Sampling | Feature
If you’re a serious samplist, you need to streamline the whole process from capture to organising so you can find everything later
1 Ableton Live is the perfect do-it-all application for capturing, editing, processing and, ultimately, playing samples. You can keep all of your samples organised by folder in Live’s Browser (these folders can be in any location, including removable storage, and linked from there). If you save them within a project, you can reload entire tracks with all playback and warping info, naming and colour coding in place; a very convenient way to manage large sets of categorised samples.
2 To capture samples with Live, all you need do is connect your audio interface, or even the computer’s built-in microphone, go to an audio track, arm it to record, and click in one of the Session View circular clip buttons – you’re now sampling! Session View clips have basic playback features, including looping. If you want to take the next step, you can drop that audio clip into Live’s Simpler – their ‘basic’ audio sampler, and get a lot more options.
3 Mac users can use Logic Pro X’s Quick Sampler, which is Apple’s take on the Ableton Live Simpler concept – Logic also having separate samplers for basic and complex tasks. Quick Sampler includes a choice of playback modes, file import, LFOs, a Mod Matrix, and filter. Crucially it has one unique feature – arecord button. Instead of recording elsewhere then dragging it in, Live-style, it’s possible to record directly into Quick Sampler, saving a few clicks.
4 Samplr is a multitouch sampler for the iPad, and it makes full use of the touchscreen, with up to six samples playing simultaneously (with eight voices each), five effects, different ways to
