Sketchpad is a free Kontakt instrument by Authentic Soundware aimed to ensure we never waste a great idea again by recording our performances in standalone mode (it requires Kontakt Full 6.7 upwards and a free Pulse downloader account).
Unfortunately, inspiration isn’t something we can conjure on demand, and as creators, we have to strike while the iron is hot.
The problem with striking while the iron is hot is that our best ideas are often fleeting and come when we least expect it.
My student days were pre-iPhone, before the age of recording every new idea as a voice memo. Typically, if an idea popped into my head, and I was outside with no way to record it or even write it down, I’d play it over and over in my head or even whistle it.
The trouble with that method is that it only takes one distraction to take you from your great idea to something a little different. Before you know it, you’re back in the studio whistling the theme from Quantum Leap, and your idea is lost forever.
Of course, nowadays, we have voice memos and other ways to capture ideas anywhere, but we still manage to lose great ideas even while sitting at the keyboard because we don’t take the time to record them.
You’ve probably played some of your best stuff if you ever loaded Kontakt in standalone mode to aimlessly noodle around on your favorite instrument (like the free Drifting Winds by Westwood Instruments), simply because you were playing so freely!
You’ve also most likely realized it sounds great but didn’t have/take the time to open your DAW and record it.
Sketchpad will prevent you from losing ideas to the “I’ll record it later” attitude. Sketchpad runs in Kontakt and captures your performance as a MIDI file that you can drag onto your desktop and into your DAW later.
Sketchpad is simple; you load it in Kontakt, load an instrument (assign both to the same MIDI channel), name your sketch, enable record, and hit play; there’s not much more to say about it.
However, if it saves even one great and otherwise lost idea, it might just turn out to be the most important recording you ever make.
Spectrasonics Keyscape has a similar feature, Flow Capture, and recording even when just messing around is a good habit to get into!
Download: Sketchpad (FREE – requires Kontakt Full 6.7 or higher and a free Pulse downloader account)
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