Chopping samples on the ren

Hi Guys!

Just wanted to see what technique you are using to chop samples. All of the different methods of chopping have their strengths and weaknesses so I wanted to see if there were other ways that I might have missed.

Lazy chop is a lot of work and can take a long time if your chopping a whole song. Threshold is what I use the most but it does not chop the samples evenly so you get some short samples and some long ones. Regions I don't use much. BPM is good but does not chop samples at the correct point. If there was a feature that would combine threshold with BPM it would be the most complete in my opinion.

Anyone have any tips they could share with me?

Thanks!

My humble advice:
-Don't chop full songs. Hear for the parts that you like, 1bar 2 bars 4 or whatever, adjust the markers to one of this regions and make it loop. Once you hear it loops ok extract that part and repeat with the other parts. Then work on the parts you extracted individually to chop them.
There is another method that is extracting little pieces, stabs, phrases, etc that you like as individual samples and don't use the chopshop at all.
Sure there are more methods. But you can easily start here

how is lazy chop more work?

If I am going to take a whole song it would look like this: (not always but commonly)

1) create first slice at start of sample (usually have already trimmed to start and discarded) and then go through the song hitting the F key as desired. I will the make one more pass through the song cleaning up the start and end points where needed. All done in 5 or 10 minutes (depending on length of song obviously).

2) do as mentioned above - grab sections of the song and extract

dopedee wrote:how is lazy chop more work?

If I am going to take a whole song it would look like this: (not always but commonly)

1) create first slice at start of sample (usually have already trimmed to start and discarded) and then go through the song hitting the F key as desired. I will the make one more pass through the song cleaning up the start and end points where needed. All done in 5 or 10 minutes (depending on length of song obviously).

2) do as mentioned above - grab sections of the song and extract

All I'm saying is that it takes longer than doing it through the auto chop feature and if your looking at really intricate piece of music like classical violin or something its takes a long time to go back and get the start and end point exactly right. When your talking about a 10 second drum loop then it doesn't take too long

Yeah but if you are talking about an intricate piece of music how in the world is auto chop going to be helpful? Unless you are chopping say 8 bars in 8th or 1/4 notes.

You can also just turn link off and just drop in the start points of each sample VS having start and end points for each chop. I like doing this sometimes and using note on.

In terms of time and effort, it doesnt get much easier. To each their own though.

DannyBmpc wrote:its takes a long time to go back and get the start and end point exactly right.

In the case of an intrincated piece as dopedee sais, there is no way than hard work and time. That's what the art sometimes take.
Even if it is an 10 seconds drum loop if you want to chop it you have to take care of these things, start and end points for example, shape of the slice, like the attack, tail etc...

Also to add, make a non destructive program....if time is working against you...make a pass in lazy chop, create the non des program and then play the pads and then go back in and adjust the few (or many) you end up wanting to use....

Or in the defensive of (in my opinion the actual lazy chop) your auto chop feature, set sensitivity...create another non destructive pgm and then go back in and delete,add,edit as needed.

Im all for saving time and developing a workflow but you have to be realistic at some point. (I am not talking at you, i just mean in general).

Whatever you have fun doing and gets the job done, is all that really matters!

definitely dont chop a whole song....thats just crazy.....

get your sample to loop, extract it, chop by regions, turn link off and adjust start and end points.....

create new program and play the pads back in required order....

Ya not trying to argue just wanted to see if anybody had a technique that I haven't heard of. Always open to new ideas

I always think its worth remembering that a lot of your favorite beats were made on equipment with very limited sample time....

samples that are a fraction of a bar long and looped up can create the basis for some of the best beats........if you are messing around with lengthy breaks / chops you will never find them....

^ This!

Why is chopping a whole song crazy.......do you and chop where you feel. If chopping a while song is what you feel then do it. Nobody here are superproducers, so find your niche, and what feels good to you and run with it.

texasrida1 wrote:Why is chopping a whole song crazy......

ok, maybe you can teach me something....why would you chop a whole song?

that would give you (roughly) 3 minutes of chops.....how could you possibly incorporate 3 minutes of samples into a new piece of music?

Having that many chops, will give you more to work with. Sometimes the small sample you think is good is not and then the part that you didn't think to sample can be a banging sample!

I usually chop a whole song so I have lots of chops to choose from. I have some drums from the intro. Some intro melodies and some chops of vocals. I usually only end up using 4 or 5 of them. Im talking chops and hits not full bar loops. I still have not heard any other techniques from anyone. Who else has some new techniques they could share??