Maybe you have a favorite old school synth that you love, but you just don’t love carrying it around.

Or you like everything software has to offer, but you haven’t found anything to replace your favorite string patch from that roland xv 5080!

The answer is sampling the sound…but really, who wants to spend the time to do all that? Sample all the notes, trigger them one by one, etc…

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan.

Luckily for us there’s SampleRobot!

What is SampleRobot?

It’s basically your personal software, hardware, acoustic instrument cloning, recycling, re-mangling, ninja sound design system.

It will automate the process of cloning ANY instrument that can receive midi, and will even help automate sampling and instrument creation of acoustic instruments.

It can export them in various popular formats like Reason’s nnxt, or Cakewalk Dimension format, Wusik format, or Emulator X, Kontakt, EXS, you get the idea.

It’s a simple way to automate the creation of your own custom virtual sound library made up of any instrument you have laying around, or your friend has laying around, or your friend’s cousin’s uncle Steve has tucked away in his Ghostbuster van!

You get the idea!

So is it easy to use and does it give good results?

I don’t wanna sound like the infomercial dude but it’s really “set it and forget it” lol.

It’s VERY deep, you can do multi layers, automatic sound looping and crossfades for perfectly playable instruments.

You can send all the attack parameters, midi cc, program changes, or anything else you need to make sure you capture every subtle characteristic of your favorite sound.

In my tests, the auto-loop and crossfade was spot on! Very seamless and I couldn’t even tell where it looped.

It can record up to 192kHz at 24 bit dependent on your interface.

Has a very nice built in wave editor, and a ton of presets for common projects like sampling bass, piano, synth, rhythms, pads, etc.

This will give you various options, and tell you how much space it’s going to take!

So what’s the bottom line?

You know I REALLY wish I could have tested this out when I had my hardware, but you know me, I look for various uses!

Even if you don’t have hardware I can see using this to create your own instruments, since you can drag any wave/samples into it.

But also, if you have some cpu hungry plugins, you can sample your favorite sounds and load them as samples into your favorite sampler, making them much lighter on the cpu.

If you have a monster computer in your studio, but your mobile rig is a little less powerful, you could clone your favorite plugin sounds for use on the laptop.

Clone your keyboards, your synths, your drums, sample acoustic guitars, make your own custom library.

I really was impressed with how easy it was, because when I first opened it, it really didn’t look so simple, but it is.

If you’ve ever wanted to clone, combine, create, or make your favorite sounds portable then definitely check this one out.

I first heard about SampleRobot many years ago, me and a bunch of friends where going to sample each others keyboards, synths, etc….

Things happened, we never got around to it, and now most of us have sold all of our hardware!

That’s okay though, this software is flexible enough to be used in many different ways.

There are many flavors of the program, the full featured version is $419 while the essential version is $159.  Depending on what features you need, will determine which one you go with.

Check it out if this is your type of thing. http://samplerobot.com/index.php

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This means, when you pull up a sound from the Kontakt library, you no longer have to wait for the full sound to load!

This is huge! I HATE waiting for large libraries and instruments to load, but now, they load in a few seconds, which let’s you quickly get to what you want to do, make music.

This may seem small, but in a world full of huge software libraries this is a huge plus for Kontakt users….trust me, watch the video and see the difference.

Some libraries used to take minutes to load, depending on the size, huge ones like Abbey Roads Drums are notorious for taking ages to load up.

With this new feature, I don’t feel so put off on actually using Abbey Roads drums now.

Check it out

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One of my gripes with the current choice of drum sampling software is their inability to understand how simply we want to layer sounds.

Many folks just want to drag a sound to a pad, then another, and another, and have instant access to each layer to tweak and create new composite sounds.

Unfortunately, many of the products out just don’t get that. Most make you go deep into the keymapping setup to layer sounds on the keys, or they don’t allow layering at all, or it’s so complicated you just say forget it and just play each sound on it’s own, layering “in sequence”!

Enter Poise…from an independent developer one small clue…someone who, like me, must have been fed up with the current crop, bloat, and “just don’t get it” operation of the majority of software drum samplers out now.

What we need is something  that’s simple, cost effective, lean, clean…and to the point.

So what is Poise?

In my mind, poise is the drum sampler we’ve all been looking for.

Poise is what I would make if I could write software….

Poise is a simple, 16 pad drum sampler that lets you quickly add layers, manipulate the layers, and come up with new sounds.

