Samples, by nature do not change. They are reproduced faithfully every time they are played back. While this is great for reliability, it is generally not what we want to hear. It's boring.
Assigning velocity to control the sample start offset on a digital sample is one of my favorite things to do to bring life to digital samples. It sounds natural, because this is how instruments behave in the real world. Strike a snare drum softly, and you mainly hear the tail end of the sound. Hit it hard, and you get a snappy attack with the decay afterwords.
To help visualize, here is a standard 909 kick drum sample.
Normally, every time this sample would play, it would start all the way at the left, every time it were triggered.
If we overlay a velocity to sample start, we can visualize it like this.
(note. this is not en envelope, it is showing the velocity relationship to time.)
With a velocity of 127 (maximum), the sample will start all the way at the left.
With 64 velocity, we only hear the second half of the sample. It sounds softer.
Programming this into a sequencer is fine, and will achieve the desired result. But, this technique really shines when playing the sounds off pads, or keys. It feels responsive, like a real instrument, even if the sound is totally synthetic.
Drums and percussive sounds are obvious candidates for this, but try it with other sounds too. Bass, pads, noises, and vocals all can benefit from this approach.
Not all samplers have this feature. For me, it is mandatory, and I refuse to use a sampler that can't do this mapping.
Samplers that I know can do this include:
SEQUENCERS:
Renoise
VSTS:
E-mu Emulator X
GURU
HARDWARE DEVICES:
Akai S series
Akai mpc series
E-mu emulator series
If you know of other devices that can do velocity to sample start mapping. Post in the comments.
0 comments:
Post a Comment