Zum Hauptinhalt

Lesson 6 - Chiptune Music with SunVox - How to create a song 2

Abschlussbedingungen
How to create a drum section in nutshell and working at the same time in the
“Tracker”. Introduction to Sampler: envelopes and modulation.

Lesson 6:

edu sharing object


Transcript

00:03 - Video 06. How to create a song. Part 2 of 5. In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to compose a richer drum section using the “Sampler,” and how to edit the loudness of our modules by writing this information directly inside the “Tracker.” From the “Synths” menu we choose “Sampler”. 
00:28 - A “Sampler” is similar in some respects to a synthesizer, but instead of generating new sounds through an oscillator, it uses sound recordings of instruments, including other synthesizers, or excerpts from recorded songs. These sounds are technically called “samples” and, in our case, they are played back by means of the “Tracker.” A single sample is often shifted to different pitches to produce muscial scales or chords. In our specific case the “Sampler” also offers synthesizer-like processes such as
amplitude, panning and pitch envelopes. Let’s route the output of the “Sampler” into the “DrumSynth’s” “Amplifier.” The reason why we do this is so that we can amplify all the drums in the same way. At this point we need to tell the “Sampler” to load a “sample” to play back. 
01:18 - We would like to use it to play the sound of a single clap. From the parameter panel we select “Load,” then we select the “Home” icon so that we can see which categories of sound are available, within the software, and ready to be used. We select “Instruments,” then “Drums,” and finally we choose “Claps” and select “clpa3.xi”. Now that our “clap” sound has been loaded into the “Sampler” we can listen to it at different transpositions using the keyboard. 
02:00 - Let’s have a closer look at the inside of the “Sampler” module. To do this, select “Edit” from the Parameter Panel”. If you press “Samples” you can display the content of the “Sampler,” so in our case this would be the clap sound that we chose beforehand. Here, you can set the “Volume”, “Panning” and other parameters. “Panning,” for example, defines the stereo image of our sound: if it is set to zero, as it is now, the sound is equally distributed between left and right channels. With these buttons you can display multiple waveforms at once, if more than one sound has been loaded. 
02:40 - You can also perform some operations directly on the waveform such as selecting an area of it, zooming in or out, or accessing other features from this menu such as “Crop,” which would cut out the selected area of the sample. 
03:00 - In the “Timeline” select the pattern we used for the kick drum because we need to add a “track” to it. Now choose a key from the keyboard to find a tuning that suits the “kick.” When working with percussion samples it is always important to consider their tunings. The way we do this is by the following: we let the song play, select its “Generator,” and then mute it by pressing the “M” key from the
parameters’ panel. Now we can listen to just the “kick” sound and use the keyboard to hunt for the best tuning of the “clap.”  
03:40 - Okay, that’s fine. Let’s write down something very basic. 
04:31 - As it stands, the percussion is really simple, so let’s try to create a more interesting rhythm. To do so properly we need to have a strategy. We have six bars, so we can set three bars, until step 47, as the first part of our pattern and then copy that into the second half of the pattern, editing it a little to achieve some variety. If we move the “Tracker’s” cursor onto the “velocity” column, the keyboard will be replaced by this tab which we can use to enter “velocity” values from zero, silence, to nine. Let’s set some “velocity” values for the “kick.”
05:33 - Now we can copy the first half of the pattern into the second half, then edit it a little like this. 06:11 Let’s play it, and we can easily create a pattern for the “clap” using the same strategy. Before you start don’t forget to select the “Sampler” from the “module view,” otherwise you would still be writing for the “kick.” 
07:53 - Here we go. Let’s open the “Sampler” again. Pressing “Envelopes” displays the envelope view of the “Sampler.” As you can see, “Envelopes” may relate to elements such as amplitude, pitch and panning, or you could even assign it to other effects. The first thing I want to do is to smooth out the attack of my “clap” sample a little bit, to let it play along with the “kick” better. 
08:38 - Let’s play our drums so we can listen to the edits in real-time.
09:02 - Now we can get rid of the breakpoints that we don’t need. 
09:14 - To make this “clap” more interesting, we would also like its pitch to change a little over time. We can do this by choosing “Pitch.” This line in the middle represents the current tuning. 
09:33 - We want to bend it down just at the beginning, like this. 
09:53 - Okay, now it’s fine. We should add “Reverb” to this “clap” becuase it sounds too dry.


Corrigendum

* 02:54: cut out the “non-selected” area of the sample.



Zuletzt geändert: Mittwoch, 13. September 2023, 16:40