Poise is NOT a sequencer.  You can NOT sample into it.

from the site:

Direct, straightforward, no frills and no bloat! Poise aims to make working with drum samples quick and painless, allowing you to focus on making music.

sounds good to me, so good I had to keep it under wraps until I could actually SHOW you what it did.  It’s not new, it’s been around, but I just found out about it and I know many of you will love it, because I get the same questions from folks looking for an easy drum sampler that let’s you layer your drums quickly and tweak each layer.

Why I think Poise “gets it”

Why do I think it’s the best? Let me list the reasons.

• It’s easy to layer sounds, just drag them onto the pad, and a layer number will appear in the window
• layers can be played in round robin, layered, or velocity switching mode
• You can have up to 16 outpus, enough to send each pad to it’s own track in your daw if you want
• It’s easy to setup to work with your midi controller
• You can have note on or oneshot mode for your samples
• It has mono mode, so you can get down like on your hardware, making pads cut each other
• You also have “cut groups” so you can set pads to cut each other off
• You can link pads… so you can quickly layer multiple sounds just by linking the pads together
• You can save your own kits quickly
• You can tweak aeach layer on a pad separately or together
• you can use wav, aiff, or mpc snd format sounds
• It’s lean and cpu efficient
• It’s 49 bucks

What about the interface, is it easy to use?

Very easy, very clean, very straight forward, and very intuitive.

It has everything you need to layer and play with your samples, and nothing you don’t.

No sequencer screen that you won’t use getting in the way.

No complex menus of keygroups and mapping to mess with.

16 pads, each with 8 layers, knobs to tweak each layer/sound…and not much else.

right-clicking on a pad let’s you access things like note on/oneshot mode, or mono mode, pad linking, etc.

It’s really simple, and everything you would try to do naturally, it just does it…this is the way a simple drum sampler should be…not a bunch of bells, whistles, and balloons.

So you really like it huh?

Uhhh….yeah.

This plugin is 5 subs all the way around in my honest opinion…I could hardly contain myself when I found out about it.

Try it and tell me it’s not what you’ve been looking for. You can layer, edit start and end points of samples, send each pad to it’s own output in your daw for simple tracking….tweak each layer, save your kits….really what else do you need in a drum sampler?

I honestly, so far, can’t think of anything I would change about it. It does what it needs to do…allow quick playing and manipulation of samples.

check it out at One Small Clue, download the demo, and see for yourself.

let me know what you think of course, leave a comment below.

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But we back at it this week!

To go along with the post I did about the Top 10 places to download samples legally, I wanted to take it in another direction.

When I first started making the switch over to software production, I didn’t quite have many plugins yet, so I would look around for the free stuff.

Let me just say that, while there is some good free plugins and instruments around, you really have to look, and do a bit of trial an error.

I don’t use every single free thing I can find, I just look for those that have the best sounds, are expandable, and have a nice appearance

I don’t go through the torrents and other dark corners looking for software, so if that’s you as well, then you’ll love this article.

The 5 dopest FREE workstations and samplers

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So here we are!

The reasons I love kontakt 4 even more than the previous version…

kore like browsing interface is now standard in pretty much every native instrument program…maybe with the exception of battery 3

yes, this categorizes all the tons of sounds in kontakt 4, making it easy to find what you want in their library.

you can also bring in and tag your own sounds for use in their database if you’re feel adventurous.

I like it, it’s simple, it’s easy, and you really don’t have to use the library browser for their internal sounds.

Good move.

It gives you a familiar interface for sound browsing across their entire range of instruments, they are not stupid, they know what they are doing….I smell a take over….hmmm….wonder if there are any subliminal messages hidden in the navigation and interface of their programs!

They also gave each “collection” of instruments a new interface, as well as adding a brand new choir collection, all the sounds from their Elektrik Piano instrument, some solo strings from Vienna, a collection of mellotron sounds in the vintage collection, and other gooodies.

Each one is a nice visual representation of the collections contents.

But it is also functional, allowing you to access all your desired parameters

directly from the front panel.

This is a vast improvement from previous versions, and the controls seem “simpler” if that makes any sense.

Everything you need, nothing you don’t, however you can go as deep as you want if you feel the need to.

They also updated the scripting and added some humanization/dynamic functions that allow for more realistic playing.  But I will tell you the truth, I didn’t mess with that much, I’d much rather just let it do it’s job.

My absolute favorite update…and this is the truth…is the new quick load browser!

Basically, you can setup your own “virtual” file system, no matter where instruments and samples are on your hard drive or external drives or even across the network!

You can put them in your own folder structure…and the files are not copied anywhere…it’s basically just links to your stuff.  This is very helpful, as the last quick load version just organized things based on how they were on your hard drive.

