Creator resources.... how to build sampler instruments.
Introduction
If you are new to the world of sampling and building sampler instruments then we at Sampl'd hope that this resource area will empower you to build the most amazing instruments and unleash them onto the world with confidence. Each of our guides below cover how to record your instrument, edit the samples, create a virtual instrument, apply noise reduction and prepare your samples for upload to the Sampl'd network. There are many different options when it comes to sampling any sound in order to design a virtual instrument for example – how many microphones should one use, their positions based upon the environment they are being recorded in, how many notes to sample, how many times to sample an individual note, how many velocities to record, whether to capture with different combinations of the processing effects or (pedals, outboard processors) pre signal chain, there is a lot to consider. We do encourage you to do your own research as we at Sampl'd are trying to keep things simple, but if you do have questions please feel free to message us via our contact form. Most of all have fun, we get lots of joy out of the recording, editing, processing and design of our own instruments, love it, don't loathe it.... thanks for being part of the network.
String Instrument Sampling
Percussion / Drum instrument Sampling
Brass / Horn Instrument Sampling
Building the instrument
After you have recorded, edited and noise reduced as per our guides above, it's time to build and we at Sampl'd love this final process, building and trying out your carefully recorded samples in a virtual instrument. The following videos demonstrate how to load up your samples in the various samplers. The videos are rough guides if you have specific question not included please be sure to reach out to the network for help.
Pack Up Your Sampler instrument
As per our submission page please ONLY upload a single Zip file containing the raw samples, any sample instruments (e.g. DecentSample, LPX Sampler or Kontakt), a short text file describing your sample pack and a story of it's creation with an image of the instrument, you can of course do this on the submission page too. Upload to wetransfer.com and put the link in our form HERE.
The following is the preferred directory structure within the ZIP file:
samples/ - a directory containing the raw sample files - .wav is preferred
*.nki/*.nkr/*.nkc etc - Kontakt instrument files (where appropriate)
*.dspreset - DecentSampler preset files (where appropriate)
*.exs - Logic Sampler/EXS24 instrument files (where appropriate)
*.other - as per the sampler saving instructions (where appropriate)
Please name each sample file with the note being played, ensuring you use only sharp “#” symbols rather than flat “b” symbols. Distinguish between the volume layers by adding “p”/”mp”/”mf”/”f” as appropriate, if you are not sure what these mean, please review our FAQ page and the process of sampler instrument creation.
Additional Resource links
Sample Robot - an amazing 'automatic' software tool that records, edits and organises your 'keyboard' based sampler instruments
https://samplerobot.com/pages/samplerobot
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Knobman - a perfect resources for all things sliders, rotary's knobs etc for GUI designs of your sampler instruments.
https://www.g200kg.com/en/webknobman/gallery.php
Decent Sampler - we love DS, Dave's own sampler and his extensive libraries and community is amazing, get involved!
Kontakt building resources / GUI systems - here are some really useful tutorials for building Kontakt instruments:
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Logic Pro Sampler - here are some really useful resources for building Logic Pro Sampler instruments:
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Ableton Sampler - here are some really useful resources for building Simpler instruments:
Halion Sampler - here is a really useful resource for building Halion GUI designs and parameters
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