Sample chains: I've seen the light

Elektron Gear Analog Rytm
#1

I had tried out some sample chains with the Rytm and I thought they were alright. Too much fiddling around with the start time, I thought. Not compatible with quick kit creation, I thought.

No. They’re absolutely amazing. You just have to use a full chain of 120 samples.

I was scared to make 120 sample-long chains before. It’s time intensive. It’s a lot of memory on the rytm, relatively speaking. Like 4 mb per sample eating into that 1gb plus drive, ya know? Would it eat up the ram? Isn’t a chain of 120 samples excessive?

No. It works amazingly. And it turns the sample start knob into a sample selector. As long as the amp is set to something like a hold time of 20-30 and a decay time of 2-5, you just leave the sample end param maxed and change the sample start time. Boom. 120 snare samples on tap. 120 shaker samples on tap. 120 clap/snap samples on tap. FEEL THE RADNESS.

I have a gajillion samples on my laptop because I had a maschine expansion pack habit for a while. I’m pleased to see that money didn’t go to waste, and now all those high quality samples can get the full analog signal path treatment. I make the chains in Ableton at 40 bpm with a sample on each 16th note. Utility on the Ableton track with panorama set to 0% so I can hear things in mono like they’ll be on the Rytm. SDS drop to get them on the Rytm with a load time of about 3 minutes per chain, which flies by when I’ve got Elektrons to fool around with while I wait.

It’s a brand new drum machine all over again–again :slight_smile:

New machines on the tracks? More LFOs? Pshhh. Between scenes, performance macros, pressure and velocity mappings, crazy new trig conditions for fills and other radness, step length per track, and mappings for an external Quneo controller to juggle it all, I don’t even have time to program what I’ve already got! Thanks Elektron. You guys are the baddest.

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#2

And it turns the sample start knob into a sample selector. As long as the amp is set to something like a hold time of 20-30 and a decay time of 2-5, you just leave the sample end param maxed and change the sample start time. Boom

Yeah !!! Thanks for sharing your light . Such a cool trick !!!

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#3

You can even use a LFO, a Scene or a Performance pad on sample start to get some very cool variations on your sounds !
Note that Scene and Performance can be configured to let sample start + end evolve at the same time :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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#4

120 different bass samples on tap: ACID Sound Pack
Totally agree with you, 120-slice sample chains are big but have loads of possibilities, and the cool thing is it’s easy to navigate samples since it’s every increment.

Has anyone had luck with LFO settings for cleanly changing sample start?

I’m thinking if you set LFO to random with a 120-slice chain, it could become a randomizer, which would be cool for the bass notes in the ACID pack (or other applications). I’ve tried it but can’t find the right LFO / AMP settings to get this to work perfectly.

#5

I tried playing around with setting performance macros to change sample start time, but the performance pads seem to output more than 120 steps, so you end up with samples triggered at the middle or end of their waveforms.
This makes sense: I’m glad that the performance pads have a resolution finer than 120. It’s probably the same deal with the LFO. I haven’t yet attempted to figure out a trick to get it to sweep through samples using the LFO…

#6

120 different bass samples on tap: ACID Sound Pack
Totally agree with you, 120-slice sample chains are big but have loads of possibilities, and the cool thing is it’s easy to navigate samples since it’s every increment.

Has anyone had luck with LFO settings for cleanly changing sample start?

I’m thinking if you set LFO to random with a 120-slice chain, it could become a randomizer, which would be cool for the bass notes in the ACID pack (or other applications). I’ve tried it but can’t find the right LFO / AMP settings to get this to work perfectly. [/quote]
BTW E.M., I salute your sample pack creation, and expected you to bump this thread :slight_smile: You partly gave me the idea, as well as the folks who are having more esoteric discussions about coding automatic sample chain code in another thread.

#7

“esoteric” is probably the right term :smiley:

but yeah, these 120 slices sample chains are really a lot of fun to play with.

btw: my tool can be used to auto-pad a less-than-120-slices chain to 120 so the “STA” increment remains 1. that wastes a lot of space, though.

I guess there’s no “best way” how to arrange these slices (e.g. all snares/hihats/… vs whole-kit-in-a-chain).

To everyone who releases samplepacks: Please don’t just include the samplechains but also the original samples so ppl can rearrange them as they see fit.

