Want to create Harpsichord Program.

Not in front of the MPC right now, but I was thinking about looping: if you combine the samples so the inital hit is at the beginning, then silence, then the "release" hit. Then set the looping points to circle on the silence. When you release, the rest of the sample will play, giving you the release sound.

This might not sound right if your note length is shorter than the inital strick sound. And, you'd have to edit every sample by hand to do this.

Awesome. That's what i was wondering before when i mentioned sticking the samples together, but didn't know how the envelopes worked. I wouldn't mind all the editing. I would only have to do it once. Hoorah! Let me know if you happen to think of any other cool workarounds. This gives me hope. Thanks.

You know, i think together we are building a better, brighter future. Mark my words.

That's brilliant superstar, good noggin on that one.

jksuperstar that is seriously totally smart! wow

see when people b1tch and moan about how the 1k doesnt do this or that blah blah, they really should be thinking like that. people get so lazy (not talking about you slider, i know youve been busting your balls on the sampler thing), they want everything handed to them on a platter.

- Got back to the MPC...I forgot about the fact that you can assign 4 sounds to a pad.

1st sound: Your initial strike. Make it stop when you like (envelope triggered by note on or off)

2nd sound: silence (w/ looping points), then release sample. Make the loop short, but not too short (1 sample loop makes the sample engine go haywire!)

So, no problem about the note duration being shorter than the inital strike sample. You always get your release sound where you want it. Less editing too

Oh man. That rules. Akai needs to put you on the payroll cause im ready to get one now. Thanks so much! Thanks to everyone that gave feedback.

No Problem...just let us know how it works out (along with anything else you learn)

jksuperstar wrote::idea: - Got back to the MPC...I forgot about the fact that you can assign 4 sounds to a pad.

1st sound: Your initial strike. Make it stop when you like (envelope triggered by note on or off)

2nd sound: silence (w/ looping points), then release sample. Make the loop short, but not too short (1 sample loop makes the sample engine go haywire!)

So, no problem about the note duration being shorter than the inital strike sample. You always get your release sound where you want it. Less editing too

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this will really work. There are two ways to set up your start,loop,end points:

[Start Point] "Silence" [Loop Point] "Release Sample" [End Point]

In this configuration, when you press and hold this pad down, the Akai will play the silence and then immediately loop the Release Sample over and over (from the Loop Point to the End Point).

If you set your points like this:

[Start Point] [Loop Point] "Silence" [End Point] "Release Sample"

then you will loop the silence while holding the pad down (which is what you want), but the Release Sample will never play. Nothing plays beyond the End Point, and the Akai only loops between the Loop and End points.

In my experience, I have not found a way to set the start/loop/end points to get the release sample to play as you release the key. If you turn LOOP=ON with a sample, the Akai plays through all the points like this...

Start... Loop... End... Loop... End... Loop... End... (until you release)

Again, in my testing with this, when you release the pad/key, all sound stops immediately.

JK is there another way to setup the loop points that would make this work??? Thanks.

Damn! I really didn't know the end pt. & loop points are tied together. Kind makes the "PLAY FROM" function during loop editing mean more like a "THIS IS WHAT YOUR MISSING" function.

Sorry Tiger: back to bitching about the limitations

Spiral:you might check out the Yamaha RS7000 or one of the roland units.

haha

Just a couple of thoughts on this, since I've been laying out keyboard samples on the MPC too.

- Does your harpsichord set have a sample per note? You can easily cut that back to 4 per octave, with +/- 1 semitone retuning of each sample = 1/3 the space. The same for velocity, one layer would be fine. (Is a real harpsichord velocity sensitive at all?). Even if you cut back to 2 per octave, it might be good enough for Rock n' Roll...
- You have the One Shot / Note Off choice to make, but if you think about real harpsichord construction, you'll leave it at One Shot. Once the key is hit, you have no control at all, there is no sustain and no mute to kick in when you lift the key up, i.e. you have no note duration control...

I'm considering an Akai Z4 as my "real" sampler, it's full-featured, and fairly small compared to the older Akais.

But you do have control over when you release the key. Once you do, the plectrum hits the note again, hence the release layer.

I can't remember if there is a sample per note. I don't believe there is.

