Edit that preset!

Well.. after doing some breakbeat i needed to get back to the chillout style i so much love…

I am fare from finished, but i have gotten a start. I started out working up a pad patch on the emu, by layering the oscillators on my Novation Nova, then sample it down as a raw sample without filters or anything from the nova. two keys was sampled C3 and C4, then i just layered it on the emu, worked out the filters and cords to create a good lushy pad. adding a nice delay effect made it realy good.

Then i started with the drums. i have tons of singleshot drums on my computer which i am moving over to my emu… it takes a bit time with the zip, but when i have it on the hard drive, its rather easy to dial up the samples i need. Some filter works on the drums.. and layering.. i am running the kit on 3 parts using diffrent effects and filter settings.

Piano is holy grail on esx24, with filter and some modulators i worked up. then ran through the rfx for some ambience delay.

The chant voice is my own, with a slight tuning.

i am considering sample it down to the emu, then play it off like a sampler with the filter possibilities.

the cut is 2 min.. not very much.. but its a start
004 / Pad o rama - preview

Yepp.. yesterday i tested out the vocoder, after reading about it in the rfx-32 manual. I am not in desperat need of robotic voices, but its nice to have the function. But the real fun started when i used (break beat) Drumloop as carrier, then a rez bass as modulator.. i also tested with AHH sound as modulator. Where i made the drumloop as a non-transpose.It worked almost like a gate on the modulator, blending in sound from both parts. Sounds sweet. I will without doubt add that in my next track to spice up the beat :).

There might be a sound example later

Well.. last night (04. july 2007) i manage to get a good workflow.. but it all ended to early.. not because my head was empty.. but because i had to go to bed…   

  Anyway.. i finaly manage to find a theme in my track.. The last few tracks have been a bit empty.. Because I havent managed to sort out any image for the soundscape.. its ended up been just music.. with no big feelings..   

finaly feel that i have some expression again.     But it dosn’t mean that its mellow chillout.. because its not.. its rather angry break music. :).   

Anyway.. i havent found the excact title yet.. but the title will contain “shark”.. and this is the reason why:

 I extracted this nice sample from the movie “The Beach” with leonardo di caprio where he talks about a shark attack.  I also sampled my Wife “Ahh”ing.   I am trying to build a feeling of beeing under water.. but not this crystal lovely images you see on Discovery.. more a cynical.. hard.. rough place with a touch of evil.  A place where the stronges predators of them all survive.   I have some work left on the ambience.. but its getting there..   The beat is pritty much in box.. rather banging stuff..

Tech stuff: 

This track relies heavy on the Emu on the drum and bass.  And i can’t say it enough.. that emu is just amazing.. its like it does the music for me….   It sounds so analouge that i have sometimes a hard time understanding its a digital sampler..   

I am using for this track

Novation Nova  (base sample for the bass, pad)

Emu e6400 Ultra (bass, drums, choir, drumloop)

Creamware synhts (Lightwave, Zarg Orion Custom 3)

Samples from my wife and “the beach”

And if you have read this fare!  please leave a comment…  i know that my blogg arnt very popular.. but with a comment here and there.. i can pretend that it is

Here is a patch example of an emulator patch made by sampling down 3 position of Waldorf microwave2 chorus2 wavetable, and crossfading between them.

 There are some filtring there aswell.. but its very easy to spot whats filtring and whats “wavetable cycling”

Download the mp3 here:
E-mu Wave (mw2:chorus2)

Well.. i suddely found out that my 13 GB large ide disk that was installed in my sampler was almost filled to the brim…  so i wanted to push the samples from the disk over to a new 40gb disk.. but i don’t have a clue how to do that??!!!  so i ended up an empty 40gb  harddrive then formate it to fat.    so now i am sampleless..  and my last project will not restore but it dosnt mean too much to me.. because i do my own sampling. but if someone told me how to move over the samples from the old disk i would be very happy :).

