# Kontakt: best practices for creating orchestral templates



## K8ch (Dec 3, 2019)

HI,

I use Reaper as my DAW, and made a big orchestral template using about 20 instances of Kontakt. 
Then I saved it as a project template.
Later, when I loaded the template, it overwhelmed my computer and the program crashed.
I've only got 12gb of RAM, so it couldn't handle it, I guess.

So, how can I set up the template so that it only loads in the instruments I need, as I need them?
Do I disable/mute everything, when creating the "project template"?



Thanks...and I look forward to haring your suggestions!


Peace,

Keith
(http://www.r (www.r)everbnation.com/keithhaydon)


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## tc9000 (Dec 3, 2019)

i had exactly the same problem, also a reaper user, couldent find a way to solve this. in my stupidity, i just bought more ram


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## MartinH. (Dec 3, 2019)

K8ch said:


> HI,
> 
> I use Reaper as my DAW, and made a big orchestral template using about 20 instances of Kontakt.
> Then I saved it as a project template.
> ...



When you open the template select "open with fx offline (recovery mode)". That should avoid the crash. Then one by one activate the plugins on a track, and then afterwards "freeze" the track. Go to "view -> track manager", select the track, click the button "freeze", and "freeze tracks to stereo". Do that one by one with all tracks, then save the template as a new file. If you want to edit a track later, select it in the track manager, click "freeze", and select "unfreeze". When you're done with a track, freeze it again. How many you can keep unfrozen at a time depends on your ram and the amount of memory the individual tracks need. 
As a bonus saving the project should be much faster now.


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## robgb (Dec 3, 2019)

First, I'd suggest splitting your template up into TRACK templates rather than a full project template. For example, open five instances of Kontakt, add your 1st violins, 2nd violins, violas, cellos and basses respectively, then highlight them all, right click and "save as track template." Name it "strings" and you can call up those five tracks whenever you need them. Do the same with the other sections.

You can also do individual tracks like VIOLINS.

Also, if you'd rather do a full project template, you can disable all of the tracks and only enable them when you want to use that particular instrument.

Here's a full orchestral template with everything disabled except for the violas.


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## tc9000 (Dec 3, 2019)

robgb said:


> First, I'd suggest splitting your template up into TRACK templates rather than a full project template. For example, open five instances of Kontakt, add your 1st violins, 2nd violins, violas, cellos and basses respectively, then highlight them all, right click and "save as track template." Name it "strings" and you can call up those five tracks whenever you need them. Do the same with the other sections.
> 
> You can also do individual tracks like VIOLINS.
> 
> ...


wait - is that reaper?


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## robgb (Dec 3, 2019)

tc9000 said:


> wait - is that reaper?


Yes. Concerto Theme.


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## tc9000 (Dec 3, 2019)

robgb said:


> Yes. Concerto Theme.



i should have read your signature, shoudent i? haha!

this is... this is... really awesome. mind. blown. 

thanks* robgb*! (and *K8ch* for posing the question)


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## robgb (Dec 3, 2019)

Also, here's a custom toggle action you can create to completely disable a track (or multiple tracks). Add it to a toolbar and you're in business.


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## K8ch (Dec 3, 2019)

Martin, RobGB, tcC9000...


Thank you!
I have to read these posts again so it really sinks in...but I think this is exactly what I needed to know!

I know there's a button that will delete the instruments samples in memory, and only use those that the song needs.
Is -that-something that I should do?
What I man is....If I created an empty MIDI track, and hit that button, wouldn't the result be that no samples would be loaded?

Wouldn't that also save CPU..to save the template after having done that, to all the instrument tracks??




BTW: I've deleted that "big" template I'd spoken of, so I'll b making a new one)

All these suggestions will help, with the next one I make...so I appreciate that, very much!

Thank you for taking the time to help me out.
Very gracious of you all.



Peace,

Keith


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## vitocorleone123 (Dec 3, 2019)

Yes, it will be empty. Until you play something. Then it will load what you play. Dynamically.


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## Simon Schrenk (Dec 4, 2019)

You can also purge all samples from your Kontakt instruments to save some additional RAM! When playing an instrument with purged samples in Kontakt, only the needed samples will be loaded to RAM. This leads to a much lighter imprint on the libraries used.


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## tc9000 (Dec 8, 2019)

robgb said:


> Also, here's a custom toggle action you can create to completely disable a track (or multiple tracks). Add it to a toolbar and you're in business.



This is just for anyone else reading this - if you want to try this out you'll need to add the SWS Extension:






SWS / S&M Extension


SWS / S&M Extension, a REAPER plugin extension




www.sws-extension.org





EDIT: OK this works _really_, _really_ well - it does everything I need - frees up RAM, you can select single or multiple tracks, toggle in / out with a click of a button.

THANKS!


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