Operating instructions

ADVANCED APPLICATIONS

PART 3: EFFICIENTLY COMBINING SAMPLES INTO PRESETS

Part of creating a good Preset is to get into a “rhythm” where you’re punching up

parameters as if the whole process was second nature. The following example shows

the flow of a typical sampling session from start to finish.

I. The Situation

You have a portable, toy synthesizer that has about seven really great patches and no

keyboard dynamics. You’d like to take it on the road, but it’s real fragile; so, you decide

to sample the seven patches into the Emulator II, and add keyboard dynamics while

you’re at it. We’ll suppose that these neat sounds are called “Electric Piano”, “Trumpet”,

“Gong”, “Noise”, and “Synth 1 - 3”.

II. Getting ready

First, let’s do a little bit of planning. We’re trying to fit a fair amount of sounds into

memory, so we’ll minimize the number of Voices per sound. Here are some suggested

ways to divide up the keyboard for different numbers of Voices:

3 Voices

Low Orig Hi

C1 C2 A2 Lower Voice (Voice 1)

Bb2 F#3 D4 Middle Voice (Voice 2)

D#4 C5 C6 Higher Voice (Voice 3)

Because transposing changes the timbre of the sound, sometimes three Voices will not

realistically cover the keyboard. Often you can stretch the lowest Voice to cover two

octaves, and use three Voices for the upper three octaves.

4 Voices

Low Orig Hi

C1 C2 Bb2 Voice 1

B2 F#3 B3 Voice 2

C4 F#4 B4 Voice 3

C5 F#5 C6 Voice 4

For greater bass range fidelity, use octave by octave sampling.

5 Voices

Low Orig Hi

C1 F#1 B1 Voice 1

C2 F#2 B2 Voice 2

C3 F#3 B3 Voice 3

C4 F#4 B4 Voice 4

C5 F#5 C6 Voice 5