A few beginners questions.

[TmanRocksTheBoat]

Hey Everyone,

I am fairly new to Ableton and learning a lot through theses forums and other various tutorials. I'm really new to using audio samples and haven't been able to find basic answers to a few things. I think I understand the basics to using an audio file (a drum loop, for example), chopping it to MIDI and creating your own beat. Where I'm stuck are the single note .wavs. I have some beautiful samples of one held note (A1) and would like to use that for multiple notes. Is this possible without grossly distorting the sample? If not, how are the single notes/drum hits useful?

[Willyum]

Like Funken said, it will distort if you go too far from root. If you need the sound to be clean as possible over multiple octaves, and you only have one copy of the instrument sound what you can do is drop the note in arrange view... copy and paste it 4 times next to itself (give it different colors so you don't get confused)... Now you have 5 copies of the same note. Use the middle one as your raw sample (if it's a middle tone... if not, think of the 5 clips as your keyboard and select which ever one would be closest to what the note is)

Ok, now the clips to the left and right tune up and down in their perspective octaves +12, +24, -12,-24 leaving the middle one as is. Erase any transients the note may have within (actually you can do this even before copying so you don't have to do each one) then audition each clip while adjusting the warp mode to get the proper sound (complex mode is a good place to start)

When you have each octave sounding right, freeze the track... Highlight all clips and CTRL-drag them to the track below... this will rewrite the sound as a new sample while still keeping them seperate.... right click each of the new clips and crop.

You now have 5 new clips an octave apart and they should all sound clean and ready to be layered in your Sampler (if you already know what you're doing and don't want to work from a second coppied track, you can just make the innitial copies, tune and consolidate, then drop in your sampler

I chose 5 clips as example cause that should be fine for most sounds... But if your sound is a little complex or has a certain tempo or feel to it, you may have to make 20 or 30 copies

HOWEVER... NONE OF THIS WOULD BE NECESSARY IF ABLETON WOULD JUST PUT A PROPER TIME-STRETCH/PITCH-SHIFT IN THE SAMPLERS!!!!!!!!

Oh, I forgot to mention, check and tune the sample to make sure your new keyboard sound is in tune.

If someone has a shorter route for this method, please post it.

[Willyum]

I usually use sAmpler for layering when it's necessary to place root notes... I forgot how to select root note placement in sImpler... Anybody?
Cause I just realized he may need a tutorial on how to layer sounds, and if he's new, he probably doesn't have sAmpler

[Gregory Wells-King]

Hey Everyone,

I am fairly new to Ableton and learning a lot through theses forums and other various tutorials. I'm really new to using audio samples and haven't been able to find basic answers to a few things. I think I understand the basics to using an audio file (a drum loop, for example), chopping it to MIDI and creating your own beat. Where I'm stuck are the single note .wavs. I have some beautiful samples of one held note (A1) and would like to use that for multiple notes. Is this possible without grossly distorting the sample? If not, how are the single notes/drum hits useful?

Single note WAV files are pretty useless (Fact) Pitch them down, stick em through loads of effects and long reverb and you might get a drone you can use, or maybe turn them into hit's for a drum rack.

Multi samples are useful used within a simpler rack. I make rack templates then save them. you can aso fill them with one shot sounds often, found sounds, pitch correction within simpler should be starting at 0 with middle C then +1/C#, +2/D, +3/D# etc up until as many as you want you just duplicate simpler as many times you want within a rack, then set each one up as I just described, you can macro some of the other controls for comfort.

NB: Don't forget to go don the scal as well, i.e you may want to start at -32 or whatever. (Sorry I'm at another computer so can't tell you what note that number corresponds to, but you get the idea)

Look up 'Map control to siblings' in the manual to help shorten work flow.

Drum hit's and found sounds, tend to be the most useful, straight out the box..

Heres a tut. http://vimeo.com/17835841#