Self-Oscillating a Filter in KONTAKT 3

Those of you who owned (or still own) analog synths like the MiniMoog know that if you turned the resonance up all the way in the filter section, it would self-oscillate, creating a very vowel-like sine wave. Add some vibrato and some portamento and you could get a credible opera star “singing” in the upper octaves. Today Native Instruments Kontakt 3 has a 3×2 Multimode Filter that is capable of producing this same effect. Besides being able to “morph” between three characteristics each (lowpass, bandpass, and highpass), the resonance controls of each filter band exhibit a behavior just like those original high-end analog filters, even if there is no signal present at the input. This effect is self-oscillation, just like you heard on your analog hardware filter. The down side of this is that it requires more CPU power than other Kontakt filters, but if you are using the filter to create the self-oscillation and not to change the sound of a sample, you should be fine, even using a less than top-of-the-line computer.