Native Instruments Schema: Light

Schema: Light’s UI is stylish and modern but has plenty of creative possibilities to dig into.

NI bring some light relief to the Schema concept.

If you like your virtual instruments with a decent dollop of ‘quirky’, Schema: Light from Native Instruments might well appeal. This latest release is a follow up to Schema: Dark. It shares the same playback engine but, as the name suggests, provides a somewhat lighter underlying loop‑based sample set to work with. Schema: Light’s curated collection of some 300+ source loops therefore features various bells, plucked sounds and a variety of suitably soft keys, alongside various mallets, noise and percussive elements.

Lighten Up

The Schema engine allows to you combine up to four of the supplied loops within a single preset. These are labelled A to D, and colour coded, including within the central pattern grid display, where the colours indicate which of the four loops has an active slice on each step of the current sequencer pattern. Each loop is chopped into 16 slices and the slices can then be sequenced within their own sequencing engine. This provides independent control over the number of steps (up to 16), which slice plays back on a specific step, and step‑based control over items such as pitch, filter, and volume settings. Presets offer three switchable step patterns for each loop and, by default, the mod wheel allows you to adjust the blend of the loop layers, giving you real‑time control over the degree of complexity in the resulting playback. A set of macro controls (shown at the base of the main display) provide modulation of key parameters, and there is a dual effects engine with various effects including delay and reverb. Amongst an array of other creative options, the playback engine includes scale locking (located top left) so that any pitched slices within the underlying loops will conform to your project’s key/scale requirements.

Some 200 Kontakt snapshot presets are supplied, and these demonstrate Schema: Light’s ability to move from ambient melodics through to more intense electronica. In the main, the ‘light’ nature is retained, but moods can easily span gentle and soothing through to more enchanting, mysterious, or downright creepy.

Space precludes a full treatment of the editing features, but you can certainly go deep into the pattern creation, slice selection and modulation sequencing if you wish and, even with a little use, the UI quickly becomes easy to navigate. Usefully, additional levels of preset settings provide presets for pattern steps, filter cutoff, and step volume to speed up sound design. However, in terms of instant inspiration, the very neat randomisation options are particularly cool. These can be applied to any (or all) of the sounds (loops), steps, or slices used on any (or all) of the four layers, so you can go fully random to start from scratch, or just randomise a few elements to create variations from an existing preset.

Schema: Light is cool, quirky, and suitably inspiring.

Conclusion

Having used Schema: Dark on a number of recent projects, I found it a great tool for creating low‑end rhythms, pulses or bass elements (the kind of thing that might provide a bed for a tension cue in a film/TV/game context for example). Schema: Light obviously contrasts that with its higher register, and more melody‑focused potential. And, providing you don’t get them both running at full tilt (when things might get overly busy), they complement each other very well. No, there is nothing radically new in any of the individual features employed here, but the sum of the parts does make for something unique in Schema: Light’s whole. Music producers creating electronica styles would find plenty to enjoy, but I think the most obvious audience is media composers wanting some additional options for modern scoring work. It’s perhaps a niche product but, like it’s darker sibling, Schema: Light is cool, quirky, and suitably inspiring.