# Roland Handsonic HPD 20 and Kontakt



## Lode_Runner (Aug 7, 2016)

Hi everybody

I was just wondering if anyone here has the Roland Hand Sonic HPD 20 and has experience using it as a controller for Kontakt Percussion libraries? Is it effective as a midi controller and are there any cumbersome workflow issues when it comes to mapping the samples to the pads?


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## synthpunk (Aug 7, 2016)

Lode, this recent SonicCouture video showed me the Handsonic could be a useful tool, email James and Dan and ask them if it's easy to setup. I am assuming so. I added it to my want list.



About 10 years ago the zendrum got a little popular for this, there were some Play libraries that had control pathes built in for it.


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## Lode_Runner (Aug 7, 2016)

Thanks Synthpunk. I had the pleasure of trying one the other night at a friend's - hours of fun playing with the onboard sounds.

I notice in the video that the patches are called for example 'Hang 1 HPD', so obviously they've created nki's specifically for the HPD. I'm guessing for libraries that don't have HPD nki's already, it's a matter of getting under the hood in Kontakt and shifting the samples to the blue keys that you can see in the video, and then saving as a new nki. A fair bit of work, but at least it I'd only have to do it once. 

The Abbey Road Drums with their 88 keys already mapped might be a bit of a challenge, especially as I can only see 13 pads on the HPD.


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## soniccouture (Aug 8, 2016)

Hi All,
The HPD20 is simple enough to setup - it's just a MIDI controller like any other, so it was just a case of changing the note number of each pad to match the keys in our Pan Drums instruments. I figured that out in a few minutes looking through the HPD's menus, without needing the manual.
It's quick to do, just tap the pad, then scroll the cursor wheel to the correct number, referring to a MIDI note number table of course.

Lode_Runner: I didn't need to create any specific Kontakt NKIs, but I did need to save a new HPD kit for each Pan Drum, as they are all mapped slightly differently in Kontakt according to the notes they have. So I did it the other way round to the way you suggest, which seems simpler as you don't risk breaking any NKIs.

That was all there was too it, I didn't get into trying extra expression programming or anything fancy.

If you are looking for a Hang Drum specific controller, I would recommend waiting for The Lumen, which is in development now and should be available early next year, loaded with our samples.



James


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## Lode_Runner (Aug 8, 2016)

Thanks James. I'm not looking for hang drum specific, but something i can use with all of my percussion libraries - including pan drums and konkrete.


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