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Sampler Techniques

Lesson 4 from: Mastering The Maschine

JK Swopes

Sampler Techniques

Lesson 4 from: Mastering The Maschine

JK Swopes

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Lesson Info

4. Sampler Techniques

Lesson Info

Sampler Techniques

One of the big things about machine is it's a sampler so basically what I'm going to do is kind of go through some different ways that you can use the sample if there's any specific question that you have about the sampler feel free to ask or anything like that but let me get out my trusty turntable really quick so this is one of a new age turntable so beside that so I got some some cruelty free samples on here just to kind of simulate, you know, working with samples from a turntable, so pieces from m s x audio dot com thanks a really cool stuff, so what I'm gonna do is I'm a sample from this and then kind of show you some different ways that you can work with your sample once you get it in. So first thing I want to do is go to sampling and I have it set to my external stereo input, so I know my inputs coming on him put number one and if I want to hear what I'm sampling, I'll go here and turn on the monitor and I just kind of you know any time that you're doing with sample just kind of...

go through and kind of look for, you know, sound that you want a sample question you're using a real turntable has an issue with because it's a phone online and put so basically is going to depend on your audio interface. So you're basically go. Anything that you want to get into. Machine audio wise has to go through your audio interface. Oh, not through the machine itself, right, there's? No audio hook ups here. So if you have your deejay mixer and you want to take the outputs of your d j, make sure into your audio interface. You can pick it up that way, so yeah, you won't. You won't look it directly up to machine. Thanks. So let's. See, we got monitor turned on. So let's do it. If I find something I like from my turntable. So, like some like that. So a pause. It kind of go over here to the tech mode. That way, I would set my threshold kind of low that way. It automatically start recording once it. Once he hears something that contested just to see what I could see. That pressure was low enough. If I wanted to, I could turn this up. So what to do? I would just start sampling right here. Let's. Say, I like that. Sounds fine. Now I have the sampling so I can go in and start editing. If I want to do multiple samples, I can, you know, keep taking multiple samples and they would all show up as takes, you see, right here at the bottom of the screen, I got my little takes, but I'm just work with this one right now, so I'll go to the edit tab and, you know, started just in my start point on it's a little bit low, so what I would do in this case, I zeitgeist go over here, tio, normalize it, get a little bit louder, so I kind of I know I don't want that front part right there, and if you need to get in closer to kind of see what you're working with, you can just kind of zoom in and you got your scrolling right here's that we'll zoom in just to kind of see where we're at, and I know I'm just kind of I don't need that sold now what I'll do is just truncate that, so I just have that part right there, so go find my truncate and you got a lot of options. You can do what your samples like you can, you can fade in if you want to fade in, fade out so your samples you could, you could do that and basically away let's say you want to on lee do something on a specific part. Well, let me let me truncate this first and then we'll get to that. So I'm just trying to take this and I got that. So let's say, I want to fade in this sample for some reason. I mean, of course you can go in and do it with the attack or anything. But remember, anything that you do to a sample in the editing screen is destructive. So it is actually applying to the sample itself. Whereas if I was to go into the sampler or on the sand and kind of just attack that's that's not destructive so you can take that off if I go in here, it's going toe destructively, you know, change the sample that you can undo it with. Undo button if you want to. If you do something don't like but let's say if I wanted to just specifically go to the front of the sample and do ah fading. You got this election range right here. This is different than the play ring. So if I go to this election range on ly was in this election is going to be affected. So now I could go and say, maybe I want to weaken fei that in if I want to so now I really don't have a reason to fade that and but sometimes, you know, depending on your sample one how you chop it, you may have some clicks, you know, some different stuff like that that's a really, really easy way to fix your samples to end in the beginning just go in and just a do a little bit of a fade in on that sample and it'll make it coming a lot smoother, so I'm gonna do that because I really don't need that. So what I want to do in this one is let's say you do a classic way of sampling of just finding a loop and that you want to work with so there's really easy way to do that. What I like to do is actually I want to go over here to my zone and I want to go to my loot mode, so I'm a turn loop on and now when loop is on anything that's in between, that loop is going to actually loop for me and you'll see why I'm doing this in a minute because that's going to help me find a loop on one and then I can go back and truncated, but this is gonna help me find something that luke's properly, so I'll just keep playing with this is long as I'm