Hi;
I recently purchased Native Instruments Strummed Acoustic Guitar, but I've been a user of their Session Strings for a few years.  As anybody here who has either of these programs knows, both are capable of Animation and Articulation choices within the program.  On Session Strings every time I want to make a change in my animation/articulation I've been creating a new track with a new instance of the Kontackt 5 program.  This, of course, uses up much memory and I'm wondering if there's a way to have different articulations changes using only one instance of Kontakt 5.  I asked over at NI and they said to load a new instrument into the same Kontakt player but use a different articulation and MIDI track for every new articulation I want to use.  My question here is how do I utilize this insofar as linking the 2nd (etc) instruments to a 2nd (3rd, 4th, etc) MIDI track(s).  Also, do I insert a new MIDI track for each, use new take lanes, or what?
 
Hope some one can help.
 
Thanks
John B.

Hi John
 
Yes, you can do it after NI's suggestion, load your articulations into same Kontakt instance and assign each to different MIDI channel. Here's what I usually do. Create new MIDI track for each MIDI channel. To assign track's output and MIDI channel, in Track View click the Output bar and find Kontakt there. You can do it directly in the track strip or in Inspector on the left (after making the track active/focus i.e. by cliking on it). Next, in Channel bar you then choose MIDI channel for each track, you may need to click "All" in Layout Presets drop-down bar above the first track to make Channel bar visible in track strip.
 
Now you can draw/record MIDI data into you tracks. I usually put the Kontakt track with audio outs and all corresponding MIDI tracks in same Track Folder.

chris.r
Hi John
 
Yes, you can do it after NI's suggestion, load your articulations into same Kontakt instance and assign each to different MIDI channel. Here's what I usually do. Create new MIDI track for each MIDI channel. To assign track's output and MIDI channel, in Track View click the Output bar and find Kontakt there. You can do it directly in the track strip or in Inspector on the left (after making the track active/focus i.e. by cliking on it). Next, in Channel bar you then choose MIDI channel for each track, you may need to click "All" in Layout Presets drop-down bar above the first track to make Channel bar visible in track strip.
 
Now you can draw/record MIDI data into you tracks. I usually put the Kontakt track with audio outs and all corresponding MIDI tracks in same Track Folder.

Please help me a bit more.  At this point I can't even get a second instrument I've added to the player to even make a sound.
Thanks
John B

John, where exactly you have problem? Please try do following steps:
 
1. If you use an external MIDI keyboard please make sure you have it's MIDI driver installed and enabled in Cake's preferences. Go to Preferences > MIDI > Devices, and check the MIDI input device you are going to use.
 
2. Load Kontakt and load few articulations. From my observation each new articulation should open with new MIDI channel already assigned.
 
3. For each articulation, create new MIDI track in CakeLab, assign it's output to Kontakt and MIDI channel to the corresponding articulation MIDI channel.
 
4. If it didn't activate automatically, in MIDI track click the Input Echo button to make it lit. Make sure the track's input is set to Omni and now you should be ready to play. Check your MIDI keyboard if it's actually sending MIDI data.
 
At this point I would wish somebody who knows how to paste pictures could chime in with more detailed instructions. You can find some lessons on how to enable MIDI devices or create tracks in Sonar/Cakewalk on the web, i.e. youtube videos or for example on Cactus' website here. I can help more if you will be more specific on your problem when trying the above steps.

CakeLab    Now that's the best one yet.. did you come up with that? 
 
I have screen shoots in my tutorial on how to use a VST. see my signature for the link.
 
I've never used Kontakt not even sure what it is but I know lots of people here use it. 
But it sounds like a multi channel VST.
 
I use Airs Xpand2 and it has 4 instruments available.  So that might be similar
So you insert 4 midi tracks.
Set the outputs to Xpand
Set channels of each midi track to  ch1 thru 4.
Now load an instrument into the 4 places in Xpand and make sure they are turned on and the volume is up.  
You can set the banks and instruments in the track inspector or use the GUI. If you use the GUI make the track inspector boxes for Bank and Instrument NONE. 


 
 
Chris it's easy to post screens shots.
 
I have One Drive set to store all screenshots.  Drop box also does this. 
I then use Imgur to upload those.
Then post the link from Imgur. Takes less than a minute. 
 

Imgur... I'll take a closer look. Thanks.
 
"CakeLab" = Cake[walk by Band]Lab. Somehow easier to type than "CbB", if you do fast typewriting.

I like the term "Cakelab".  It's easier and quicker than Cakewalk by Bandlab.   I think I'll call it that from now on.
Thanks for all the tips.  It might be easier now.  I'll try them and let you know.
 
John B.

I've worked for 2 hours with both above suggestions.  Total failure.  Apparently they changed Kontakt's output channel selection.  You said that every new articulation was supposed to create a new output channel for it, but it doesn't.  There is one channel called st1 and three called aux.  You can add more if you like, but you have to do that manually.  There's no easy way to connect the articulations to a MIDI track.
What I did was:
1. Opened Kontakt and brought in three articulations
2. Opened the Kontakt Output selection and went in and created another channel -st2
3. Created three MIDI tracks in Cakelab
4. Changed the inputs of the three MIDI channels to Kontakt.   The bottom of the MIDI track allowed only 1 selection (3Kontakt 51) but the selector in the upper portion of the MIDI track (C of CBP) allowed selection of 1Kontakt 5, 2Kontakt 5, 3Kontakt 5, etc).  Still nothing but frustration.  What's the next step?  What am I doing wrong? What do I choose in the output channel(s) of Kontakt?
 
Your's in Frustration:
John B
 

which kontakt dll are you loading? there are 3 with different output configs (kontakt, kontakt8out and kontakt 16out)... and point 2, does cakelab now handle dynamic changing of a VST's number of outputs?

I downloaded the demo and the demo library.
I opened it and it's kinda a blank interface? The library browser is empty so I'll have to sort that out. 
I guess this is not something you can use without reading the manual from front to back.