Teased last week, Native Instruments has released a brand new line up of hardware for their Komplete Suite, the S-Series. These keyboards are designed to be an integrated solution for production, opening up a large amount of control similar to how the Maschine hardware works alongside its software companion. Watch our exclusive first look video that we shot when NI visited DJTT headquarters last week inside along with all the details on this exciting new line of keyboards.
KONTROL KEYBOARD MAIN FEATURES
The S-Series packs a few serious hardware features that bring them above and beyond the traditional MIDI keyboards, including:
- Komplete Browser – tag-based access to all KOMPLETE Instrument presets from one plug-in interface. Instead of browsing by instrument, users can now search by sound
- Native Map™ technology – automatically maps all key parameters for each KOMPLETE Instrument to the touch-sensitive controller knobs – all clearly visible on the keyboards’ Clear View™ display. Each instrument was carefully mapped by NI sound designers to arrange the most relevant parameters on pages laid out on the keyboard’s display.
- Light Guide: shows key switches, zones, and more on multi-color LEDs positioned just above the keys, and also provide performance feedback – scales, chords, and arpeggios light up across the keyboard as they are played.
- Smart Play:. Chord mode lets producers play complex chords with single keys. Chord Set mode provides ready-to-play progressions that can inspire and augment original compositions or add new flavor to remixes. The integrated scale mapping features deliver fast access to new melodic possibilities – notes of the currently selected scale light up on the Light Guide. Many widely-used musical scales can also be mapped to the white keys.
- Touch Kontrol: Touch strips in the place of traditional mod wheels mimic the behavior of pitch and mod wheels, and physical objects like springs and bouncing balls for interesting modulation curves
NEW VERSION OF KOMPLETE WITH KEYBOARDS
NI is also announcing a new version of their software instrument suite, Komplete 10. The new software comes with three new major synths, along with a number of additional devices. Check out the full update on the new production tools on the official Native Instruments page here.
The S-Series keyboards are available online and in retailers October 1, 2014 – with the S25 priced at $499 / 499 €, S49 for $599 / 599 € and S61 for $699 / 699 €. Komplete 10 is available for $499, or you can update from an older version for $199.