holding down the pad is going to keep moving some will go here justice bring this over here because I want to start way kind of lets me lewis and now I can play with it so awesome if we could play from the end so I can know is that where the end but now I got actually listen to the whole thing was a way I kind of here with that group is and I know it's a little bit towards that in because I can kind of hear where I wanted to so I would want it to move about right on you could still zoom in and kind of see where you're at it shows me this not really properly so I don't need to just hold it down and keep it just the way I'm not really kind of looking at the screen I'm more trying to listen to how that lucas because you can look at the screen and think you know what is going through bad but it's a lot easier especially you're doing this method is to kind of hear and see because you really wanted to be a seamless loop if you want to work with that look like this I'm listening to it I kind of want to change the start of it so I go back and there's another section where I kind of want to start it at now just by hearing how that's looping mmm I kind of want started right here I don't know he didn't just adjust my play range now one thing to remember when you just you play range is going toe affect your loop brain so you have to just keep switching back and forth between those two but wait not in this with the tackle that what's that chopping way kind like that so what I would do now is actually go back over to the edit mode and just adjust my n range so what kind of lines up and now I would just truncated truncated right there and I'd like to leave just a little bit before and after just so I can play what they didn't get it exactly right once that truncated so I will go back over here to the front of it and of course she got a question that I'm doing this if you you know why I'm doing this and whatever let let me know so then that's good so now what I would do is just truncate that so now I just have this sample the benefit of doing that and making sure it's samples probably like if you want to get into time stretching and everything like that it's much easier if you have a specific length or a perfect loop if you want to go in and you know, chop and sample and do different stuff like that but I say we just want to work with that I don't need my looping on anymore because I just want to play it in a track or whatever so I'll turn that off and the next thing I would do is I would make like a pattern and just kind of try to see how long it is and try to find the temple of it the question no way any questions I think people are so focused on okay wait yeah ok so now now what I would do this is another trick of that do if I'm trying to find a loop because if you notice I'm in a sampler and I'm looking at the edit screen and you can see right here on the screen is just seconds now you djs you're probably awesome you could say ok this mini seconds at this tempo is this mini bars I'm not a deejay I work in bars so I need to find my tempo and I would prefer to be able to see this in bars but as you can see I don't have bar count so what what I like to do is I go in make a makeshift kind of ah well you'll see so we'll go over here to the pattern you know sampling and what I like to do is just drawing a note just to kind of see how the loop works so I put a note in there like this and kind of drag it over here and this way it's gonna play that note and I can see you know how long the loop is and I can kind of find my tempo so and another quick way to do is just turn that metro no wait one thing you'll notice about not he says he's a deejay he'll listen he'll stay honest this this tempo is this I don't have that bpm calculator and my kids so I just go like this and usually like I said this is another way when that tap tempo comes in so if I listened to it oh just kind of e o contest it so that's why I like tap temple because it's easier for me to just tap what I hear and tap along with instead it question uh justus ah small suggestion another way if you don't have that internal bpm clock is ah great way to do this is if you have the start and end points right where you want the loop to bay go to the time stretch feature inside of machine and it will actually show you what that bpm value is inside of machines so it will it will give you the mathematical reality at least of what it is now you might want to find tune it by year after you get there but it will definitely get you extremely close to where you want to pay again and that's why I mentioned getting a proper lou because it won't calculate it properly you don't have ah, good loop. It would kind of be off sometimes go fast, but anyway, so, you know, I used that tap tempo so I can work with this. I could put it in a little sees to bar it's. Perfect. I could actually, I have to go in and kind of seems a little bit off, so maybe a little bit so chopped off a little bit of that into that. No, but you kind of get the idea. Just work on that tap temple in that loop. So let's say, we got this and, you know, there's, a lot of stuff you can do with this sample. Now, if you just want to work with it this way, it's farm, let's say, you know, maybe you wantto kind of increase you want time stretching, you want to change the tempo of it so we can go in. I can actually make it match to wear. My project is if I want to change this and just remember what your temple is or you could just go in and do it free. So if I say I want to go here too, stretch and go to the settings if I haven't beaten move that's where that loop you know, having a perfect little kind of