Download here: http://www.higen.org/misc/Higen-Whats_that_Smell.mp3

New track done its my first track made with the emu.. and i had a killer time

Genre:  Drum & Bass

Drums:  Emu drumkit (self sampled)

Bass: Emu, sampled from my Nova, layred and fixed in emu.  Used RFX compressor.

Sweet & Pads: Emu, sampled from my Nova, layred and fixed.  Used RFX reverb.

Rhodes: Premade emu sample (it was on my harddisk :P)

Other synth sound: Juno 106 emulator from my Creamware card.

Feedback are welcome.   It was a blast making the track.. its not eq-ed on the bottom.. so don’t play it too loud on crappy pc speakers..

Edit: I found a solution to my case 7 min after i wrote this blogg.. you will find the solution on the bottom of the blogg. 

Well.. finaly it happend.. i found a limitation on the emu sampler.  Well.. its not a big deal.. since i have ways of doing it off sampler… but it would have been sooo awesome to be able to do so.  anyway.. here it comes.

 My idea:  Emu goes Waldorf.

 I had an idea in my head of sampling down wavetables from the MicroWave II, and then store them as samples.. then having the emu playing x cycles of the sample by using the cords.   Start and stop location of the sample and loop could be controlled in realtime (like its possible to do on a Waldorf Wave/MW).  But after fideling around on the emu with a random sampleloop i found, i found out that looping is something that has to be set in sample edit mode, and can’t be changed in realtime.  Well you can change the startingposition of the sample. but thats not affecting the loop and is ofcourse not realtime.   which means.. mission failed!.

 Anyone know if its possible to do such on akai samples? (S5000/s6000). 

 Anyway. i havent given up totally.   I might not get the same flexibility as there is in a waldorf xWave, but i might be able to recreate the sound and much of the feel by sampling down the wavetable, and more or less predefine the looping cycle then instead having multiple voices  with diffrent filters to simluate the diffrent oscillators.     After all.. the wavetable is much about recreating complex timbres that are made through advance filtering.. so.. i guess the z-plane filters can do me a favor here.   I will post an example as soon as i have sampled down some wavetables.  Anyway.. the point is that the instrument should get some of the ppg/wave feel.. cyncial and harz metal sound.   I must admit that i have owned both Waldorf Qkeyb (love that synth), and Waldorf XTk (love that too).. but both of them are sold because of lack of space (and some economy).  But i hope the emu will bring some of it back to me! :D.

 Anyway.. the drum and bass track is taking form.. its not that long.. and i am not sure if i should use more time on getting it long “enough”.. after all its more important to make much, to get the proper work training on the emu, then to make it long.   So you might see an mp3 link here on the page in not so long time :).

 EDIT!!!

 well 5 min after i wrote this post, i came across a man who was looking into doing the same as i described in this mail.. but he actually came up with an brilliant suggestion..  i will past in my answer and solution from emusonacid here

http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?p=9497

Hey.. you are searching for answer excatly on the same thing that i am wondering about. but lets elaborate around it.

I have also owned a mQ, Qkeyb and microwave XTk.. i realy love waldorf but at the moment i dont own any of them.. just because wife and space :P.

But i have gotten an emu e6400 ultra.. and are fiddeling with the thoughts of getting some wavetable sound.

i wrote some thoughts about it here blogg.higen.org, but what you are suggesting is actually a idea i havent thought of yet. which gives me hope.

What we can do is that we could make like 8 single cycle samples (ie. sample down the main samples from a wavetalble from the microWave 2), then we could set it up to be layred with crossfade using the Voices Realtime Window. Here we can set up crossfade value for the diffrent voices, then distribute the 8 samples , which means sample each 16 value, and crossfade between that. (so that between value 1 and 16 are there two sample crossfading with 100% overlapp. which means sample 1 is silent at value 16, and at max on value 1, and sample 2 is silent on sample 1 and at max on value 16, and so on).

I teste the idea with a regular string sample.. and it works as i want it to.. i am able to sweep between the two samples (with diffrent filtersettings) by using controller (of my choice), and i can also get the lfo to do it.. The only thing i cant stand guarantee for is that the crossfade between the sample will sound like the aliasing used in the waldorf/ppg synths :). But i will know in the future.