Now you can set things up exactly how you work…want a folder of sounds for a specific project? Go for it…you can have the same sound duplicated and triplicated lol..if that’s even a word!

I love it…this is my favorite feature and I use it all the time. I have tons of Kontakt instruments and libraries, and I always wanted to organize them MY way…now I can, this is the feature I’m most excited about and thing is the best addition…well, that and the ability to drag the kontakt window to adjust the size

Is it worth the upgrade? heck yeah… is it worth a try if you’re new to it? Heck yeah! But again…I would NOT buy it alone, at the price it cost just for Kontakt, the better deal is getting Komplete 6… real talk.

4 payments of 124.75 at zzounds is always a good deal for budget musicians lol.

If you just plan to get it all in one swoop, head on over to native-instruments.com

lemme know what ya think about it, any questions, or if you’re using it, let me know your favorite features.

leave me a comment below

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Today I’m taking a look at Kontakt, their flagship sampler they sent over for me to review.

You can’t be around software instruments, sampling, and production for long before you come in contact with Kontakt.

Whether it’s because some sample company says they support the kontakt format, or a sample library comes as a kontakt player instrument, you’ll see it everywhere.

And for good reason.

Kontakt has become pretty much the standard cross platform sampler for everyone from sound designers and composers to electronic musicians and producers.

It’s a replacement for that huge rackmount sampler you have sitting there… you know, the akai s whatever or z whatever…the emus, all that.

Some may argue it won’t sound the same, that’s fine…at times it may not. But as far as functionality, features, and universal compatibility is concerned, Kontakt is a dream come true.

Why I love Kontakt

Coming from hardware, I was looking for a big replacement.  I needed something to replace the sampling functions of my mpc 4000. It is a full sampler, meaning I had collections of samples in various akai, roland, and other formats.

I need to be able to use all the instruments and kits from my mpc, which are in akai format.

I also want something that I can easily expand, well into the future. Basically something that is both backwards compatible with my hardware sample library, as well as future proof by being able to be constantly expanded.

Kontakt covers both. It not only reads my akai format samples and programs with ease, it is also expandable by the thousands of sound design companies providing samples and libraries in native kontakt format.

This allows you to put together your own custom sound workstation. If you just need better guitars, you can find the best for your music, and bring those in, if you need pianos, strings, bass, whatever…it’s out there and ready to load into kontakt.

The sounds and content

The sound library is good, I like it, it’s extensive, but again, it’s open.

With my fantom, or a motif, triton, etc…you can only expand so much.

After you fill all the card slots, that’s it, no more expanding.

With kontakt, that’s not the case, you can just keep expanding it well into the future.

Of course there are tons of sound design tools inside, but as I said, for me…it’s more used as a huge sound module, and it fills this job easily and effortlessly.

The user interface

With a sampler this powerful, you may expect to get lost, and many are intimidated and never give it a chance.  Let me tell you, this thing is as easy as it can be.

Open it up, load a sound, and play. Each sound you load after that will automatically be set to the next midi channel, making it easy for multitimbral playback.

There are a few features that make it easy to browse your sounds, including the “library view” which gives you a graphical box representing all the kontakt libraries you have installed.

Not all kontakt sounds are actually a library, libraries are made by companies that license the kontakt player. So if an instrument or sample collection says “powered by kontakt, or kontakt player” then Kontakt will see it, and give you a box that shows your library.

From there, you can browse the sounds easily by clicking the browse button on the box, and you get a normal file structure that has your sounds. It’s very quick, and I loved this addition in the 3.5 update, it wasn’t there in Kontakt 3.

But, even with sounds that aren’t actually Kontakt libraries, you can scan them into the database, which then allows you to browse for them easily via a drop down menu.

I just love it, period.

Bottom line is that I’m in love with this sampler. It does everything I need it to, it let’s me use all my sounds from my hardware gear, and let’s me customize the sound library to fit exactly what I want to do.

The fact that so many companies support the format is huge, just like the akai format was in years past, kontakt format is the universal language that many sound and sample providers speak.

That’s great news.

They have recently released version 4 of Kontakt, it has more enhancements, includes a kore style sound browser, some new sounds, including all the presets from their electrik piano instrument.

It also has a new choir, some more strings, and other little goodies. As soon as I upgrade, I’ll do a follow up and show you what’s there in version 4.

If you’re like me and you need a good replacement for a hardware sampler that can use what you have as well as expand well into the future, checkout Kontakt.