helps, but if you just want to turn that off and go to free, so one hundred percent is going to be the original speed if you want to slow it down a little bit, we'll go at ninety and of course, if you don't like that, you could do it another thing that's really cool, you can do let's say you like to speak, but you kind of want to be a little bit darker a little bit, you know, lower into and you can change the platoon e without changing the speed, so I leave my speed on one hundred, I'll change my tuning, and if you have something that a lot of kind of like this, that doesn't really have a lot of drums you can turn your former on and it kind of helps it a little bit, so if we do this now, so the same speed just sound has a different told so that's one thing you can do with it now another way that normally I like to work with samples is I don't really take the loop. I just kind of chop it up and it's a lot of different ways you can chop up your samples, so the fastest way for me is I just go in and just like, I'm just going to say and at this get out of the air that this not just adjust my start in points made I got that I'll duplicated just go old school way way just keep duplicating and keep it just I feel like for me this is just the fastest way to do it keep going but you don't have to do it that way if you want we can get out of that well just don't do so you can undo all your steps so you can also go into slice moments that we leave this here we could go on the sly smile there's a few different ways you can do this so now you got slice mode you can go buy split where just our mackley split it into equal division so right now you see it has four I could do eight sixteen where we want so say sixteen this's even in the slice mode you also see that you can get the bp and it kind of shows your bpm in there as well so that's pretty close to what I think I was that like seventy three point something so it is pretty accurate so you can do it that way or you could go by grid and slice it by you know america numbers like eighths and sixteen of course you know I don't know what slices that small I usually do if I mean slice more actually split independent of my sample it's usually like it just depends I usually do maybe sixteen or you can do eight I think you could actually edit these slices so if you click edit now I can go in and each one the starting point of each slice so on to see the end points will actually let you overlap into the next slice so if you kind of if you look closely you can see right there where they're actually overlapping that so that's the end point of this one you see on that could be useful you know when you're doing when you're putting your slices back together sometimes you know you get a little bit you know some clicks there it's a little jagged but if you kind of let him overlap a little bit it kind of flows a lot smoother so so he went in and we edited I still remember you could still zoom in if you if you need to get closer to see what you're doing way you got your slices and you wantto make a track with this a lot of a lot of people get confused because they press recording they start playing that slices and it doesn't record you have to actually assign these so there's a couple different ways you could do it so it's say we'll get out of it you can either apply this and what it will do it would be like if you if you just click apply it will actually it's almost like a rex file actually apply it on that single pad it will give you a pattern with it they don't actually play and you can actually adjust the tempo kind of old school rex type of way so if I wanted to say apply it would apply these slices it will actually put you see my panel button light stuff is going to put the pad in keyboard mode so now this is basically one pad spread across the keys. Each one is kind of on the keys so that's the way to do it but the thing about this is if you do it that way you don't get as much control over each slice like each sample maybe you want to add effects to only specific once you can't really do that in this mode because it's really all just on one pad it's like the key map so if I were if I were to go into the zone you see you see all that that's, all of them right there those slices it's really just one sound and it kind of key maps it's so normally what I like to do is if I'm slicing something, so I got all the slices these eight slices, what I do is due and apply to and now if I hit a empty group is going to put all those individual slices on a pan in a new group so now I'll hit that and I'll just say, yeah, we'll just do that click apply if you look here and I'm going to the sampling, you can see each one there you go. You see all my samples right here and now that gives you a lot more control over each individual sample there's also another way, let's say maybe you just want specific slices, so let's say, I want this way. I want that one I can do apply to, I could say single and now if I hit my group, I can pick which sound I want to put it on, we'll do it in a new group will say there and apply now just that slices there so they go back and fight, so maybe you don't want all the slices just one specific once and they don't want this one and maybe this way, that one so again I can do it apply to single and I want to put it here could apply. Of course you can if you want your slice of the cut each other off. What I usually do is before I start slicing one sample, I'll set the sample itself to ah chilled group of one and a litany of one in that way when I start slicing it though on slice each other off but you could do it after the fact so we'll just put that