1010music Blackbox

It can do that? Totally missed it in the manual.

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Yea what firmware is this for? Or whatā€™s the trick?

Donā€™t run into this often but I can see how this is quite useful.

I would assume mono samples only right?

What I mean is, letā€™s say I have a kick and snare separate. I will often sample the sequence onto a pad, then I can remove the individual kick and snare, freeing up a pad. Or a closed and open hat, combine those. Three toms or other percussion, I may resampling those into 1 or 2 different patterns. All in the name of freeing up space.

I rarely need to do this though, I generally only use 6-12 pads at most for drum elements, leaving 8 to 10 open for melodies, bass lines, atmospherics etc.
I like to keep my jams on the simple side, where as other like to be more in-depth. For me it works great, I understand from reading users experiences and wants on the BlackBox forums that others make much more elaborate jams.
Ultimately I have a full fledged DAW if I want to go crazy, and have other hardware that can do more stuff than the BB. I really enjoy squeezing an individual piece of gear for all I can, it always teaches me some helpful tricks and workflows.

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Ah gotcha. Makes sense!

Another thing I like is slicing a couple loops with various elements, performing with the midi keyboard/midi pads, then resample g those sequences back into a 4-8 bar wav loop, then I can remove the original wav beats I used to make the sequences, again just removing old elements to free up pads.

Also, think about your drum patterns. A sliced pad can only be 2 voice polyphonic, but something like a 4 on the floor beat can have kicks (obviously 4 per segment) with the snare on every other. Thatā€™s your 2 voice polyphony being used on those steps. I will still do hats overtop a sequence, simply leaving the hats that fall on that kick/snare step out, effectively a poor mans side chaining. I will also sometimes use a heavy handed delay with high feedback set to 1/8 timing on a closed hi hat, it sounds through the 4 bar loop (or whatever length) giving you the voice of the hi hat without actually using an extra voice.
Itā€™s simple tricks like that I find fun to experiment with.
It obviously no substitute for an actual sample being played, but may or may not suit the needs of the song.

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I dont think chopping samples up works when exporting them (I could be wrong - need to double check), I dont recall them exporting as .wavs

BB confirmed that you cannot bounce a clip to .wav which is a shame.

Just ordered one of theseā€“very excited! I read somewhere that you can open up BB projects/files on Ableton. Is this true or am I imagining it? Canā€™t find any documentation or YT videos about this feature. Would be amazing if true!

You ā€˜canā€™. Pop the card into the laptop and open the .als file. However, it wont recognise ā€˜clipsā€™ from Blackbox which is annoying and neither any chops. It will recognise straight up .wavs from a specific project you selected. You can manually import each track and it will recognise the clips but they wont be time stretched etc so a little useless. At present you cant bounce a clip to .wav on the same pad in Blackbox which makes exporting a messy affair if you used up 16 pads (easily done). Lets hope they increase the 16 pads, its my main annoyance with the box especially as (as far as im aware) it wont export any chopping to pads - can anyone confirm this, i only tested quickly last nightā€¦

Donā€™t think I completely follow, but it sounds less than ideal. If Ableton doesnā€™t recognize clips in the als file, what exactly is the als file showing? And the time-stretch issue will only matter if the BB project is saved at a different tempo than the clips were recorded, right? Sorry, donā€™t have the BB yet so no idea how the file management works. Puzzling. But very much looking forward to receiving mine soon. I want to basically use it as a kind of quantized looper with DFAM and other weird synths, vocals, etc. Everything else is extra.

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It shows no audio in the ā€˜clipā€™ files in Ableton when opening the .als project.

I have given up as i dislike Ableton and its warp which makes things sound fractionally odd. Back to Logic and importing things manually from SD.

Howā€™s this working out for you? Iā€™m very curious to hear about your experience with the Norns and Grid.

Well ā€¦ my Monome is lost in US Postal Service limbo. They keep on sending it to the wrong post office and Iā€™m waiting to hear back from them as they figure out how to send it to the correct address. It has been a ā€¦ frustrating experience.

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Ah, man. And in these times, as well. Best of luck it sorts itself soon.

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Canā€™t complain too much as I am healthy and have lots of other gear to play with.

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Right, hereā€™s the track then, actually a cut from a live set I did not too long ago. Hope you like it, Iā€™d love your feedback as always. While all parts are recorded from various sources directly into the Blackbox, the piece itself is performed only on the Blackbox through the SSL SiX, with live tweaking going on during the performance.

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Love that little percussive melodic bouncy sound. Beautiful work!

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Every time I get a chance to sit with my bb (lol) Iā€™m more in love. The resampling is so fire. This guy is like almost there as the sp404 killer with this. Few more FX , a global filter and unquantized recording (or micro timing nudging) and this is the perfeeeect hip hop box

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Thanks :blush::pray:thatā€™s a lead from my Prophet12, sliced up and resequenced into something new. Itā€™s def one of my favourite parts.

lovinā€™ the 2nd part !

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