Why you should NOT buy Kontakt…

Usually right here I’d tell you to go pick it up, but I gotta be real with ya.

With the recent price changes over at NI, you’d be better to pick up komplete 6 instead of just getting kontakt 4.

Kontakt 4 by itself is 399, well worth it, but when you can get komplete 6 for 499, which includes kontakt 4, it just makes more sense.

Over at zzounds.com you can get komplete 6 for 4 payments of 124.75 no credit apps or anything.

I love these payment plans and once again zzounds.com comes through with the best price for it.

Being able to get Kontakt, the best software sampler around, plus 6 other dope plugins like absynth, fm8, reaktor, massive, battery, and guitar rig, it just makes more economical AND creative sense.

So if you’re looking for an all around sampler/sound module like I was, then Kontakt is what you want. Check it out at zzounds.com

let me know what you think, or if you have any questions.

leave me a comment below.

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I’m currently using the beta update so as soon as the full update is released I’ll give you my review.

But I’m still going to show you little tips, tricks, and some of the workflow.

In this video I just want to show you how easy it is to import your samples for use in maschine.

When you do it this way, you can browse through your own sounds right from the hardware controller, just like internal native instrument sounds.

This is important for me, as I use maschine without having the monitor on or the software is minimized. I do EVERYTHING from the controller.

Maschine is dope, straight up, probably my favorite released product so far this year. Serious.

What do you think?

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This is another video showing how native instruments maschine is not just a sampler or beat machine, but that it can be used just like a workstation or keyboard.

Instead of using it by sampling records or songs into it, I am using the internal sounds and creating music like I would on a fantom or motif.

The sounds inside maschine are really good, I love them.

Knowing that they will be putting out expansion packs for it is very exciting.

Let me know what you think.

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This is just another video of me using native instrument maschine.

There are alot of videos showing how to use it as a sampler, so I figured I’d show it in

use as a workstation, similar to a roland fantom or yamaha motif.

I used all internal sounds to make this track.

let me know what you think…I really like the worflow of this maschine.

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After a short “outage” on the website…they busted out with some new goodies!

Komplete 6….

Yep, they are updating their massive synth and fx collection, come October 1 you can get your mitts on the new Komplete collection.

What I noticed immediately, the price! It’s retailing for $559!! What the! Yessssssssssssssssssss….Native Instruments is taking over, period.

They are making it pretty much a no brainer to get with them.

You get three new instruments in addition to all the mainstay classics from NI.

Kontakt 4…

Kontakt is pretty much THE standard when it comes to sampling nowadays. And even though I’m currently in my own review of Kontakt 3.5…it looks like we’ll just have to switch focus to the new Kontakt 4 which ALSO releases on October 1

One of the new features is the addition of Choir section in the sound library. Also something sexy called “Authentic Expression Technology”. Sounds fun!

They also added some solo strings from the Vienna Symphonic Library, all the instruments from their Elektrik Piano plugin are now there, a concert hall organ, and a mellotron.

They also updated the performance views for each collection in the library, and looks can be just as inspirational as the sounds themselves.  They also gave it an “attribute-based” browser…similar to Kore 2. I will definitely get you more updates as I find out more about it!

Absynth 5…

Absynth is pretty much the monster “other wordly” synth that is so flexible it allows you to come up with some absolutely stunning sounds.  I personally haven’t had a chance to play with Absynth yet, but the sound demos and videos look amazing.

I have ALWAYS heard great things about this synth, and if it gives off smooth, etheral sounding pads as well as ambient and atmospheric sounds…I’m all for it. I love that stuff.

It includes all the sounds from the previous versions plus 200 brand new synth sounds! Also includes 30 new fx…yes, absynth can also be used as a kick butt fx unit.

Something called an Aeitherizer is in there…, it basically “decomposes” your sound into tiny grains, and puts it back together if various ways…I don’t understand all the technology behind it, but it sounds like I can make some major sounds!

Speaking of that…what about the “Mutator” ? This is a sound design tool that allows you to create complex and crazy sonic masterpieces without ever having to go into the editor pages…just point and click…I REALLY have to try this out. Anything that makes sound design easier and fun is okay with me.

Bottom Line is that Native Instruments is not taking it easy on anyone!

As I was discussing with a few buddies earlier today, with their outrageously competitive pricing and new product line up, native instruments is making it hard for anyone to say no to what they have to offer.  I can tell you I’ve never been disappointed with anyting I’ve tried from NI, and I’m sure these new products will continue to carry on the legacy.

When I get something in my hands…you know I’ll give you the full scoop!

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