🔊Creating and using sampler instruments from audio

Sampling is an important part of electronic music production, and is used across genres, both popular and experimental. The basic idea is to take pre-recorded sounds or music, and manipulate them in some way to create new sounds. To this end, Logic Pro X comes with the EXS24 sampler instrument.

To create a new sampler instrument, drag audio into the timeline, either on an existing track or in an empty space to create a new track. Click on the clip to select it, then move the playhead to the beginning of a sample. This may be easier to do accurately if you zoom in, either with the trackpad or by selection the Zoom Tool, either with the dropdown menu or by pressing “T” followed by “9” (see A below).

A.

B.

Additionally, selecting the exact point to cut the audio may be easier if you turn off “Snap to Grid” with the keyboard shortcut “Command + G”. Once you have selected the point to slice the audio, split the audio, either by clicking “Split > Regions at Playhead” (see B above), or by hitting the “ / ” key. Repeat this process at the end of the sample you want to cut out, and using the above steps, cut as many sections as you want to load into a sampler instrument.

Tip: Often, you get the cleanest-sounding samples when you cut at quiet parts of the waveform, or right before the attack of the sound you want, as shown in the above screenshot.

Once you have sliced the samples you want, drag and select all of them, then right-click and select “Convert to New Sampler Track”, or hit “Control + E”, then hit “OK”. Logic will create a new MIDI region with all the samples laid out. If that suits your purposes, you can leave that and type in or play the samples with a MIDI keyboard. Otherwise, open the Inspector by hitting “ I “, and click the blue “EXS24” button to open the sampler instrument. Click “Edit” in the upper right corner of the window to open the Instrument Editor.

C.

Here, you can modify individual samples in a number of ways. Using the “Coars” & “Fine” options, you can change the pitch of samples, and in the example below I have raised the bottom sample by 5 semitones. You can also move samples around the keyboard, such as the highlighted sample below, which is an octave higher than the others, or change the “Key” parameter to set where the original-pitched sample is on the keyboard. The highlighted sample has also been stretched out by dragging near the edges to allow it to be played at a range of speeds & pitches. If the samples differ a lot in volume, you can edit the “Velocity” fields to make them more balanced.

Once you have your samples sliced and set up how you want them on the keyboard, all you have to do is hit record and play them with your MIDI keyboard.