Greetings !
I have started a new mini - series that will cover chain making. Let’s chain some kick drums !
Done in Ableton but the same concepts apply to any DAW.
Enjoy
Greetings !
I have started a new mini - series that will cover chain making. Let’s chain some kick drums !
Done in Ableton but the same concepts apply to any DAW.
Enjoy
seriously can’t thank you enough for all of your tutorials on the OT & A4.
this is another gem!
Well done, you beat me to it with my OT in the shop right now Hope you don’t mind the couple of comments I left on the YouTube page, helpful Live tips for this kind of thing.
Nice job
Nice one! What will the future tutorials cover?
It’s also worth checking to see all the samples are at the same level.
I usually normalise them all to -1db (just my preference).
I was just going to start digging into sample chains today, and then this tutorial came up! Thanks!
May I ask why you you put a small dip at around 200 Hz with the EQ? Is it to reduce the conflict with other bass sounds?
Thank you everyone for comments
Tarekith, of course I don’t mind ! Quite the opposite, you nailed the 2 things that I forgot to mention, and that have been nagging me when I watch this again. I must admit that I did this video in a bit of a hurry, had I given it a day or two to polish it, I would certainly have added those tips in So thank you !
Future tutorials will cover :
Regarding normalizing the samples, absolutely ! I used some stock Ableton pack samples for this demo, so they are all already normalized, but that is something else I should have mentioned ! Damn, I seem to have overlooked quite a few details still Thank you for pointing that out.
I tend to dip slightly at 200 Hz as this is the frequency that makes car speakers sound bad It’s a very muddy zone, and I want to make sure that I control it at all times. It also helps getting the kicks cleaner on little earbuds or laptop speakers. It’s more of a rule of thumb than an absolute truth. This is how it happened :
I was working on a track with a friend of mine. It is a very bass heavy track. We bounced it and took a listen in his newly acquired Golf. And we also A/B’ed with other stuff. There was a frequency in there that was making the speakers crap out completely, but that we never heard in the studio. So we took a laptop in his car, plugged it into the system, and started experimenting with EQ. We found that Golf speakers really do not like 200Hz, and also realized that by notching it out slightly on kicks and pads opened up the mix in an incredible way. So now, it has become a habit, which does not mean it’s right, by the way Experiment and trust your ears !
On a more general note, there are a few key frequencies that I always check, and dip if necessary : 40 Hz, 200 Hz, 5k, 13k. I suppose it’s a matter of personal preference, but after quite a few years of EQ’ing in the studio, and live PA’s, i’ve found that those are a good benchmark.
Thanks for the video though
AT least it is a place for good discussion on the subject.
I had just used Reaper to create some chains. I then imported into Audition and normalised each sample individually…because I forgot to do it in advance.
Yes, I like good discussion !
I learn a lot from doing these videos, which is probably one of the main reason I’m doing them
Cheers !
one thing that irks me about chains sometimes is that you effectively lose the ability to play samples backwards, since playback will usually start at the silence between the slices. has anyone figured out a way around that without manually setting all the end points?
- applications and uses of chains once inside the OT
I chime in with a simple small “technique” I haven’t seen on the boards yet:
Once a chain is loaded in a sample slot, one can play whatever slice by locking the slice parameter. So far so good…but the nice thing is that one shot triggers can be parameter locked as well…So…
By locking the sample slot and the slice parameter in a one-shot, ANY slice from ANY sample chain can be played on ANY track that has the appropiate machine loaded.
This, in turn, means that any free step in any track can be used for letting a sample pop out from nowhere at the press of the yes button (which arms tracks) during a performance.
If you combine this by setting up several one-shots on various tracks, one press of the yes button, yields a variation ranging from a very subtle extra hihat to a massive boomed rolling bassdrum to…anything you can think of.
For example: If you have three tracks on which, say, step 8 is not used, you can use a one shot to trigger the sample of a sawtooth wave. By locking pitch offsets in a musical way on each seperate track, pressing the yes button arms all tracks, causing those three tracks to play the sample and thus a chord pops up…
Another idea is to combine one shots with a sample and hold lfo which modulates the slice number. You get as much or as little randomness as you want at the press of a button, but under tight control of the sequencer.
M.
Nice, thank you for sharing all these funky and useful tips
After I’m done with the Ableton stuff, I’ll do a tutorial on some of the uses of chains. I’ll keep your tips in mind to include in there !
Cheers.
Hi. Thank you for this really good tutorial! Was part 2 ever released? Id love to see it. Please if you have it recorded, many members here would appreciate it very much
Several years later, episode was still never released…
Necroquote - often a cut at around 225hz will make your bass less cluttered especially when using x0x type sounds (eg 909 kick) I sometimes notch this out on kicks to allow a bit more level and “fatness” but it can also sound nice on a whole mix, for example using a graphic equalizer.
A question re sample chains: why wouldn’ I just trigger a synth from an OT midi track at a really low tempo, say 8 notes for a 64 step sequence, and then record that into the OT, then slice? Not sure why everyone seems to recommend using a DAW for chain creation? (I suspect there is a good reason).
You can. If there’s a little latency you can shift the audio with ROTATE POSITION TO START.
Easier with a computer from non equal length samples, like a drum kit
The other thing to bear in mind is file size, if sampling then slicing on the OT you will probably want to cut out all the dead space to keep file size lower, which can be a bit more time consuming.
You could not bother and load the slices into static slots but then you lose some options over flex, and also statics have a bug where clicking can randomly occur on some slices some of the time with current OS (on mkII, don’t know about mkI). The clicking isn’t terrible but is definitely noticeable when playing a less busy pattern, I sent in a bug report along with a file demonstrating it about a month ago.