there and put it on one thing same with this one we put in a choke group in now way you could just go to work and start, you know, putting your slides together however you want to know of course you know you could still do stuff to these slices and these samples in the sampler you can go in and everyone take this one would be the wait wait it starts, you know, just duplicating and added effects to each individual one you know pretty much gives you a lot of control so a lot of ways you can slice and sample and pull out the slices so there's, anything you got any questions about the slicing portion or the slight senior how you would use this is any any chat room questions on this port? You know, as faras ahs bringing in the samples? I mean, I think that a couple people actually missed that. So if we have any extra layers that kind of add on top of this, you can sample as many as you want solis saving let's say we wanted get a different sample to say ok, I got this let's say we want to we'll just go here and we'll go back to sampling and make sure you have a record to have I still have it set to external stereo so maybe I want to sample something different now so maybe we'll see maybe we have ah something would just like sit drums or something so this is how I'm going to my record on the turntable you know if you had to turn to when you're going through looking for stuff to sample so wherever so the thing about machine but a lot of people ask is how to get extra stuff into it so it's all based on your interface so whatever you have hooked up to your interface you can sample into machine get a lot of questions from people on trying to sample from their computer a lot of interfaces don't allow you to do that they don't have the answer around but a way around that is a lot of people have cell phone you know? So a lot of people are trying to sample stuff online stuff like that pull out your cell phone, get a get a cable hook it and you're good to go or ipad you know whatever anything that you anything that you can plug into your interface you can sample it that that goes for instruments which we'll get into another segment that goes for if you get a bass guitar whatever any type of mike anything that you can hook up to your interface that's what you sample so if there's any external audio that you want to get into machine, you're going to sample it since it doesn't have audio tracks you know which again we'll get into that when I when I start doing the external gear stuff but you know it's all basically everything an audio and machine is a sample so anything you want to get into there is gonna be a sample so let's let's just pick something random just just so they can see it works so again for those who didn't see it so I got my my external source and you could set up you know all your sources in the machine preferences and I'm doing external stereo and put one I got my mode set to detect so that means it's going to sample you know whenever it reaches this threshold and I can kind of you know, preview it and see what's going on see right there to start so what's in there and that's pretty much how you get your sampling and and we can go back into what what I talked about with the different you know, editing and stretching and different not like that now there's there's something else I want to show a lot of times I know you know, back in the day we would sample we was sample stuff through an effect you know, like I say, I want to sample it through a filter I don't I don't want to put a filter on it after I want to sample it through that filter cause is going to give it a different sound or I want to sample it through a phaser whatever so there's actually ways that you can do that a machine so what I'm gonna do is it's just clear all these only these samples so much set up a new group and I'm a call that somebody is called at my input so what I'm going to do so I had my input coming in here so again, you going to do this directly from the hardware you can do it inside machine we'll go over here to the channel page and you know, for my input aiken said it right here to external one so I got my implants that two extra one that means it's going toe whatever's coming in wait wait another thing and what I want to do in my sampler is I want to change this because now I'm gonna be several an internal so I'm gonna internal and I must set this too input that's why I named it because now I can see you know that's where I want to sample so now that's going it's only gonna sample from the internal and now if I go back over here I've got full control what was also cool about this is now if I go to my plug ins started, thanks directly on there. So if I want to say something like that, I could just do it. I don't have to add it after and it's going to be in the and you can. Of course, you can add as many different layers of samples as you want. So said he wanted to do we owe you want to really get crazy, goes after him on it. Well, you wonder that it doesn't matter. And these could also be your external plug ins as well. So whatever you want to sample in here, you can do so now. I got a phaser directly on that sample way. Now, now you have that actual effect embedded into your sample. So it's really cool, especially if you have some favorite playing games that you want to think this will work with internal effects or, you know, third party plug ins, anything that you can load on there as long as you set this up like this, where you have the input coming into that, that channel or that pad, you can add whatever you want as many, you can just keep going, and I can add, you know, where I can keep going I can add