How to unlock Kontakt pitch bending

Many of the Kontakt instruments are locked to twelve equal, or have only limited pitch bend range. This means you can't bend the notes with a pitch bend wheel after they are played. It also means you can't use them for pitch bend retuning based on channel remapping in software such as SCALA and Tune Smithy

However, with many of the instruments, it can be quite a simple matter to unlock the pitch bends once you know how to do it. Others, especially the pianos, tend to be permanently locked into twelve equal and can't be adjusted in pitch at all.

Here is how you do it:

First, you need to go "behind the scenes" and edit the instrument, click on the spanner icon at top left.



Now you might need to click on the Mod button at bottom left



Now look for the pitch bend modulator.



Make sure it is set to modulate pitch in the drop down to the right. Then adjust the slider until it shows 2.0 st - this is the standard pitch bend range of 2 semitones up and down.

If there is no pitch bend shown there, you can add it using Add Modulator

[[File:kontakt_set_pitch_bend_range_stage_4.png

Now you might find that even after doing all this, that the instrument does not respond to pitch bends. If that happens, that's probably because it has been heavily scripted and the script ignores pitch bends.

In that situation you need to go to the script tab

[[File:kontakt_set_pitch_bend_range_stage_5.png

Then look through all the four tabs and you may find an option there to set the pitch bend range. If so this overrides the pitch bend modulator setting. Some instruments have a knob there which you adjust to set the pitch bend range.

Another thing you can do is to disable all the scripts in turn until you find the one which is disabling pitch bends.

I don't understand why it is that so many of the Kontakt instruments default to either a very limited pitch bend range, or completely locked into twelve equal. But at least in many cases it is reasonably simple to unlock them once you know what to do.