How to Get Into Sampler Again

Permit'due south say you lot need an instrument that will play back recorded effects, piece drum loops into segments, automatically shift the pitches of sound so they're always in key, and cutting out bad "pops" other undesirable parts of a sound. Oh, and you lot also want it to play absurd gating effects. What instrument would you use? The respond, of grade, is a sampler. A sampler loads upwards recorded audio files and does some basic processing on them so that you can utilise them as an instrument.

I've never really been big into samplers. I started doing music after trackers were going out of manner merely earlier scripted sampling engines became big. Equally a result, I never really paid much attention to the "simple" sampler where you lot dropped in a sound file and had it play it back for you.

I desire to walk y'all through using a sampler using Logic Pro 10'south "Quick Sampler" because it'south, well, quick. The Quick Sampler was released as part of Logic's 10.5 update and information technology's fast and easy to comprise samples into your music limerick! However, even though the instructions here are specific to Logic, nigh all samplers support these concepts.

Loading Samples

Drag and drop the sound directly from the Finder into the track header. Release the button and it'll give yous an option for what to do with the sample:

Elevate and drop the sample from your filesystem into Logic'south tracks to create a Quick Sampler.

• Original: Utilise the audio equally-is. Keen if you desire to but play the sound back at different pitches using the piano roll.
• Optimized: Analyze the sound and practice a agglomeration of magic to ready the sampler upwards around the blazon of sound you loaded in.

You lot tin audition your sound with the tiny fiddling play button under your sample, or you can utilise the piano roll and play the sample back (the default note is C3). For most sounds, the sound will play back as long as the annotation is held.

If you lot mouse over the note proper noun here, the icon actually turns into a "Play" push that volition audition your sample. It'south a little hidden.

Play Your Sample Like an Musical instrument

One of the neat features of samplers is making the sample work across all kinds of dissimilar pitches and with all kinds of annotation lengths. You can alter a quick snappy trumpet note into a long drone or pitch a really depression-pitched sax into a loftier-pitched sax.

Load your sample and ready it to "Classic" fashion. The short version of how this works is that the sample plays equally long as the note in the pianoforte roll is held down (the longer answer is that the sample follows the amp envelope). Adjacent, wait for the loop points. If you agree the notation downwards for longer than the sample's length, then the sampler will loop across this range.

To make the loop sound expert, y'all don't desire clicks or pops when y'all get from the terminate to the first. This means that y'all mostly desire the loop points to hitting a point called a "zero crossing" (which is represented by the line). Fortunately, Quick Sampler makes information technology pretty like shooting fish in a barrel to snap the loop points to zero crossings. Under "Snap", choose "goose egg crossing". Side by side, you desire to set your loop so that the sound is as continuous as possible. To do that, y'all can zoom in on your sound's waveform and imagine that you're drawing a line from the end back to the start without an abrupt alter in direction.

You want to set the loop points so that the waveform at the loop finish and loop offset cross from positive to negative (or negative to positive) through the zero crossing to avert clicks or other sound artifacts.

The post-obit video demonstrates some of the differences in the sound when you don't snap to zero crossings, when you don't match the waveform's direction, and when you do line everything up.

Demonstrating how to use loop points on a sample to reduce clicking.

One Shot: Play The Entire Sound!

If you desire your sample to always play back in its entirety, and then employ "I Shot". This is best for drum sounds or sound furnishings where you always want the unabridged sound to play.

Slice Your Sample

A long-continuing music product technique is harvesting pulsate loops from recordings, slicing them up, and so using them in different ways in your own music. This is non merely fun, but information technology allows yous to get some really interesting effects.

If you want to play each drum hit separately, yous tin use the "Slice" option in Logic. When you click information technology, information technology automatically cuts your tracks by transient and assigns information technology a notation, and then y'all can use the note to play back each slice. Here's a filtered hi-hat loop you can use to follow along with.

This sequence plays dorsum each hit in the loop one at a time.

You can cull different ways for Quick Sampler to automatically cut your track upwardly:

• Transient: Cut your track using the audio equally a guide – substantially, information technology tries to put each hit in its own region that tin can exist played back with a notation.
• Beat divisions: Cut your sample into slices based on the tempo from your DAW.
• Equal: Cut your sample into a specific number of slices. This is really useful if you know the BPM of the original sample and how frequent the hits are.
• Transmission: Manually piece your sample by mitt.

In each of these cases, you lot can apply the gear menu to copy the MIDI pattern and paste it equally a region on your track. When you play information technology back, it should sound similar the original.

Copy, then paste the MIDI Pattern to quickly play the sound in the region

With the region, y'all can move MIDI notes effectually to play the different hits in unique ways or even to gate parts of a sample! In the case video below, I use this technique to chop up a song.

Using "slice" and the piano ringlet to gate parts of a sample.

Recording Instantly From Logic

I've been talking a lot virtually how to load and manipulate samples that you already have, but what if y'all don't have any suitable samples to piece of work with? The Sampler makes it piece of cake to create your own!

Using Quick Sampler's "Recorder" mode, select an input source (which could be from your sound inputs, merely it could also exist from an instrument runway in Logic). Press the red "record" circle, and and then play the audio in the DAW. You'll come across the sound come up through into the sampler. Press "Terminate", and then select an appropriate mode for playback. You will likely need to edit the start and end points of your sample (hint: if it's a loop, you lot might find Snap: Beat helpful).

Recording a baseline from Instrument iii into the Sampler. Yous need to manually terminate the sample and so trim it down at the finish.

Why would you resample from your DAW when information technology'south already playing the sound? The cool thing near resampling is that you can chop up the result for some very interesting effects. Resample your voice and pitch it upward or down for some robotic dystopia. Piece a loop up to gate and glitch it. Record some drums with huge reverb, just and so gate the reverb out. There's a lot of interesting things that y'all can do with samples even directly in the sample editor.

Let Quick Sampler Do The Work For You

When yous load a sample into Quick Sampler, it asks if you want to use Original or Optimized mode. What's the real deviation? Optimized mode volition attempt to auto-notice the nature of the sound and and so tailor the sampler'due south settings based on what it thinks works for the sound. It will:

• Attempt detecting the pitch and put the sound on the corresponding annotation
• Set the commencement and finish so that it skips silence
• Set up loop points automatically
• Slice the sample into drum hits if it'southward a drum loop

Quick Sampler modulation and other audio-shaping devices

In addition to manipulating the sample itself, yous can modify a number of pitch, filter, and amp envelope options. You lot can use these to creatively shape the sample to your needs! If y'all want a lush pad, for example, you lot could increment the attack on the filter envelope and increase the amp envelope release.

The sampler as well contains a number of modulation options. Access the "Modernistic matrix" to see a list of possible controls, then map them and then that yous can control them from the pianoforte roll or your MIDI controller.

If I'm drawing MIDI notes on the pianoforte roll, then I like to map velocity to a target for some easy ways to innovate diversity.

These features are part of most every sampler!

Now y'all know more than than enough to have fun with your samples. I like Logic's Quick Sampler because information technology's and then easy to get started, just pretty much every DAW, and fifty-fifty hardware sampler, uses the same concepts in this post. From slicing to ADSR to zero crossings, you'll be able to effigy out any sampler!

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Source: https://irwinkwan.com/2021/03/11/using-the-sampler-in-logic-pro-to-play-and-slice-audio-samples/

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