The age-old question about the dark art of Resampling
 

Hi Infekted, first-time poster here. I've had my Virus TI for a couple of years now and I've been slowly ramping up my 'production game' as they say. One thing that continually frustrates me, however, is this 'resampling' business. My goal is to be producing dark, aggressive D&B and breaks, and I seem to take a crack at this technique every few months, only to become more frustrated.

I understand the technical processes behind it. I've watched hours of tutorial videos, browsed countless threads and I am extremely detail-oriented. I've gotten some pretty great sounds directly out of the Virus - from straight detuned reeses, to FM throbs, etc., but they tend to lack cohesion. Reconciling the technical with the creative in terms of when and what exactly to load into a sampler, is a part that confuses me. I can load a simple detuned reese into Live's Sampler and play with its shaper and morph filter, and play a boring timestretched melody, but creating interest and maintaining a cohesive sound seem to fall apart very quickly. Add to it the fact that Live and the Virus tend not to get along and it gets very frustrating very quickly. Any tips to this end? Thanks.

Interested in this subject too. How can resampling change the sound in the intended way? From the technical it is intended NOT to cause any sound distorsion while resampling. What can be said out of the box:

Any kind of resampling is a mathematical multiplication with a square wave and as with all mixing techniques like this will cause new frequencies. A square wave has harmonics itself already so all of them will produce mixing results like Freq A * Freq B = Freq (A-B) + Freq (A+B). To make this become sound sensible: The modulation frequency will have to be selected appropriately. I would consider to perform it that way, that A-B as well as A-B makes sense to the music. One could choose it that way, that e.g. 3/2 of the freq is used and the half and the double freq occur:

440 Hz * 660Hz -> 220Hz + 880 Hz

This will sound very harmonic, I guess. Not sure if it is what you want.

Resampling is nothing more then recording an instruments and placing the results on a sampler so as to be able to play the samples.

So what you really need to focus on, I guess, is in how you should go about making a sampler instrument. Then there's some stuff to look out for, such as:

your audio editor (or daw) must have a snap to "zero crossing" points - so as to avoid audio clicks. you can sample all the notes you want (a couple of octaves or more) and then assign them to the respective keys, if you're planning to use this as you would an instrument (play it, in other words). or you can place one sample and rely on the repitching algorithm within the sampler to do it. sampler instruments can of course be mono or polyphonic or legato - and you can use portamento to.

from the moment you record something, all further processing to the source will have to be either the sampler's own modules, like filters, envelopes and lfos; or further post processing.

think that's about it. but before that, watch your gain staging: you shouldn't record to loud or to low. to loud because it can create distortion if the signal clips and it's a good idea to have some headroom left, not to low 'cause the lower you go, the closer you are to the noise (search signal to noise ratio), hence you'll be bringing it up along with the signal with further processing (mastering included).

I think a big part of your question has more to do with the arrangement and composition then with sampling routines. As far as that goes: watch your timming, try and use scales so that things sound more cohesive and harmonic, questions and answers are always a good way to go as far as placing sounds together goes. Then you should think about distributing sounds across the spectrum and panning (and depth) - this starts with the octaves you choose to play... Time stretch changes the timming, adds some kind of repitch algorithm to the sounds that changes its harmonics entirely, along with its tunning (gets out of tune), so this can also be your problem. There's repitching plug-ins (and nowadays you get that inside some daws to) like melodyne or auto tune (by antares) that you can use to correct the pitch even after some post processing that changes pitch (like time stretch).

I'm using the Virus C with Ableton (and Logic), absolutely no problems at all. The mistery island editor also works for the TI range. it doesn't work with the usb connection, just good old midi and then the analogue inputs of your sound card. don't think the other editors available support the virus ti.

hope it helps. cheers

Thanks, TweakHead, for the detailed response!

