Make Your Notes Do The Electric Slide With Portamento in Kontakt

Glide, aka Portamento, adds a sliding pitch transition between notes that are played consecutively. This sliding pitch transition sounds amazing with bass sounds. In this quick tutorial, I will show you how to Make Your Notes Do The Electric Slide With Portamento.

[aside title=”Pro Tip!”]Glide time can be synchronized by an External MIDI clock or the internal clock of your host![/aside]

The Glide module acts as a source for a special modulation signal that’s needed to create a portamento effect. This effect is known from monophonic synthesizers and adds a sliding transition between the pitches of two consecutive notes when they are played in a legato fashion.

Display the modulation section of the source module.

Add a Glide module by clicking on Add Modulator

Set the Modulation Intensity to the max which is 12 semitones.

Click the Quick-Jump button to scroll down to bottom of the rack and display the Glide module.

The controls of the Glide module are:

Time/Speed: Selects one of two different glide modes. If Time is selected, all transitions happen in the same time, regardless of the interval between the notes; in Speed mode, wide-spaced intervals will result in longer transitions than close-spaced intervals, as the glide speed will be kept constant.

Speed: Adjusts the speed of the portamento. You can synchronize this parameter to your host or Master Editor tempo by clicking on the displayed unit, then selecting a note value from the drop-down menu and adjusting a numerator for this value with the speed knob.

We want the distance between are notes to control the transitions so change Time/Speed to Speed. The Speed parameter is fine.

In your DAW create legato notes. These are notes that consecutive. The horizontal distance between notes will determine the transition time.

To control the actual speed of the glide, use the Speed parameter of the Glide module.

So with a little adjustment of the note lengths and the Speed parameter you can have your notes sliding like they hit an ice patch.

Until next time…now go make some music.