Sampling my old grand piano - advice?
I’d like to sample my old piano into a bank and I’m looking for the best method. I’d like to sample every single key at three different velocities.
So far I’ve tried to record an octave at the medium velocity as a test, recording right into the BM3 sampler, then slicing that into 12 pieces, then saving to a single layer. This works great for a single velocity, but how do I sample in another layer of high and low velocities into the same bank? Is this the way I would want to do it? I can’t figure out how to record a new sample into the same bank, do the slicing again, and set as a different velocity layer. When I record again the old layer is gone.
Comments
Quickest way is to just map the samples at the velocities you want in the sample mapper (see image) white is upper layer higher velocities, blue lower layer is lower velocities
When you record in to the sampler it creates a new layer everytime you start recording, so you will need to record all 88 notes for the first velocity, then start recording again and record the next 88 notes for velocity 2 etc etc, but if you are using slicing to slice a single file you are going to put yourself in a world of pain because when you save to a single layer it will replace the previous layer, so slicing for multiple velocities will not work in this way on a single pad as far as i know.
You could slice/map the three layers across three pads and link the pads, that will work
Personally i would record all the notes to a single audio file, then edit each note and save it as its own sample, but thats me.
Just say the note name and velocity into the mic while recording makes it quicker edit/naming.
Once i had all the samples recorded in and named correctly in a folder, i would then map layer 1 as the high velocity, then create a new layer 2 as mid velocities and layer 3 as low velocities.
Layer 1 i would add a fast pitch envelope also based on velocity, so when played hard you get a bit of clickiness (key/string noise) for very hard playing.
Layer 2 i would leave natural for natural playing.
Layer 3 add an amp envelope that raises the attack very very slightly as the velocity goes down, this emulates softer playing the lower the velocity.
You could even duplicate layer 1 just to have the pitch click at the extremes 120-127.
To be honest i normally create all the three layers above from one set velocity of samples, not three, but im a lazy sod lol.
Thanks that’s very insightful. So to record the 88 keys you would do it into a BM3 audio track? Then how do I create the individual samples from that? Do I have to actually bounce/export each to a file?
I personally would record in to an audio editor, currently doing this sort of work in BM3 is a bit of a hassle, but same could be said of any DAW.
So I decided to go ahead and do the sampling inside of Beatmaker. I sliced the recording into 88 pieces and assigned them to notes across one layer. This works great, but I need to adjust the pitch of some of the notes. When I select a single slice I can normalize and do some other things but if I try to pitch shift it replaces the slice with the first note basically the beginning of the recording. What am I doing wrong?
Also noticing a big degradation in the tone when I do an overall pitch adjustment of only 1 semitone. Sounds like ring mod.
Im not really sure how you are doing it, can you send me the bank to look at ?