delays on it do whatever you want so that's another question we get is how can you add effects to your samples when your sample a lot of people think you can't do it you most definitely can do it it's really easy to do it and it is fun because it gives a new character to your sounds or maybe maybe you just want to e q your sample before you sample it in two machine you know so you just ok I want to make you just want to bring this up when I bring this down you could throw it right there and then just re sample it internally and you'll actually have that affected sample so you can wonder and actually sometimes what all I'm doing is kind of putting one of those effects and like printing it onto you know my actual sample like that but let's see if you have a good delay or river andi it cuts off when you basically go back to the entry of the loop now is there a kind of a process that you employ when you're kind of for what what ones you do? What would you don't? I rarely ever put a delay on a sample and this is just some time like if it's a rhodes looper something I'm a sample what the delay but then that that's where you kind of you want to sample a little bit more than you're probably going to need and when you can kind of you know chop it down and get to where you need to you know, give in terms of how you want to sound without it sounding bad so I just want to add to that there is another technique also on baby you could show that which would be sink sampling with poop on with and what that will do is it will it will automatically sample the pattern as it loops around and it will it'll print the end back to the beginning as well so it will be a complete loop yeah well we're getting to sing sampling when I'm dealing with the hardware stuff so yeah that's part of that that topic but another thing was wait just waken use this one just use this sample I'll just go in and normalize it so another thing that machine has is the vintage modes you know and there's where you can make it sound like the espy twelve or the mpc sixty and a lot of times people just kind of throw it on there and expected tio kind of give it the sound and it does sound good but anybody this use those those order machines they kind of know the process of really getting that sound was you would sampling to him but they didn't have a lot of time so you would kind of pitcher samples up on a turntable you would kind of, you know, put it on forty five so it goes a little faster it was sample it, do that sampler and then you pitch it back down and it gives it a lot more grit, but you can actually do that directly in machine and I'll show you how to do that as well. So let's say we have this sample it's already kind of affected, but we'll use it anyway just to kind of give it a little bit so way have that sample so what I'll do is I'll come back out, I'll come over here to the engine, I'll just go, I'll do spf twelve low, I like this one so you could see added on their kind of gets a little different if you listen to it without you kind of just it's almost like a little filtered sound, a little a little bit low fi so but again, what I would do after I do that, I'll come over here. We kind of we kind of looked at this earlier and I'm kind of messed with my sample reduction like we kind of showed earlier just kind of put it just like that, thanks that was kind of get a little bit greedy, you can even mess with the bits if you want to let's say I got that going right on and then what I'm gonna do come over here just to give it that speeding up your record because you don't have enough sample time effect I want to pick it up so I'll do it I'll be like twelve all right so you like you like that here's a trick so we do that what I want to do is I come over here to a new group of the sampling internal I know it's right there on group b so I want a sample group b and they're not listen so what I'll do I'll just turn this down just to make sure I get it started come back over here and there's my sample now what I'm going to do to that sample so come over here and whatever I pitched it up I'm gonna pitch it down so I picked it up twelve so I'm a pitcher back down twelve to get back to the original tempo that we had it at let's go have a totally so that's actually sampled it through the vintage most was like sample it through a vintage sampler pretty much in the same way that we used to have to do when you do when you only had like two megabytes of memory you would have to speed up your samples and you know then picture back down and it wouldn't take up more space because you know and that's the truth that you can do it machine because a lot of people think just because you have the vintage molds, you could just turn it on. It's, just our mackley sound like it. Well, I mean, they sound good, but if you actually go through the process of sampling through them, pitching it up, pitching it back down it's really going to give you that? Just that old school. Gritty sales. So any specific chime in one more time? Because again, the great thing about machine is that there's so many different workflow ease of doing different things the other way is, as I showed earlier, thie the sample zone area, you have a pitch in there. If you drop the pitch in there or raised the pitch in there it will, which it will change it before it ever hits that sampler mood. So you can actually do all your pitching right there, right? And then it will. It will affect it the same way that re sampling will do it. And then you would affect your tune pitch afterwards the same way. So if there's different ways to, you know there's more than one way to skin a cat, as they