I want to sample an electric piano or key sound from a synthesizer. It sustains as along as I press and hold a key. I'm wondering what note length I should use? And I guess I have to manually set up a loop section with the sample?
thanks
Note length when sampling a keyboard?
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- KVRian
- 690 posts since 31 May, 2002 from chez moi
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- KVRist
- 247 posts since 5 May, 2020
Since you have sustain-forever notes, just play the note until it hits that forever point, where the sound no longer changes.
In general, if we're going to loop, we sample until the tone and volume are relatively stable, and loop it at that point. Also, best to sample long enough that most notes won't need the loop (so, at least a second or three.) It was more important to keep samples short back in the bad old days; these days we have lots of memory so I suggest not being stingy with note duration.
I found the looping tool of Extreme Sample Converter (http://extranslator.com) to be the best tool for the job when I searched years ago. There may be a better one today but it's really quite good. It will do auto looping, but it uses a rather long loop with a cross-fade, which I find unsuitable for my purposes (piano, Rhodes). Instead I made a pretty short loop.
In general, if we're going to loop, we sample until the tone and volume are relatively stable, and loop it at that point. Also, best to sample long enough that most notes won't need the loop (so, at least a second or three.) It was more important to keep samples short back in the bad old days; these days we have lots of memory so I suggest not being stingy with note duration.
I found the looping tool of Extreme Sample Converter (http://extranslator.com) to be the best tool for the job when I searched years ago. There may be a better one today but it's really quite good. It will do auto looping, but it uses a rather long loop with a cross-fade, which I find unsuitable for my purposes (piano, Rhodes). Instead I made a pretty short loop.
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 690 posts since 31 May, 2002 from chez moi
Thanks! As luck would have it, I have Extreme Sample Converter from years ago. I'll check it out for the loop controls.
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- KVRian
- 1189 posts since 11 Jun, 2019
That depends. You'll usually loop the Sustain Phase. But be aware that Sustain does not Generally mean that nothing changes. Listen closely, also to the Stereo Dimension.
Multisamples are my Focus. I usually sample every Key and about 10 Seconds. Even If the Loop doesn't need to be that long I have enough Material like this.
Processing, Looping, Mapping are an other Topic. Pro-Sampler Features are very advantageous here. Export, Cut, Map, Loop takes me about 10 Minutes with Halion. You can even loop all Samples at once (Crossfades).
Which Sampler/Tools?
... the Effort for doing all that manually is too big imO!
Multisamples are my Focus. I usually sample every Key and about 10 Seconds. Even If the Loop doesn't need to be that long I have enough Material like this.
Processing, Looping, Mapping are an other Topic. Pro-Sampler Features are very advantageous here. Export, Cut, Map, Loop takes me about 10 Minutes with Halion. You can even loop all Samples at once (Crossfades).
Which Sampler/Tools?
... the Effort for doing all that manually is too big imO!
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- KVRian
- Topic Starter
- 690 posts since 31 May, 2002 from chez moi
All I have is sforzando. I really have only one sampled instrument - scarbee j bass, pre NI Halion and Kontakt version. I used Extreme Sample Converter to convert the bass to SFZ format. At the time I thought I would get more sfz sampled instruments but that never happened.