emusonacid!

Hi there,
I'm new to the EMU world, bought an ESI2000 a few months back and haven't really had a chance to play with it. I'd like to use it mainly for looping and playing other things over it on different instruments. Basically I'm looking for a way of playing a drum loop and bassline loop over each other without having to hold down the key.

I see there's an option for "Loop in release" in Setup in Digital
Processing.

From the manual it appears that this will cause the sample to loop
continuously even after I've released the key on my keyboard (using a
Yamaha PSR220 to control it) but I can't get it to work.

Can anyone explain how I can get a loop I've recorded into my sampler
going continuously by just hitting the key it's transposed onto and
then make it stop by pressing the key again or is this possible?

Ideally I'd like to have a drum loop assigned to one key, a fill
assigned to the next key, a bassline loop assigned to the next and so
forth.

When I hit the first key it'll set the drum loop going, I can then hit
the first key to cancel the loop while triggering the fill and then
hit the first key again to set the loop off again. When the drum loop
is going I'd like to be able to kick in the bassline and have that
keep going while I concentrate on other things like sound effects etc.
assigned to the other keys.

Also wondering if it's possible to have it so that, say I have a
sample that's 4 seconds long, I can just hit the key that that sample
is assigned to and it'll play the whole 4 seconds without me having to
hold down the key. I'd like to be able to do this on a
sample-by-sample basis so that one key could be triggering a 4-sec
sound I want to be able to play all the way through without having to
hold down the key but also have samples I can play only for the
duration of when the key is held down.

Hope this makes sense to all of you.

Thanks in advance

What you are looking for in your ESI sampler, is a function called "latch key". As far as I know that is not implemented on the ESI series of samplers. The only way you can trigger samples and keep them going, is by assigning the samples to the numeric buttons on the ESI itself. Set up correctly, pushing a button will keep the sample sounding until you press the button again.

There is a workaround, however - you can buy an Emu X-board midi controller keyboard. I believe you can set up that keyboard and latch the keys on the X-board.

kvinge

Ah, pity about that. Thanks for the reply though, may splash out on Thomann for a new X-board in the near future.

I can figure out how to assign the buttons to specific loops but do you know how I would "latch" them?

I know I did it once but can't for the life of me remember how I actually did it!

EDIT: Oh, never mind found it

Just thought I would update this thread as I am currently messing about about with the trigger buttons on an ESI 4000/2000 for the first time properly, despite owning one for 14 years.
All the questions asked in the first post on this thread are possible with an esi2000/4000, there is a latch option(which enables you to play an automated loop and toggle on and off) which is located in the master menu under trigger buttons(latch on/0ff).
It is also possible to set the trigger buttons to play the whole sample with one touch-assign the sample to a note(c3 for example), go to the master menu and go to trigger buttons, choose the trigger button you want to work with and link it to c3. select that zone in dynamic processing(c3 to c3), select keyboard mode to "trigger" then write the envelope(how much you want to hear played) under VCA and add VCF, LFO etc if wanted.