Samples in Slate
Some workflow tips that help me.
To get a bunch of samples (notes or chords) in Slate from an IAA app, I find it easy to record notes (say 8 notes A2-A3 to play an octave) or chords (say 5 chords in my progression) all at once. I record from IAA app into Audioshare and leave a short bit of silence between the notes/chords.
In Slate I import the Sample on the first pad, and delete the last 7 notes and Save As A2. I set the Trigger Mode to Sustain and determine appropriate ADSR, usually just selecting a release that sounds good. If it is a pad note, then the release might be long, like 5s. Now I have a nice pad sound named A2 on pad 1.
If I move to pad 2 and press Sample > scroll through a list of samples and double tap the IAA sample> which loads sample onto pad 2, then edit, select Pad > Sustain and then adjust the ADSR, ie Release to 5s, I will he repeating all the steps that I did on pad 1. If I am doing this across 32 pads, with samples of the same sound/preset, the work isn’t that bad, but it can be made less tedious.
Before loading the multi-note sample onto pad 2, adjust the Pad settings first: Sustain and Release to 5s (or whatever value works for your sample, which you determined on pad 1). Now load the multi-note sample on to pad 2. Now press the Hamburger button in the upper right hand corner and select Copy. Go to pad 3 - 8 (or 16 or 32 - depending upon what you are doing) and press the Hamburger button > Paste. Now all pads 1 - 8 have the multi-note sample with all the settings and you won’t have to press as many buttons nor go ‘out’ of Slate to the Library to repeatedly find the multi-note sample. Just go into each pad and trim to the corresponding note and ‘Save As’ to name the note. Seems much faster to me and I don’t get side-tracked as easily. The Copy > Paste function saves a lot of time and is a more focused task than all the button pressing and searching for the sample again.
Some of you may already be doing this, but for those that are loading and adjusting parameters of notes or chords manually, try this if you have a lot of notes/chords to work on.
For percussive samples, obviously Trigger Mode ‘One Shot’ will usually work best. I like Sustain for for notes and chords so that I can play them and adjust note lengths as needed.
Anyone else got some Slate workflow tips...?
Comments
i use sustain mode for kicks, for easy adjusting length of kick to not overlay too
much of bass or shorten it in breaks to skio it's bass tail and leave just tick and initial punch ...
but this technique is probably specific to "psytrance" genre where usual kick&bass patterb is
(kick) (bass) (bass) (bass)
and sometimes and end of pattern things like
(kick) (kick) (kick) x
like here :
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sqgsfbyv559gtnk/KickBass.wav?dl=0
I also very often do snares layering... although lot of factory snares in NS are already result of layering, i still use all 3 sample slots on pad with various snares (usually one more noisy, one more snappy) with various levels, sometimes panned to left/right tiny bit to get really fat sounding snare :-)
Great tips! Making sure you set all pad parameters that will be common to several pads (such as FX that are more kick specific for a series of kicks) on that first pad before you copy saves lots of tedium! Thanks