difficult to set up, if you're working with a small template. You can set your instruments up as presets in S1, complete with whatever plugins you like. Then just send the midi from Notion.

That's the way I do it now. The Notion built-in sounds are adequate for me to use while composing and orchestrating, but I don't find that any third-party libraries deliver a really convincing audio mockup. I've used the East West library (Play) and the BBCSO Pro library (using an adaptation of Michael Myers' excellent ruleset), and they both work as well as can be expected. One problem is that sampled instruments, especially legato patches, require adjustment so as to align the note's attack with the beat. This can be done easily in S1 by giving each instrument a negative delay. A second problem is that it's pretty awkward to adjust dynamics and expression within Notion, and this is easier done in S1's automation lanes.

So I compose in Notion, getting a player-readable score, and then I just send as midi ("add to open project") to my premade template. The imported tracks can be quickly dragged to their corresponding instruments. Then I apply the appropriate articulations and automation, and use S1's far better plugins and mixer.

It's not a bad workflow for me, now that I've gotten used to the fact that I sort of have to "do it twice."

davidlarson6, I regularly work with Notion and Studio One by exporting the MIDI to S1. It's a more advanced method and opens up a whole new world of possibilities. In my response I was focusing on the basics for someone that wants to stick to the Notion platform.

MM, Sure. Just offering the other view, given that the OP has S1.

The wonderful thing is that we have these options, depending on how far we want to push our "pursuit of perfection."