User Manual

Prophet X User’s Guide

Using Sampled Instruments

The internal sample library gives you a lot of variety to work with when

you’re designing sounds. In some cases you may want to use the instru-

ments as is, and just add effects as necessary. In other cases you may

want to layer two different instruments to create something new and

unexpected. And nally, you may want to completely mangle one or

more instruments by modulating their loops and using all of the other

synth functions that the Prophet X provides. With a bit of creativity, you

can go to some very extreme places.

Let’s start with a simple instrument and go from there.

Selecting and Modifying a Sampled Instrument

You can easily modify a sampled instrument using the lters, enve-

lopes and effects — just like you did with the oscillators in the previous

examples. Let’s start with a simple piano.

To customize a piano:

1. Recall the Basic Program. (See previous examples if necessary.)

2. In the Mixer section, turn Oscillator 1 level down to 0. (We’re just

going to work with sampled instruments here.)

3. In the Sample Playback section use the type knob to select piano.

4. Use the instrument knob to select the rst piano (1928 Grand Near).

5. Play a few notes and chords and listen to the instrument’s sound.

At this point it’s important to note that by default, the sampled instru-

ments pass through and are affected by the low-pass lter. So it’s simple

to change their sound dramatically by just adjusting the lter and lter

envelope settings. Like so:

6. Next, set lter cutoff to 0 and lter env amount to 120.

7. Play few notes and chords and listen to the instrument now. It’s

completely different and unrecognizable as a piano.

8. Now, set lter resonance to 160 and set the lter envelope to attack

60, decay 60, sustain 45, and release 40.

9. Play few more chords. Completely different again and un-piano-like.