About to embark on some deep sampling. Any tips?

[philroyjenkins]

Hey all. I love my PX and I am finally ready to take things to the next level by doing some deep sampling of a few instruments of my own and friends.

I'm going to start with an extra deep rhodes collection. I'm not super happy with the stock rhodes sound and its one of my favorite instruments so I'm going to do some of my own recordings at a buddies studio.

I don't need a million huge sample banks like this, so I don't mind dedicating quite a bit of space to this collection to really get a nice, expressive rhodes sound.

How many velocity layers is reasonable? I'd like to shoot for 9. Was also thinking of 6 round robins. Like I said, I don't mind this one bank being a huge space hog.

I'm thinking about release characters as well. I figured I'd just capture some nice and long, fully sustained notes and use the PX envelope if I want something plucky. I don't mind if this ends up being somewhat unrealstic and odd hybrid rhodes, that's kind of the point. I just want some better raw material to then shape with the PX.

Limiting this to mono would save a lot of space and also let me do the 32v thing. I'll probably go that route.

[Shaw]

I’ve never owned or sampled a Rhodes, but I have done a couple of samples for the PX.  Here are my thoughts.  (And I’m assuming your Rhodes is mono and without MIDI unless you have one of the brand new ones)


— Mono is fine if not preferred.   The typical effects you would add to a Rhodes will add that stereo vibe.
— Don’t record through anything but a good board or AD/DA interface.  Don’t record through EQs, Compressors, or any other effects. If you wanted to create loop points in your samples, a compressor (depending on settings) could make that more difficult.  Just get clean samples, you will normalise the sample files later.
— Velocity Layers and Round Robins… I would personally do something like 4 velocity layers with several round robins per layer (as many as your target file size will allow).  Since you’re playing an instrument that is not MIDI enabled, you’ll be striking the keys yourself. This means that there will inherently be some natural variation between each strike even within a velocity layer. Once you add round robins on top of that, you will end up with an amazingly expressive instrument.
— Tend towards longer samples with natural decay rather than trying to do shorter looped samples.
— As I said, earlier, normalize your samples.
— Even though your sampling process can’t be automated (since you’re using a rhodes that, presumably, does not have MIDI), still consider using good quality sampling software. It will offer other features that will save you a lot of time and effort: batch normalizing your samples, automatically mapping your samples across the keyboard, organizing your velocity layers and round robins, etc.
— Before you start, just do one sample of a key in the lower register of your keyboard, with a high velocity, and a long sustain. Then analyze that file for a couple of things. 1) the quality of your signal chain, and therefore, the quality of the sound sample you are producing. You don’t want to do 600 samples to get to the end and then find a problem. 2) Once you have that sample recorded, what is the file size you’ve produced? Use that information to plan how many velocity layers/round robins/keys-per-octave you want to sample based on how much space you’re willing to dedicate to the sample instrument.


Hope this helps

[philroyjenkins]

— Even though your sampling process can’t be automated...

I'm a Mechatronics Technician. Don't tempt me with a good time

Great thoughts man. Yeah I was planning on doing the whole tasty pre-amp/compressor thing but the point about looping does make sense. I might still go that route and forgo looping, but its a great point I didn't consider. I might as well also record a split chain dry just so I have the option.

And very good point about doing a test run of one key just to asses problems/size.

Appreciate it!

[Shaw]

Good luck!