Much clearer right?

I will also show you how you can output long and short articulations to two different audio channels. I know that some people like to have them split to apply different processing such as reverbs to longs and shorts. Expression Maps, contrary to what you can sometimes read online, doesn’t prevent you to do that.

I will be using Cubase but this technique should work similarly if you are using FL Studio with the BRSO Articulate plugin, the new Articulation Set feature in Logic Pro X, or the Reaticulate plugin for Reaper. I haven’t tried but they all support switching MIDI channel inputs so you should be good to go.

The problem

The main issue when you want to use Expression Maps with CSS is the way articulation switching is built into the interface: you need to use more than one keyswitch to trigger certain articulations. For example, switching to sustain + legato is both C0 and A#0:

Triggering the short articulations is first F0 and then using the modwheel (CC1) to switch between the different shorts:

This doesn’t really play well with Expression Maps, as for example, Cubase cannot re-trigger a CC message mid-phrase. But worry not, there’s an elegant solution to these issues.

Build a Kontakt Multi

The first thing we will do is build one Kontakt Multi per instrument. In this example, I’m taking the CSS violas. Start by adding 3 times the violas to the same Kontakt instance:

Don’t worry about your RAM just now, we are going to purge that in due time.

In the first instrument, deactivate every articulations except Sustain and Marcato (1). You deactivate an articulation by clicking on it while holding Alt on Windows or Option on Mac. Make sure that the Legato button is switched on and Con Sordino is off (2). Your first violas patch now looks like this:

Deactivated articulations are grayed out

In the second instrument, deactivate the two short articulation groups, Staccato and Pizzicato (1) and switch Legato off (2):

For this one, I also like to set the Measured Tremolo articulation to Sync to host instead of having a fixed BPM:

Finally, for the 3rd violas patch, deactivate all the long articulations, keeping only Staccato and Pizzicato:

Now, you will need to deactivate the modwheel for switching between the different short articulations. Right-click on the modwheel drawing and click on Remove MIDI Automation: CC# 1:

We do this because we want to control that via keyswitches and not via CC messages.

Before our Kontakt Multi is ready, we need to do one more thing: changing the input MIDI channel for each patch. You do this by clicking on the dropdown button within the MIDI Ch box inside the patch header (1). At the moment, it probably says “omni” or “[A] 1”. From the dropdown, select Port A [from host] and select 1 from the 16 given options (2). Do this on the first patch only:

Quick tip: you can set Kontakt to do that for you automatically in its preferences rather than having it set to Omni each time you add a new instrument

Then, set the second violas patch to [A] 2 and the 3rd one to… …[A] 3:

The last step is to purge all the patches to save you some RAM and loading time. This is optional and depends on your workflow as well as on your computer specs. You can do it in one click by going to Kontakt main menu (1), Global Purge (2) and clicking on Purge all samples (3):

Now, your Kontakt Multi looks like this:

You can save it (and I’d advise to do so for recalling it later). You do that by going to Kontakt main menu (1) and then selecting Save multi as… (2):

In the save dialog that pops up, give it a name (1), in this case CSS Violas, select Patch Only (2) as you don’t want to re-save all the associated samples and make sure that Absolute Path (3) is selected so it will continue to work even if you change the location of your instruments at a later date:

That seems like a lot of work but with practice, these steps are done in about 15 seconds. And speaking of practice… …now repeat the same steps for all the other CSS instruments! 1st Violins, 2nd Violins, Cellos, Basses and Full Ensemble (also Lite Ensemble if you use it).

Now, we can finally start building our Expression Maps.

Building the Expression Maps

Following the previous steps, I loaded all my newly created Multis in 6 separate Cubase Instrument Tracks: