precious precious LFOs

ok, so much of the stuff i sample tends to be downpitched so i can use it in my beats without leaving gaps. i then do tiny surgical timestretching to make each note fit.

i often find that downpitching on the 1000 leaves the sample very murky. however, i have also figured out a way to liven them up using the LFOs in a very small scale.

downpitch a spanish guitar sample and apply a lowpass filter. just start at 50 / 50. then go turn on the lfo for filter at 3, with the rate at .48. put it on a sine wave, too

listen, and then slowly turn down the filter in program mode until the effect is barely audible. it starts sounding a little more lively, doesn't it?

do the same with tune - start at like 10. slowly turn it down til it's JUST there.

pretty cool, huh? you can save a lot of samples that just don't fit in your keysig this way.

Wow! That's getttin really precise here..don't know if it will help me in my work tho..I love your work Nym and it's nice to share but.. hell.. we ain't got this spanish guitar cut you're working on. Anyway it's good to let the newbies figure out that workin a cut efficiently requires precise surgery..that's the game

spanish guitar was just an example because it's particularly warbly in general
but a piano sample could do just as well
make sure you've fitted it to the mpc's tempo first.

in fact, soniclabs's pgm might be a good one to try this on.

i'm really glad i figured this trick out, it's pretty damn awesome, i'm experimenting more and more.

you can use lfos in increasing increments as the sample pattern progresses-- so the lfo appears to be getting stronger in depth as you go, and then you can fade out. you can thread the lfo apparency into the actual rhythm, getting some incredibly badass results.

soooo cool, i suggest everyone try it even if you don't know what lfos are/haven't started messing with those yet

yeah Ive used similar technique to liven up my hihats.

Antonym wrote:ok, so much of the stuff i sample tends to be downpitched so i can use it in my beats without leaving gaps. i then do tiny surgical timestretching to make each note fit.

i often find that downpitching on the 1000 leaves the sample very murky. however, i have also figured out a way to liven them up using the LFOs in a very small scale.

downpitch a spanish guitar sample and apply a lowpass filter. just start at 50 / 50. then go turn on the lfo for filter at 3, with the rate at .48. put it on a sine wave, too

listen, and then slowly turn down the filter in program mode until the effect is barely audible. it starts sounding a little more lively, doesn't it?

do the same with tune - start at like 10. slowly turn it down til it's JUST there.

pretty cool, huh? you can save a lot of samples that just don't fit in your keysig this way.

Nym, this looks nice, gonna give your technique a try later. This looks like a good way of adding depth and movement, I used to do a similar thing with my s3000.
Out of interest what Sine do you use?

Reminds me of a thing we used to do with the Emu e64 sampler where we'd assign the modlation wheel to Start Point (of the sample - unfortunately this isn't available on the MPC1k - Ithink?!?) AND lfo depth (only slighly) and wiggle the mod wheel as the track went along adding more feeling subtly. Not very noticeable to the untrained ear but fuxxin groovy.

First:

joeybells wrote:I used to do a similar thing with my s3000.

...and then:

joeybells wrote:Out of interest what Sine do you use?

Well, this doesn´t add up...

tunable lfo would be nice with this technique.

i just keep discovering uses of this trick.

so i applied a slight pitch lfo to my bass oneshots (i only had 2, it's a real simple bassline). let me show you a graphic representation of the rhythm -

BUMMMMMMMMMMbumBUMMMMMMMMM

got it? so there's one lengthy bass, with a preceding bass hit that is at a lower pitch. i put the lfo on both, but especially on the lower pitch bass. the higher pitched bass oneshot has some lfo action as well, but it's less noticeable.

so anyway, i took the low pitched bassline with the stronger lfo and i assigned it to qlink for realtime tune. i put it so the lowest it could go was 0 and the highest was 50 (the tune of the second bass note). my plan was to have the bass climb up to the higher pitched bassnote.

i then resampled myself pitching up the lower bass. but check it out - the lfo still applied PRE qlink! so it was still oscillating as i pitched the thing up, providing a really badass subtle tune variation... soooooo cool, great sound. this kind of subtle stuff you don't always notice is the way to go man...i love it...so what if it's not immediately audible. people won't be able to put their finger on it right away - but it will help contribute to the LIFE of the song. so cool.

i will henceforth start posting these kind of tricks and techniques, including in depth drum programming and stuff.

MODNAR - sorry, what do you mean tunable lfo? the mpc1000 os 2.q was honestly my first experience with LFOs of any kind, so i'm fairly new to this.

"what sine do you use?"

i'm a bit confused with this, but in the option of lfo waveform (square, triangle, sine, etc) i picked sine. triangle sounds good too.

random is just nuts, but i will use it sometime.

I was just wondering where you got your sine wave from!
Some sines are better than others imho!

i'm not using a sine wave sample if that's what you're asking,
i'm choosing from the lfo waveforms offered by the mpc

Cool, haven't tried using it yet. But will do now.
Lookin' forward to your tips and tricks Nym.

Antonym wrote:MODNAR - sorry, what do you mean tunable lfo? the mpc1000 os 2.q was honestly my first experience with LFOs of any kind, so i'm fairly new to this.

well i'm not sure it exists in many synths, definitely not in any sampler afaik, but basically an LFO that follows which note you hit on the keyboard. you can do it in reason quite easily with maelstrom. you'd first of all need keygroup programs in the 1k for it to be possible.

Yeah i've been using the LFOs in a very similar fashion to this. I just wish there was a setting to either have the LFO run continuously, independant of note on, OR start on each note (like it does now).