This is a last ditch chance, but can you have the initial attack and sustain before the loop point? and then have either an additional sample, or append the release onto the first layer (ie. only one wav) so that you have the attack and sustain / loop point on the release layer which plays after release and play once?

spiral wrote:But you do have control over when you release the key. Once you do, the plectrum hits the note again, hence the release layer.

I can't remember if there is a sample per note. I don't believe there is.

This is a last ditch chance, but can you have the initial attack and sustain before the loop point? and then have either an additional sample, or append the release onto the first layer (ie. only one wav) so that you have the attack and sustain / loop point on the release layer which plays after release and play once?

You mean it's an important part of the sound? I think I need to listen to a real harpsichord again, sounds more interesting that what I remember. Thanks!

The start and point and loop points can be unlocked (manual Pg 57), so that you loop only a section of the sample - I can confirm that works OK, that's the result when I create loop points in Adobe Audition. But the time before the loop point is fixed, you can't vary the time dynamically, and it doesn't solve the release section shortcoming, sadly.

A thought: didn't we say that master keyboards these days don't send Note Off, but actually send a Note On with V=0? What if we could save the release to a separate sample, add it as a layer to be triggered when V=0? Must try it, but I suspect the sampler will still set the actual volume to 0 when V=0...

I tried that already, and your suspician's are correct: the mpc will play those sounds at 0 velocity...but I forgot to try it with the "FULL LEVEL" set to on...

No modern MIDI instrument will actually "play" a note with vel=0. When a MIDI instrument sees Vel=0, it translates that to Note Off internally. Check your MIDI Events in Step Edit mode... I don't believe you'll find any events with vel=0. Actually when you think about it, Vel=0 is used to determine the Duration (D) of a note event in the Step Edit. Otherwise notes would play forever with a master keyboard!

One way you might be able to get the Akai to trigger "release samples" when a key is released would involve a computer program, such as pd, listening to your master keyboard MIDI events and transmitting "extra MIDI events" when you release a key. Pd is a free program (the precursor to Cycling 74's MAX/MSP) that can be programmed to manipulate MIDI events in a virtually unlimited fashion. It's a VERY powerful program, but has very little requirements (it will even run in Linux, as well as Mac and PC). You could also use MAX/MSP but it costs $$$, but if you already have it, you're good to go.

You could create a fairly simple Pd/MAX/JMax/etc. program that would do two things...

1. pass all incoming MIDI thru to the output unchanged
2. when a note off is detected, pass an extra "quick" (short duration) MIDI Note On/Note Off event to trigger your "release sample".

One way to make this work efficiently would be to first create a 2-layer Harpsichord Program on the Akai. Layer 1 would be your normal Attack/Sustain samples set to Note On mode (so it will sustain as long as you hold the key). Be sure to assign velocity 2-127 to this layer. Now Layer 2 has just your Release samples, probably set to One Shot mode, and you assign it to velocity=1 (range 1-1), which means it only plays when the incoming velocity is 1. This would be the velocity that pd/Max/JMax creates in Step 2 above, that is sent when you release a key on the keyboard.

Now when you play a key and hold it, the Akai plays the Layer 1 sample... and when you release a key, pd/MAX/JMax tells the Akai to play ANOTHER note, this time with vel=1 which will be your release sample.

The only "problem" with this approach is that you couldn't have variable velocity with your release samples. Layer 2 would have to be set so that it ignores actual velocity (otherwise it would play with a vel=1 and would be inaudible). So you'd probably have to pick a fixed volume for your releases (i'd guess you'd need to make them fairly soft, so they're not too loud when you actually play soft).

To get around this (and have full velocity for both attack and release) you would have to split a Program down the middle, for example assign pads 1-32 to your Attack+Sustain samples, and pads 33-64 for your Release samples. This gives you less than 3 octaves to (literally) play with, and may not be acceptable. Why not just create an Attack Program and a Release Program you're thinking, and have all 64 notes on both? Because unfortunately the Akai MPC1000 cannot play more than one Program at a time. It will only play the Program that is set at the bottom of the MAIN page. Actually I haven't given this part a lot of thought, but I don't believe you can trigger more than one Program at a time from an external MIDI instrument (anyone?)

And then again... if you have a computer, you might as well use Kontakt or some other PC sampler to do all this instead of an Akai (because Kontakt has release velocity support).