I think I'm being an eejit but...

[chriskorff]

So anyway, I started playing around with the STS5000 today...

As a bit of a 'get to know your sampler' session, I thought 'OK, I'll mash up the Amen break, for old-times sake'... and I confused myself

So I dragged a WAV of the break into 5 different keygroups (one for kick, snare, ghost snare, ride, and the 'doosh' sound).

Then, I extracted the kick from the whole break in keygroup 1, and that went fine. But... then, all the bleedin' keygroups were cropped to just the kick sound!

Basically, I think I'm missing something pretty fundamental here - it's probably because (a) I only skimmed the manual today, though I've read it before thoroughly and it still didn't make sense, and (b) I am a complete novice to the whole hardware sampler paradigm that CW/SC have adopted for their samplers...

In an ideal world, I'd like to do all my topping and tailing of samples in the STS sampler, leaving the original WAV files intact. Is this possible?
Also, would it be worth acquainting myself with an Akai sampler, just so I know how the fuck these things are supposed to work? (I've got a mate with an S3000 that's literally propping his door open, and he said he'd be happy for me to nab it).

Help please? Thankyou muchly!

Chris

[Shroomz~>]

Hey there,

Not directly addressing the issue here, but I wouldn't even consider chopping a break within the sampler. It's much easier & more accurate to chop it up in Recycle, SoundForge or even a basic free audio editor then load your chopped up break segments into the sampler.

Sharc & I had 4 or 5 Akai samplers at one point & I'd say the Akai hardware could help you if you wanted to actually use it, but I wouldn't necessarily buy it just for learning or creation of sample programs for use in the STS.

Mark

[chriskorff]

Cheers Shroomz,

The S3000 would be a freebie, which I guess makes it a no-brainer! You're probably right about doing all top-and-tailing in Soundforge or something, the STS sample editor doesn't look particularly accurate... I just thought I might develop a quicker workflow doing the lot in STS.

Anyway, I'll have a play-around this evening and will no doubt be back with more stupid questions when I get stuck...

Cheers!

Chris

[Shroomz~>]

You can't really say no to a free S3000. There's tons of good sample libraries for it, so if you hook up a scsi CDrom & keep an eye on ebay for bundle deals on original Akai format CDroms, you're rocking. You can also make your own Akai CDroms from your STS programs.

Mark

[Mr Arkadin]

btw if you haven't found it yet, i think you've left the 'Edit All' button on.

[valis]

There are many cases where you would want to edit the samples this way in the sampler itself. One older technique for chopping up sounds (piano, break, whatever) was to have start position mapped out so that later keys trigger a later part of the sampler. This usually works best if you can disable key position modulating pitch (no sample transposition by key). This was how many breaks were chopped before the emu 'beat munger' and recycle, and is also useful for cutting up something like a piano solo. Some older samplers can emulate legato with 1 voice (the legato is usually just crossfading from what I can tell) but it's just as effective with more than 1 voice if you are careful in how you overlap your notes. In all cases, this allows one to 'draw' a duration of playback, then draw a different start point and hold that duration, and so on.

It's a bit easier to watch than to describe. Essentially this gives the net effect of chopping up audio on a track with the added bonus of having all of the sampler's sound mangling tools (envelopes, modulation & filters) driven by the key down/key release events giving a highly rhythmic effect. Used by ancient junglists as well as a lot of house/breaks producers. MPC can do this as well, although the hiphop era where this was explored more they lacked most of the filters that the Emu line had (even Roland had more) so the sound was more 'dry'.

Even more fun can be had when this is done if you can duplicate those keygroups once they're created and muck about with the settings of the env/filter/etc a bit. This is essentially where the 'neurofunk' basslines in dnb, and 'nu skool breaks' came into play (again with the Emu e4/e5 series).