Even though there are some outstanding sample-based instrument libraries around, it’s important to understand how to build your own. Firstly, you might have something unique that doesn’t already exist, and secondly, you get the ability to sample and tweak everything exactly as you like it. There are many different ways to achieve the finished result in software. You can go basic, and capture literally just one sample, and play it across your pads or keyboard, and sometimes it’s all you need; otherwise you can build a complex instrument using more source samples. This will apply to drums too – sometimes we want that one-size-fits-all unresponsive robot drum machine feel, where every note is the same level and tone, but there are times when we want something to behave in a more organic or creative way, and multisamples come into play with our favourite drum kits as well. Hook up your hardware and we’ll give it a try.
How to… Sample a drum machine kit
> Here we’re sampling a kit from a ’90s sequencer, using Ableton Live. Connect your hardware, you’ll need audio to and MIDI from the computer. Create a MIDI track in Live, and a MIDI clip containing the notes you need to send to the hardware. Make sure you send on the correct MIDI channel for the sequencer. Create an audio track, and set it to receive the incoming audio. Set a suitable tempo for your project – you want to get clear gaps between notes. Now start recording, and capture one pass from the MIDI clip, capturing the drum hits into a new audio clip. Crop the clip so you only have the single bar.
How to… Multisample a hardware instrument sound
> Multisampling is used to better reflect the source instrument’s character. Here we’ve sampled notes from a hardware sequencer, using the methods already described. The main difference is that we’ve used two octaves of notes in this case. Move the sample into Live’s Arrangement View, and use Cmd-e to slice the clip at the start of each note. With all notes highlighted, right/Ctrl-click and choose Crop Clip(s) to shed all unwanted material. Load the Sampler (not Simpler) instrument to a new MI
