O/T: Simple sampler for live play?

1

Hey, figured one of you would have a fast answer for this. I just got tapped to trigger SFX for a play my wife’s students are doing- on Friday lol

Rather than worry about a playlist and going through it I was considering just loading all the sounds into a simple sampler as one-shots and firing them from a labeled keyboard. What is the straight-up simplest freeware sampler to just import a WAV or MP3, assign it to a key, done? No loop, no stretch, no pitch change, nuthin’. :smiley:

Thanks!

2

Grace sounds like a plan, check this out …

3

Hi Fred,

C3 can do this too with a special rack I have. It has 16 media players assigned to 16 keys between C2 and D#3. It’s generic so you drop it in a song, load the media players and assign a MIDI input route to it and an Audio output route from it to your main speakers. Here’s a copy of it, just another C3 homemade! It can be expanded and altered as well …

Sample Playback 16 Track.cantabileRack (53.1 KB)

Had to use it last Holloween …thanks again @brad for helping Holloween :grin:

Dave

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4

Oh that’s a thought… Yeah, a rack of media players would do the trick, why didn’t I think of that :smiley: I have to count, I think I have 30 or 40 cues. I can just build on yours.

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Very nice Dave! :wink:

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See, you guys rock :smiley:

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I was going to say, why not just use Cantabile! :slight_smile:

8

Sforzando also works nicely for that if you’re up for a bit of text file editing:

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I took Torsten’s advice and used Sforzando to trigger samples from notes. I watched this video from their website to get started:

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10

Yeah but then I have to convert everything to an sfz file…

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The rack or two of media players seems like a good way to go. I might not have looked at Sforzando if I had thought of it. Glad I did look at Sforzando though because I found some pretty cool free instruments like Meatbass :blush:

12

This thing has become nuts… :stuck_out_tongue: It’s about 30 SFX cues and 18 music cues, I can barely trigger it all from a 49 key controller… one go, no rehearsal… I’m sure it’ll go great lol

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as @dave_dore said, I vote on Grace. It is the go-to 64bit, easily configurable sampler that is free. Best one out there. I use it extensively to trigger sounds during a performance. Low resource and super easy.

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I went the media player route. Took me about 30 minutes to set up. I couldn’t get Dave’s rack to load so I just went from scratch. 39 keys, 14 for music cues and the rest for SFX. And a crapload of tape on the keys :smiley: Works great, I don’t think I’ll ave any problems. I even volume leveled everything so I don’t think I need to split the signal L/R.

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15

Glad you got it sorted Fred!

Dave

16

Just think of those BBC Foley Mellotrons produced to BBC audio spec loaded with all sorts of foley effects. You could be doing that next! :slight_smile:

http://www.vemia.co.uk/mellotron/

Sound effects Mellotron Mark II with further improvements. Original price: £1500, including the 1260 sound effects. Target price: £2000 - £4000 1965 - c. 1970Users include: ATV, BBC, South African Broadcasting Corporation.

  • The BBC rightly saw the Mellotron as the best way at the time to automate the sound-effects (or more exactly, spot effects) for their productions, with the potential for 1260 separate FX, each up to seven seconds long.

  • The BBC’s rigorous audio standards enforced a lot of changes on the FX model compared with the ordinary Mark II. Improvements in the capstan drive system, better signal-to-noise ratio due to separate head-blocks and pre-amps, and electromagnetic track selection (rather than mechanical) all contributed to a high quality machine.

  • There was no need for a big amplification system; instead, the FX had a small monitor amp and 8" speaker.

  • The BBC bought several of them, painted black early on, then BBC regulation grey, and used them for any number of famous series, such as Doctor Who. These machines came up for auction a few years ago, and were knocked down very cheaply. If only you or I had known… (and had the transport and the space).

  • Other broadcasting companies also took up the Mark II FX. Mellotronics must have reached some deal with the BBC over the copyright of the effects themselves(the masters of which had of course originally come from the BBC).

  • About sixty were eventually made.

17

Oh man, I could have used the new Arturia Tron to tron-ize them!

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18

So here was their mixer… it was in a closet. I had to run a sub mixer just to get a cable run long enough to get there.

mixer
mixer1440×1080 214 KB

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19

I still have one of those Mackie mixers—not with that much dust, tho😁

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