I just got a question regarding how ILL.GATES used sample selection (pretty slick stuff) to “scan” through his 128’s.
It is not too obvious unless you really know your stuff in this area of Ableton.
So here is a walk through to allow you to get a “magic knob” to select samples inside the Sampler instrument/effect.
1. Drop in a MIDI track.
2. Drop an Instrument Rack on the MIDI track (this provides macros)
3. Drop a “Sampler” in the instrument rack. So everything should look like this:
4. Place your samples in the sampler. You can drag groups into the “Drop Samples Here” area. (ILL.GATES used 128 samples and the “128 term” because there are 128 “slots” as MIDI is 2×2x2×2x2×2x2 = 128.For the example I will use 4 samples and by the end you will understand how to use 2,4,20, 0r 128 samples.
4b. Open up the “Zone” tab and you should have something that looks like this:
Note : MIDI starts at zero!!! So 0 to 127 is the range! This is called “offsetting” or “zero offset” and is common in anything digital.
5a. Click on the “Sel” button / square to the left of the piano roll (“Key” is selected in my shot where “Key”, “Vel”, and “Sel” are grouped together).
5b. Initiate “Map Mode” and assign the area in green where the piano roll was to your macro. It should look like this:
5c. Close Map Mode.
6. Adjust the “Zones” (blue horizontal lines under the piano roll / sample selector area to be 1 (one) note and not all notes. It should look like this:
Helpful tip: Adding samples and adjusting the zones can be a pain. You can duplicate or alt/option drag to copy. This will copy the zones. Then you can hot swap samples. One of may approaches available.
7. Wrap it up! This step is IMPORTANT anytime you are NOT USING 128 samples. This is also why macros help so much. Here are the sub-steps broken down:
A. MIDI Map your controller to the Sample Selector macro. You can use CC’s or a series of note values (make sure your series of notes are the same quantity as the number of samples you are intending to use). Here is a shot of the MIDI Mapping on the Sample Selector macro:
B. Edit the range of your mapping to match the number of samples. Remember that MIDI starts at 0 (zero). Or did I already mention that? Here is what is would look like mapping 4 samples starting at position 0 (zero):
Complete!
No, really, your done. Now can scan through samples like ILL.GATES was showing in our recent workshop. (this is just handy stuff!)
I hope that helps! There are a number of features in the Sampler that are bitchin’ but this should get you over the hump real fast. You will also need to have a MIDI clip running to hear your results, but that is another story all together.
–Marc
Electronic Music Missionary
[EDIT] Here is a great fast moving video that is the root of this post and discussion:
ESKAMON: “Fine Objects” – Ableton Tutorial by ill.Gates from ESKMO on Vimeo.