You could ofcorse sample down all the 128 diffrent samples cycles and have the patch containing 1 sample for each value from 0-127. but i dont know if the efford will bring a better result i put my 3 cent on the crossfade solution first.

the next challenge is “how to emulate the two oscillator/wavetables model”.

answer… dont know atm

I have access to the wavetables from MicroWave2 so i will be sample them down as mono into the sampler..

Got your answer?

Okay.. finaly i found a methode for splicing a drum-loop into singlehit shared out on each key..  i got it from the emusonacid forum.

http://www.emusonacid.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2006

"This chops up a single breakbeat accross 8 keys without you ever needing to cut up the sample!
Get a breakbeat sample (1 bar) and assign it to a preset.
Edit the voice and set non-transpose to on, and optionally set solo on.
Edit cords and set the first 5 Cords (00 to 04) to Gain4X > ‘SStart +100%
Set Cord 05 to Key~ to Gain4X + ? (see below)
Now on your master keyboard hit D3 and adjust the Cord 05 amount until you find the first snare hit in the beat.
And thats it - you’ve now got a chopped breakeat mapped on keys C3 to G3 (including minors).
This works by using Key~ to adjust the sample start (with several Gain4xs to extend this). If you use key+ instead of key~ the range will be C-2 (lowest key) to G-3.”

This made wonders..   What it does it takes a sample and set the starting position up in 8 equal parts.. shared out of 8 keys.

I took a housesample i made a week ago, it was a 110bpm sample.  i made sure it was excatly 1 bar.  applied the cords and tweaked it so it was fitting perfectly. 

 then i rearranged it into a new beat.. and applied som filters.. the new beat was now i 130bpm.. and i used the amen break pattern :).

Listen to an example here E-mu Sampler splice

This made my day

 Listen to a short jam here: E-mu Oberheim patch 

Well.. i guess i have made it pritty clear that i have fallen totaly in love with the sampling techniqe.   So i thought i could share my progress in learning the lost art of sampling :).

Few days ago, i needed a kind of a lead pad.. a pad that sticks a bit out.  so i turned to my nova.. found a preset.. tweaked it a bit.. and made it fit for the track.. it sounded ok.. but too mellow and rnb’ish.. so.. i turned to my emu..   i sampled a 5 sec clip of the sample down..  copied it up and panned the two similar samples in each direction.. then i fine-detuned the one sample to around +6, found a very good looping point and made crossfade between the loopingpoint to avoid too fast transition,  applied amplitude envelope, a 4-pole low-pass filter, with an filter envelope.   I also did some dsp threatment on the sample like, normalizing.    First the result was a bit flat.. but after working with the filter envelope.. and amp envelope i found the right curve.. and it made miracles..

 the pad got a more edgy characteristic sound, and fitted my dnb track even more.  and that emu-filter actually kicks the bottom of the nova filters.. i am almost sad to say.. but its a killer!!!

I am going to apply a slow lagged random lfo on the fine-tuning on both samples.. so they can drift to get a more analouge feel..

With a slow lagged random lfo, i mean a LFO that is feeding out random values, with a lagproessor smoothing out the transition between the values.. giving it a kind of smooth “sample and hold” modulation.  Since its random, the two samples will not be modulated to the same value. Which will ensure it sounds more natural.

 The emu have revealed it self as a superb padmachine.   emu together with some va/analouge or softsynth turns out to be a killer combination!!

Well.. yesterday i sampled down all the singleshot drums i used in drum-loop as singleshot samples to the emu.  And i must say that it was amazingly easy.. it all went out smooth..  i just had to push arm, play the sample, then click place.. then repeate the procedure foreach singleshot sample.    Wahoo.. it was much much easier then first expected.

So now i have my first dnb kit :).   i added a cord from MidiD -> Glide.. that created some sick effects on the drum..

 God 17. Mai, Hurra