Before we jump in, let me give a bit of background. Back in the 90's you could purchase a sample CD filled with various sounds, loops, and more. You can still do it now, but most of the samples are in specific formats for specific devices. The CD itself was samples of sounds from another keyboard, synthesizer, or stacks of keyboards, and these samples were played at various pitches so that you could map them across parts of your keyboard and play them back. You might not have been able to afford the latest and greatest keyboard at the time, but the sample CD gave you some of the raw sounds from those keyboards.
Luckily, I still have a few of those CDs around, and I found that one of the companies (MasterBits), still sells them. When I inserted the CD iTunes opened right away, but because of the rarity and marketing of the CD (you couldn't buy them in record stores), I had to name the track titles myself. This was important for later, as I would open the samples using Audacity, (a free sound wave editor and recorder). Once the sample was imported into iTunes using the AIFF format, I used Audacity to open the track. Each track had various samples of the same sound played at various intervals on the keyboard, usually every C note. Each track also had another sound, also samples at various C Note intervals.
In the following video (with audio) shows me importing the sound into Audacity, selecting the first sound, copying and pasting it into a new file for editing, then editing the file (best viewed at 720p, full screen):
Luckily, I still have a few of those CDs around, and I found that one of the companies (MasterBits), still sells them. When I inserted the CD iTunes opened right away, but because of the rarity and marketing of the CD (you couldn't buy them in record stores), I had to name the track titles myself. This was important for later, as I would open the samples using Audacity, (a free sound wave editor and recorder). Once the sample was imported into iTunes using the AIFF format, I used Audacity to open the track. Each track had various samples of the same sound played at various intervals on the keyboard, usually every C note. Each track also had another sound, also samples at various C Note intervals.
In the following video (with audio) shows me importing the sound into Audacity, selecting the first sound, copying and pasting it into a new file for editing, then editing the file (best viewed at 720p, full screen):
This first sample was recorded at C1. I saved this file as "LA Piano C1.aiff", then repeated the process for the remaining four samples of the LA Piano and named them appropriately, as seen in this Finder screen shot:
Now that all five of the LA Piano samples are saved, we need to import them into the AUSampler (best viewed at 720p, full screen):
With all the samples imported, now we can go ahead and map the sounds to various points across the keyboard, and adjust the envelope so that it sounds more like a piano:
Note: If for some strange reason the window to map the sample does not appear like it does in the video, close the AUSampler window, then re--open it. This should fix the issue. The steps in the videos show one of the basics of sampling and mapping sounds to the keyboard. The track that was imported from the CD also had a Stratocaster mute/slap combination:
To use both samples for one patch/preset, you would split up each sample into a separate file. You could have the first C1 sample as "StratC1mute.aiff", and the second C1 sample as "StratC1slap.aiff". The root for each of these would be C1, you could set the high and low range to whatever is audibly pleasing, but the more important part would be the velocity range. The mute is a softer sound and could be set at velocity of zero to X, where X is a number of your choosing, and the slap would be a harder sound, a sound that can be audible when the keyboard key is struck harder. Therefore, the slap sample could be set at a velocity of X + 1 to 127.
Since most people don't have any sample CDs laying around, let's take a more practical approach where YOU are the instrument. Move on to page 3.
Since most people don't have any sample CDs laying around, let's take a more practical approach where YOU are the instrument. Move on to page 3.