The latter half of your post was most helpful, but I get the technical side for the most part - having worked in Ableton for years, and having a background in recording. I know how to record/cut/adjust, and how to employ a sampler. I'm poor with conveying ideas and putting things into words, but I'm mostly having trouble with the creative side of the 'resampling' question. It's such an open-ended process that I've been having trouble nailing down an effective workflow. For example, I don't know whether to write a whole bassline - modulation included - and simply record it and add more modulation after-the-fact, or to take that bassline note-for-note into a sampler, to play with timestretch, granulation, etc. etc., and re-create an entirely new sound. I'm finding that once I involve a sampler into things, I'm losing some element of creativity.

I like Evoke's Resampling tutorial kind of put things into a workflow that I could utilize.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEjM3bRmmE4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_FR0JOr03U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwUK9MrsGq8

I resample my virus b to my mpc to make dark twisty neuro basslines. There are a few different things to try, of course, here are a few suggestions.

Develop a patch thats one dirty detuned reese, and pay attention to the modulation routings. Record a really long single note into the sampler where you tweak and twist those knobs like a madman. Alter lfo rates and depths (especially to cutoff but not just that) until you get a good long sample filled with all sorts of everything (still just one note though).

Now, set your sampler to play a note as long as you hold a key, and then for every key or pad you have, set different start points in the big sample. So now when you mash away on your controller or pads you are hopping around in the sample. You can quickly try out lots of ideas this way and some kind of groove or pattern should click pretty quick. Don't forget you can use the pitch wheel or pitch individual bits of the sample. You'll probably want to add touches of eq and compression and adjust levels to even it out but this is the basics of how I go about it anyway.

Alix Perez has some videos of him making bass sounds on the Virus TI and recording straight in the DAW then manipulating them - probably worth a listen if your in to that kinda dnb.

Thanks guys, helpful stuff! Evoke's tutorials and Innovine's post have really put me in the right direction.

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Ableton's Sampler has an option to spread a sample across its keyrange without pitch-shifting it chromatically, with the keyfollow controlling sample start position - like your MPC's slice function :( It's a shame because it's got some really nice modulation envelopes and filters that I was getting some cool sounds with. In Evoke's tutorials, he chooses his start positions manually which I'll probably do anyway... But since I'm a gearslut, now I'd like to hear some opinions about sampler VSTs that have a similar sample playback option... Kontakt? Alchemy? What are your opinions?

Thanks again, everyone. I'm on the right track. :)

but of course you can have different samples for different keys on Ableton's sampler. it's just a matter of digging into it, before you start thinking you need something else. these packages that come with most daw software is actually pretty much all anyone's going to need, imo. and it's much more then people used to have access to, like a decade ago, feature wise.

so yeah, best advise here is to learn your tools, see where you can take them. then you'll presumably make much more informed choices on what comes next. but to really answer your question, then Kontakt would be the way to go. alchemy can play samples and do all sorts of things with them, but don't think of it as something to be used for that kind of sampling, more like granular odd stuff then good old school kind of sampling - know what I mean?

Unfortunately not... At least, not in the way I and Innovine described. That is, one sample spread across the keyrange WITHOUT pitchbend, such that playing different notes only alters the sample's start position (like slicing a REX file in ReCycle) It's really unfortunate because it's such a simple thing that's been a common feature of samplers for years, but Live's Sampler can't implement it. There are other ways to achieve a similar process - namely, Live's 'slice to new MIDI track' feature, but the 'morph' filters, FM and pitch envelopes I'm so fond of in Sampler are missing from these instances. Although, even just typing this out now, I'm thinking of a couple of workarounds that sacrifice minimal features.

I think I should still invest in Kontakt, though, at least eventually. I know exactly what you mean about bogging oneself down with too much gear and software. I've dramaticallg shifted away from that attitude recently, restricted myself to just the Virus, Battery 3 and Live as my primary toolkit and my work has improved, I think. It's something I have to keep reminding myself; Keep it Simple, Stupid.