Let's review. Some DAWs suck because they don't come with even the most basic sampler. Others come with only the most basic sampler. In the previous post, I went into some depth on one free cross-platform solution: UVI Workstation. It's a nifty and feature-packed solution, more powerful than "samplers" included with many DAWs. And yet, for some, it might not be quite enough, which is why we press on to...
One Two free ROMplers samplers to rule them all... part 2
UVI Workstation will happily turn an audio file into a playable instrument by transposing it. But if you've got several samples of an instrument, say at different pitches or volumes, and you want to use them all? And not pay for Kontakt or Halion?Â
Independence Free
Independence Free is a completely free sampler supporting Mac and Windows (32-bit and 64-bit). The only thing that differentiates Independence Free from its for-pay counterpart, Independence, is that the latter comes with an amazing 70 GB library of instruments.Â
For this tutorial, though, we'll make our own amazing library of one instrument: Tuba. We'll use the tuba samples generously made available by the Philharmonia Orchestra, downloadable here (use the first link, not the second).
Where to put'em
When you installed Independence Free, the installer should have asked you where to put the "Yellow Tools Root Folder". On a Windows machine, you will likely find it in your "Program Files" directory or in the "Program Files (x86)" directory on a 64-bit machine (even if you downloaded the 64-bit version). Inside the Yellow Tools root folder, find the Audio Files directory. It is in to this directory (or any subdirectory thereof you care to create) that the files must be extracted. If you extract the samples anywhere else on your files system, you will not be able to use them in Independence Free.
For now, let's extract the "Tuba_samples" folder from the downloaded zip file straight into the "audio files" directory.
How to use'em
In the Independence Free UI, click on the "Mapping" tab button:
Below and to the right of the "Mapping" button, click the "browser" button:
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The browser, showing the contents of the "audio files" folder, appears on the right:
In the browser, navigate to Tuba_samples/Tuba Short/Normal/. Click on the first file in that folder. Then scroll down to the last file in the folder, and SHIFT+Click on it to select all the files in between.
Directly underneath the browser, you will see the "Import" section. Set the lowest pitch to D0, since that is the pitch of the first sample. Then click "Execute".
Voila: the samples have now been mapped to the correct keys. You should see them represented as yellow rectangles in the mapping area (bottom right). If you don't, you might have to move the horizontal scrollbar at the bottom to the sampled pitches. You can also play the sampled notes on your keyboard, and hear those majestic tuba sounds.
A layer cake
Of course, these are only the samples at normal volume. One directory up in the browser, you will find "loud" and soft" directories. We'll add these in different velocity layers, so that the sample that gets played corresponds to how hard you have pressed the key.
With that in mind, find the "Velocity Range" field in the mapping area.Â
Double-click on the lower value, and set it to 42. Then double-click on the upper value and set it to 84. I've encountered a bug here, where the yellow bars might suddenly appear flag along the bottom and some nonsense numbers appear in the range boxes. If this happens, double-click on the offending box, use the delete and backspace keys to empty the boxes, and re-input the right values.Â
When it all works, your mapping area should look something like this:
Now, click on the empty blue area in the mapping view to unselect the mapping. In the browser, select all the samples in the "Loud" folder, and click the "Execute" button in the import section on the bottom:
Set the velocity range to 85-127
Now, unselect the selected mappings by clicking in the empty blue area in the mapping section and repeat the same steps with the samples in the "Soft" folder, setting their velocity range to 0-41.
When you play these pitches on the keyboard now, you will hear different samples used, depending on how hard you hit they key.
As you play, though, you might notice some clicking when you release the keys. Let's fix that.
Envelopes... nothing to right home about
The puns don't get better from here folks, sorry.
At the top of the plugin, click on the "Modules" button (red). Then, click on the release time (orange) and, while holding down the mouse button, drag up to increase the release time. Set it to 83ms.
Voila, clicking eliminated! You can play with the envelope some more, if you wish, perhaps increasing the attack to make the sound more legato.
Hurry! Save yourself!
To save the patch you have just created, click on the words "new layer", and choose "save layer as..." in the resulting pop-up menu.
Pick a location and save your file. Do this step often! Let's just say if there was a Nobel Prize for the most stable plugin, Independence would probably not win it.
To load a saved layer, just click in the same place and choose "load layer".
But wait, there's more
Independence Free has a lot more up its sleeves than I've described. You can make key switchable articulations, which you could use to map the samples of all the other note durations included in the tuba sample archive.
You can add fades between the velocity layers, so that rather than have two completely different samples playing at adjacent velocities (the soft one at 41 and the normal one at 42), velocities near the layer boundary would trigger both samples, depending on how close to the boundary you are.
And, of course, Independence has quite a few effects to offer.
For all this, and more, I leave you in the capable hands of the Independence Manual. You can find the manual and other documentation in the "documentation" folder inside the Yellow Tools root folder.
P.S.
If you've read this far, I'm assuming the above has elicited at least a quantum of interest. If so, please share/reblog/retweet. If you have any questions, or if I left anything unclear, please don't hesitate to ask on Twitter or by email at vstparty(a t)myself(dOt)com. Peace!
