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Chapter 29 EXS24 mkII 521
Change the sound by twisting the knobs, pressing switches and moving sliders—and
don’t worry—you can’t destroy the original Sample Instrument.
Creating and Editing Instruments in the Instrument Editor
Instruments are created and edited in the Instrument Editor. It is also used to organize
samples and to convert foreign sample formats (AKAI S1000/3000 and so on). You can
also assign samples to keys or key ranges and set start, end, and loop points plus all of
the normally tedious tasks associated with sampling in the EXS24 Instrument Editor.
Fortunately, the EXS24 Instrument Editor is much easier and more pleasant to work
with than that of a hardware sampler. This is illustrated by the transparent architecture
of the EXS24: samples are assigned to Zones, Zones are assigned to Groups. The end
product of these assignments is a Sampler Instrument.
Now that you know how to load a Sampler Instrument, it would be a good time to
briefly introduce you to the Instrument Editor. Please open the Instrument Editor
window via the Audio > EXS24 Instrument Editor menu. The parameters and functions of
the Instrument Editor window are described in this section.
The Instrument Editor shown above is empty as no Instrument has been loaded or
created. The keyboard in the upper window area can be used to trigger notes for the
EXS24 in the currently selected track. Below the keyboard, a number of Zones are
shown.
Zones
A Zone is a location into which a single sample (or audio file, if you prefer this term) can
be loaded from hard disk or CD ROM. The sample loaded into the Zone is memory
resident—it uses the RAM of your computer. A Zone offers various parameters for
controlling the playback of the sample. Each Zone allows you to determine the range
of notes over which the sample should be heard (Key Range), and the “root key” (Key
Note)—the note at which the sample sounds at its original pitch. In addition, sample
start, end, and loop points plus volume and several other parameters can be adjusted
within the Zone. You can define as many Zones as you wish. Each Zone requires at least
one EXS24 voice when played.