emusonacid!

i have an e4xt and im struggling with the key mapping, if i have a sample i want to chop or even two seperate samples how do i map them to specific keys?i know this is noob but please i can't figure it out

Okay... You must be having some difficutlies here to post two topics that are basicually the same thing. So I am going to go step by step for you. I have to order a pizza first though.. so hold on a second.

Okay... So you have your record player or cd player hooked up to your emu. So you go to the new sample bit and play the break first to set your level. I would suggest that you remove one of the channels from the emu. You want to sample stereo but only one side of the break. I will explain more about this. So you pick the channel you want to sample and arm the sampler and press play or drop the needle.

So you are done sampling. You pressed done or the time ran out and now you are given the option to keep the sample or dispose of it. You should see a keyboard looking thing above these options. You can place the sample here if you want. But I have a faster way. So, just press keep.

Now you should name your break something instead of the generic default name it gives samples. Now you want to switch over to the tools section. You know where you can actualy cut the samples and such. Now... remember you sampled the break... but only 1 channel. What you want to do here is convert the sample to mono... which will make the sample sound stereo. It will go through both speakers instead of the one. You want to avoid cutting breaks up that are in stereo because one channel might be slightly behind or a head of the other and your chances of having missed zero points increase. You get ugly sounding pops and such.

After you convert to mono... you may want to gain the sample up. I typically normalize the break at this point. Then I will go into tool 4 and do the beat mugger... I do this only to get a ruff idea of the bpms. Beats per minute. Once I get that information I do some math. What I do is take 60 and divide that by the BPM... this gives me an ruff idea of how long each beat is... quarter note lenght. From this point I go in the copy function and set that length I just got from the calculator on my computer. Lets say the break starts clean with the first kick. I will transpose my controller down about 4 or 5 octaves and the keyboard to audition the break. If I don't hear the kick hit at that low of an octave.. then that means I will have a beat that will sound kind of slow and muddy. You don't want any spaces before a kick or snare or anything for that matter. You want it as tight as possible. Once I set the start point, I listen at the end point. I usually try to get the end point as close as possible to the start of the snare. So I will often set it up so I hear a bit of the snare and slowly back it off until I do not hear the snare anymore. I have the resolution set to 1 sample per movement of the jog dail. I also play this a few octaves down as well. If I can't hear a missed zero at a very low pitch then I am for sure not going to hear anything at normal or above pitch.

I grab a pad and pen and write down the start and end points and group those up and indicate what beat it is. I do this so if something goes wrong, I need to recut something or fix a mistake in cutting... I can go back and find the beat I need quickly with out having to do the whole break over again.

I copy the sample and move it to the next sample bank. Leave the break as is. You do not want to cut that up, you want to copy from it. If you make a mistake and you are cutting up the original break.. you have to start all over.

So now you have a quarter note length sample ready for cutting. You see the sample lenght underneath the start and end points in the cutting menu. You want to divide that number by four. This will give you a ruff idea of how long your 16th note cuts are going to be. You want to cut your breaks up into 16th notes because you can often times maintain more of the original sound. Also.. you can do a sort of hard quantize. You make the drummer drum on time. You will want to cut each piece as close as possible, you want the attacks of the ghost and rides or whatever to be right up against the wall. Makes for a tight break. Also cutting into 16ths makes for easier sequencing and edit control. All you have to do is move stuff around and you can make a new beat in seconds.

I like to move the start point forward and then cut. So I leave behind the part that I want in that sample bank. I then copy the sample clip board and move that to the next bank and repeat. I do all the tests and checks I stated before. The extremly low pitched auditions and such. I also, once done cutting up the first beat. I will auditon the original rhythm at a slightly faster bpm in a sequencer. I recreate the break. I am listening for gaps. You want to keep things as even as possible.

Okay... so you have your first quarter note cut and all that. You want to go into preset edit. You should see 1 voice in there. That voice will reflect the name of your break. Bump that up to the next sample... the first kick of your break or whatever. You set the origin which is default C4. I will hit the lowest key on my controller with that field highlighted. It will now become C1 or whatever your controller goes down to. I then hit next and go into the next screen. This will show you two values. one that says C-2 and C8 or something like that. These are your high and low range. This sets the length at which the sampler will interpolate the sample. You want to high light each feild and hit C1 or whatever the original key was. Do that to both. Now you have the sampler just playing that first sample at C1 and only C1.

You then copy that voice. You bump your sample bank up to the next piece in the break and then you just adjust the origina up a half step, then the high range by the same and then the low range by the same. You can't bump the low range up if you don't move the high range first.

You repeat this until you are done.

You may also find that with my method.. some hits will not land on time. That is alright. If you end up with anything more then a 0.02 second varition back the start point back to the original placement... making sure there is not strange noise at the start and then cut that break. Contradicts what I just said about getting tight cuts on the start of hits doesn't it. Not really. What you want to do with this is move the start point as close to the start of that hit. Write that sample position down. Back it off... then reverse then entire sample. Look at the total sample lenght of that hit. Subtract the number of samples that was in your sample start line just before you reversed the sample from teh total length. Move the end point to the difference of that subtraction. Reverse just that section of the hit. Now you have a hit that is long enough to avoid gaps and yet still has a nice tight up against the wall attack on the hit. This technique will work in most cases.

Hope this helps out.

snh

apprciate it, im new to the hardware world