said, why you're skinning cats, man it's not nice, tasty so yes so that's just another. Any questions about that? I think that's a really cool thing because a lot of a lot of times people just totally adventures mode on and I can hear a little bit I can't really hear but if you if you start messing with the pitch and re sampling and you know pitching and internet back up like he said it's going to give you that police into the original little picture back down so you can hear the original I mean that phaser on there is a little different but wait here's this a lot more low fi so that's the original one with just the low five turned on or the vintage bill turned on thing here it is where it was re sampled pitched up and pitch back down there was a subtle difference but that that subtle differences that painted a lot of people like about those older samplers they think it's just sampling into it it's all about the technique of how we had to sample into that stuff. So yes, so to get those classic sounds you really have to employ the classic techniques right makes a lot of sense well, there's some kind of questions that are going on a little bit outside of like that but what kind of in the same way of getting different sounds out of it cromer beats is asking how do you sample sounds on basically auditioning on a piano role as you move notes around? So if you're trying to say, like you get your sea and then you're, you know, d and e and all these different tones of it, you have that kind of function like in reason sample it, I guess, like, I mean, because automatically, any sample is in machine is automatically pitched up and down the keyboard. So is that what you're talking about? Just playing it on the keys, or are they trying to exactly? I mean, I guess, like because if I have this sample right here is gonna play up and down the keys they're way don't even have to map it. If you have a note, anything this in machine on a pad is automatically key, matt and you can't you don't have to have a keyboard to do that, you know, you could just press shift and paddle, which is keep war mode, and if you want to get to different, you know, different ones, if you're in patna, would you got active? So if I press pad molding, I mean keyboard mode, I got octaves or semi tones and just remember your bottom, your bottom left pat is always going to be your root note, so you'll see it change now we'll see one. So, you know, if you don't have a keyboard, you could still play it up and down the notes. But I think that's what they're asking perfectly answered yet. Just turn this on here. S oh, yeah, yeah. That's. One thing that's cool about machine is anything you load automatically could be played across the range and automatically, anything that's loaded on a pad. It pretty much takes up the entire key range. Now, of course, you can go into the mapping and, you know, put different samples on different key ranges and stuff like that. Like, if you were in, you know, the zone and you wanted to, you know, go into the map. You can actually go in here and start, you know, mapping things. Or if you want, look here. You can see all your samples right here. You start dragging stuff in here and, you know, just in the starting in range of your of your zone. So you can have specific samples on key if you want to build up samples that way. So that's so he had a question. He he just chatted again. He means here this sound like if on a piano roll on like a middie note, for example, on some dogs, you can actually drag that note around and hear it so you can play it there. Can you drag it around on the piano roll and change the pitch as well? If you don't have a keyboard there, um, would you ever want to do to get a question? I think I think what he might be talking about it, you know, like you did you set it up? Uh, you don't want it to tory's like nfl studio and you made it how you could do to play list like this guy he might be talking about like he has a snare and you might want to do a snare row in the india pattern air, anyone? It was like he wants, like, if he hits this near here and then he hits it down and down here like you want to touch it. And I think they want to know if I have this in here, will it automatically when you drag it automatically, play it, it won't automatically play you can you can hit the keys. You see where you want to move that, but I think that that works this is not sure exactly who's worked around time. Some slight differences between dogs and exactly how you get that effect right, that process, it's, time to bring knocked up so you could do is doing his thing. So let me let me clear my stuff. Awesome. How you clearing good question, any time you want to clear something really quickly if you just want to get rid of it. If you push a race and shift, whatever you touch will be gone, and that could be individual pads or whole groups. So that's, the way that I just kind of going and clearly think that what that happened started a project. I just going really quick. And as long as you're holding down a shift in a race, whatever you touch is going to be totally wiped out.

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Ratings and Reviews

George D
 

Even though it's a bit old now this is still a fantastic walkthrough of Maschine. Lots of great content here!

Joseph Castaneda
 

Pretty dated, but an excellent class. JK walks through everything he explains with thorough, real-time examples. Extremely helpful!

William Parmlee
 

Just what i needed, great work flow an easy to follow. looking forward to the next level . Thanks

Student Work

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