Hi all-

I'm a noobie to Alchemy, just evaluating it with the demo version. I'm hoping someone will understand and answer this question:

If I load a sample bank into the VA Source, for example an SFZ file with samples at both C4 and C#4, will modulation of the VA Source pitch knob utilize the different pitch zones?

In other words, Alchemy doesn't pitch shift the sample pointed to by MIDI note it received, but adds the value of the pitch knob to the MIDI note to index whatever sample might represent that pitch in a sample bank?

Not this:

MIDI C4 -> sample @ C4 -> pitch knob to C#4 -> pitch shift to C#4

but this:

MIDI C4 -> pitch knob to C#4 -> sample @ C#4


Thanks in advance!

Charles

To answer my own question: did a test and Alchemy does the right thing. It indexes the sample in the appropriate region, rather than pitching up.

Figures... Excellent!

. . . . . . .

EDIT: With some further experimentation, it appears that manually adjusting the coarse tuning knob on the granular sampler will shift between samples (C4<->C#4), but when the knob is automated with an LFO, it pitch shifts the original (C4) sample up to C#4.

Can anyone confirm or deny this, and is there a better way to accomplish my goal?

Thanks, Charles

Playing a specific keyboard note or setting the Coarse Pitch on the GUI will determine which sample or region in an SFZ is triggered. A Coarse Pitch offset dialled directly in to the GUI will be added to or subtracted from the incoming MIDI note before continuous modulation is applied.

Continuous modulation (e.g. LFO or MSEG) applied to Coarse PItch will affect the pitch of the sample while a note is held.

To re-tune samples use the Note Property -> Max modulation source, and adjust the depth required to achieve the desired pitch. The Max modulation source is always a constant value, unless the depth of Max is modulated.

Does that make sense?

Peace,
Andy.

Hi Andy-

Thanks for your kind reply.

With a little fiddling, your description made perfect sense. Where manual adjust of Coarse Tune will effectively pitch the MIDI note, Note Property->Max will retune the sample of the played MIDI note to a desired pitch.

What I've been trying to do is far more crack-brained: my efforts were really an attempt to simulate a wavetable oscillator in Alchemy.

I'd like to create a user file with a table of samples in it, and have some modulated interpolation between the samples in the table.

Anyone have thoughts on how to approach this?

Thanks, Charles

Hi Charles,

The interpolation part of what you want to do is tricky, but you can certainly do wave sequencing style sounds with a bit of sample preparation. Create a sample by appending a number of equal length, same pitch sounds into one file.... i usually use multiples of 4, so - e.g. - i end up with a single wav containing 8 consecutive 1 second tones. Then use a modulator (with mod map if necessary) assigned to Position to snap to the start of each individual tone. You can loop each tone by using an tri LFO with depth of less than 12% to same position knob. You need to be using granular, add or spect for this to work.

There is also a rather unintuitive / unpredictable way to get similar-ish results in sample mode using the arp, but its very trial and error, only useful for sequences, and doesn't always produce useful results.... and is a bit time consuming to set up. If thats not enough to put you off, let me know and I'll look at some patches and try to remind myself exactly how i did it

Col

Thanks for the tip, Col-

I had anticipated some work up-front, and likely the interpolation could simply be done as part of the wave sequence.

Pretty sure I can figure it out from here. Your suggestions reduced the permutations by a couple orders of magnitude!

Best wishes, Charles