Ableton Forum

Hi All,

this may require Max4Live, but something I used to do a lot on my hardware sample, back in the day was map MIDI key velocity to sample start position.

Is this possibly in Live? I'd like the entire range of the sample to be accessible in this way, so effectively the sample is split into 127 slices, and a velocity of 0 would play the first slice, and 127 would play the last slice.

The Sampler instrument has a sample Start parameter, but it doesn't appear to be mappable.

Anyone any tips?

Hi,

Sample Start in Sampler is called Sample Offset (afaik) and can be mapped to velocity. But, despite being a Live user for almost 20 years, I still don't understand how Sampler allows modulation of loop points, sample offsets, etc. It's quite erratic, I must say. If I were you, I'd use Simpler and then use Expression Control to map velocity to any parameter.

I don't think either instrument allows velocity mapping to slices, though. If you're M4L savvy, it's quite easy to create a device that'd simply map velocity values to MIDI notes.

Hi, thanks for your reply!

I was looking at the "Start" param in Simpler. That actually can be modulated by Velocity using Expression Control, but unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work reliably. It occasionally does alter the sample playback start position, but most of the time it plays from the beginning. I guess it's to do with the order that modulation and note-on are read - the sample is usually (but not always) triggered before the modulation is read.

In the Sampler instrument, the parameter is also called "Start", but can't be mapped at all, it seems.

UPDATE:
Sorry, I missed the Sampler's mod matrix. It does look like that does allow "Sample Offset" to be mapped to Velocity, and it seems to work more reliably than manually mapping "Start" in Simple. Thanks for the tip!

Incidentally, when I said "slices", I didn't mean sample slices, just that the 127 MIDI velocity values would each correspond to 128 playback positions, evenly spaced through the length of the sample. Sorry for my lack of clarity on that.

When I sequence a single note in a clip and max its velocity probability and then assign velocity to Start using expression control (which is still a rather buggy device, unfortunately), I have no issues with Simpler. Playback is updated properly. I didn't try it using an actual keyboard to send notes to Simpler.

With Sampler, the trick is to link loop start and sample start by clicking the Link button next to looping options.

And well... the mod matrix in Sampler is the first thing to look at, right? ))