#8

Nope: If the sample chain contains 120 samples, how can it be possible to start in the wrong place (i.e. middle) if you use a controller outputting any number ?
That makes no sense - it can only land on an integer and you have no waveforms longer than 1
what you’re doing is just jumping about those start/end points before samples finish properly and it sounds a mess
.
try using equal velocity mod on start and end and separate by 1 (samp page)
now if you use velocity recording via the Trig page you can control the sample - or play it live

#9

@avantronica, is your max sample chain compiler you mentioned recently shareable? I made one recently, it’s a bit shaky though, wondering how you built yours?

#10

You can use scene locks to change the slices you’re playing. it works.

#11

I had grander plans for it (therefore not shared) after I started work on it, may yet return to it as it was coupled with a few unique things !

#12

I had grander plans for it (therefore not shared) after I started work on it, may yet return to it as it was coupled with a few unique things ![/quote]
Did you figure out a way to convert the sample rate of samples not at 48k? I can’t find a non real time way to do that in Max…my compiler just slows them or speeds them up…annoying.

#13

hi there i also found 120 to be the best for finding samples quick…i tend to fill my sample chains with random sounds like loads of weird percussion or keyboard sounds stabs literally anything so you can really change the mood of a track or find new ideas really fast…
with the new trig options and p-locks you can make one track really rich in variations have all kinds of stuff happen over 64 bars …
the new upgrade is so good :slight_smile:

#14

120 different bass samples on tap: ACID Sound Pack
Totally agree with you, 120-slice sample chains are big but have loads of possibilities, and the cool thing is it’s easy to navigate samples since it’s every increment.

Has anyone had luck with LFO settings for cleanly changing sample start?

I’m thinking if you set LFO to random with a 120-slice chain, it could become a randomizer, which would be cool for the bass notes in the ACID pack (or other applications). I’ve tried it but can’t find the right LFO / AMP settings to get this to work perfectly. [/quote]
BTW E.M., I salute your sample pack creation, and expected you to bump this thread :slight_smile: You partly gave me the idea, as well as the folks who are having more esoteric discussions about coding automatic sample chain code in another thread. [/quote]
Nice, glad to hear it!
Yeah, there are a lot on here who use chains. I figured it would be perfect to include them in a sound pack, as long as the directions for using them (moving sample start/end) are included to avoid confusion. It seems like the way to go for these machines.

#15

That’s a good suggestion; certainly adds more value to the pack. We’ll see what we can do on the next pack.

#16

To each their own. I prefer concise chains. 30 or 60 slices.
With 127 sample slots over a 64MB Project Ram, chains with minimal silence = more killer in my project and less filler (silence).
It also means a single sample hit can be split into more regions.
If I have a 30 slice chain, each sample is split across 4 segments. So i can do fun things with reversing a snare and just using the 2,3,4 slices of it, or the 1,2,3 slices, or the 2,3 only… more resolution.

Working with smaller, more concise chains means I don’t get a sample on every integer, sure… but the time I lose in dialing in the right sample hit is gained back by not having to stop the sequencer to load an additional project because I filled the project RAM up too early.

To each their own.

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#17

Yeah, definitely depends what you are going for. :slight_smile:

The ACID Sound Pack uses several different length chains depending on what sounds they contain.

30 and 60 are good lengths with easy to remember integers, 120 chain is good for grouping a ton of similar sounds together, such as bass sounds with different settings (a la 303, etc.).

The next pack will probably feature more 30 and 60 chain lengths as that seems to be a good standard.

#18

@midilifestyle thanxx for sharing man! its absoltly amazing.
1 question: when i stop or mute the AR the chainsample is still playing many other samples. is there any trick, how to stop that? start is on 8 and end on 9
mhm… thanxx for help
cheers martin

#19

actually i found out, delay & holdtime right :wink: you wrote it before haha

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#20

Another good trick with chains - and a fairly obvious one, I’m sure - is to break a full, treated loop down into its component parts, so that you can manage it using a single track.

So for a basic four-on-the-floor pattern you might have a 909 chain with a solo kick, a kick with a closed hat, a kick with a clap, a kick with a clap and a closed hat, and so on. Or you could just have a chain composed of twelve variations of a full loop, or chop those twelve loops into quarters, or whatever.

Whichever approach you take, your basic rhythm is then on a single track and you’ve got eleven more tracks to fill up with synthesized sounds, fx, vocal samples, loops, pads and whatever else you might want to lob in, and you’ve got the convenience of everything being contained in one chain file. You can also use scene or perf mode to switch sample slots for mutes, breakdowns and what have you.

I like doing this even with fx-treated loops - I love the sound of a reverb tail or delay suddenly cutting out and then back in. Obviously you lose the ability to individually process sounds, but in the right context it’s very handy and effective - and having eleven Rytm machines twittering away in unexpected ways over the top makes it all worthwhile.

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