'Power Tips for B3' - help by posting yours here.
Earlier today I helped @Sygma discover a feature he had been wanting for months but didn't know was already available (vertical velocity mode for pads).
It got me thinking I'd like to start a community-driven guide to all the top tips for B3 we've learnt as a community over the last 12 months.
Please share your killer workflow tips and tricks below, and I will compile these into a helpful reference. Some of the categories I'd like us to cover include hidden features, shortcuts, setup, housekeeping, composition, performance, sequencing, exporting, mixing/mastering.
I'll start us off with my little tip that made Sygma's day...
Comments
PERFORMANCE TIP:
Vertical-based velocity when tapping pads
It's pretty good for tapping-in hihats
Export a copy of your track directly into the sessions folder so you can listen to any session instantly without having to load it...
Copy n paste from the tips category of the forum there are lots there
@Audiogus Hahahaha, I had that thought recently. Specifically I think there needs to be a preview export feature, similar to the regular export, where you can choose a range to export that will be played when you tap on a session before loading (similar to previewing samples, can toggle auto play on or off)
Back on topic, here are a couple of my fav tricks right now
The @tk32 Bouncy Sample Juggling Trick:
Slice a sample, works great for break beats, and set it to Hold and loop alternating. Set the release as appropriate and play the keys or pads. I did a quick demo of this in my tune walkthrough for Brayktharuu, but I might do another vid specifically for this trick.
Slice Mode Sample Offset:
I learned this from @samu in an old thread post. Slice any sample, but this works great for breaks and vocals and baselines and whatever else. Leave the pad in slice mode, tap the Polyphony setting and turn offset on. Now your sample will play to the end starting at whichever slice you triggered. Try it out with the layer trigger set to Hold and jump around the sample. Try slices of different lengths depending on the sample content. I might do a video on this one as well.
Use Legato Play with Sample Stretch On to 're-pitch' a sound without altering the speed for crazy results on spoken phrases etc. alternatively use a synced step-modulator to control the tuning with stretch on to re-pitch parts of the sound.
Biggest tip for B3 users, the forum has categories (scroll to bottom of page and press full site) and there is a Tutorials, Tip & Tricks section and a lot of free resources banks/samples etc.
Very few B3 users know that
Oh and to be fair, i did a consolidated tips & tricks and it is stickied.
To my eyes that is better than a list like this where tips get lost in the long long long thread.
So my biiiiig tip is this.
Post these tips as threads instead of posts here, I will add them to the consolidated list and maybe myself and @ronji can start going through and doing quick shot demo vids ?
Just trying to get people motivated to share tips again
It's been a while and I feel we have all learnt some great little tips and workarounds over the last few months.
Do a thread like this once in a while then, once you get a few, we post them individually as new threads with full instructions and list em in the main list ?
SOUND DESIGN TIP:
Try modulating attack time by key for some fun and interesting effects, especially on pads. You can set it so that lower notes have a slower attack/ higher notes have quicker attack. Or my favourite, set it the opposite way and play a few chords. Note this only works with sample-based sustained sounds (such as single-cycle pads)
How it's done:
Good incentive guys !
Do the same but modulate by velocity, softer notes have more attack, you can use this on pianos to pretty much get rid of sample velocity layers, combined with velocity volume and you could even use a little vellocity filtering, you might be surprised how realistic a single set of piano samples can sound.
Isn't that just like an advert saying "B3s sampler is awesome" which by the way i am in total agreement with and go out of my way to try to get people to use it instead of AUv3 as much as possible, if we could freeze AUv3 to sampler instruments, then round/random robin, Game over.
By the way, drum kits with over 128 samples is closer to infinite samples, 128 keys/128 velocity layers/haven't even checked how many layers/128 pads per kit, thats near enough infinite for me hahahahaha.
I am going to slightly rephrase your tip MSandoval...
Always try to create instruments in the sampler before going to AUv3/IAA/Hardware, it has many levels of sample mapping (See MSandoval suggestions above) but also an infinite level of modulation to move past static samples in to synthesis territory.
Oh I almost forgot my favorite intua forum tip:
how to search the forum
site:intua.net/forumsCare to share some instruments? Or even sell them?
Cool. I’ll check it out. I did buy some of the BM3 sounds over the last year. Lol. Thanks for the info.
If you can figure out how to extract the WAV samples from gigasampler archives, they’ll open in BM3’s sampler with ready made loop points (this is AWESOME for building sampler instruments!!).