anyone here produce soulful, sample-chopped hip-hop?

i'm looking for a bit of advice from the live users that produce this type of stuff. firstly, how do you like to go about slicing and playing your samples? do you just throw an old funk track into an audio clip and slice to new midi, or do you prefer to load a clip into arrangement view and insert slices manually?

if you do use "slice to new midi" what sort of slicing presets do you tend to use? i understand that it's important to set up "choke" with a value of 1 on each sample, so the sample chokes out whenever a new sample is triggered. i've seen a lot of videos on youtube that use this technique and it really is hella fun just to throw anything into the midi slicer and observe what comes out.

something else i'm curious about, is that i've read that whenever you slice to new midi, the clips do not retain their warp settings. i'm not sure if this is actually true tho, what do you think?

either way, something else i'd like to see discussed is how they work with percussion-laden samples. do crate diggers generally like to use samples with loud hat/percussion patterns, or do you guys tend to just grab stabs/vocals/sounds without a lot of percussion? usually i chop drum hits out of an old funk break, and throw in a couple 808 hats of mine, and whenever i wind up with a pattern of decently chopped samples, there's usually bits of percussion here and there that aren't in time with my beat, and it sounds a mess. how do you get around this? just properly warping the track you chop?

another way i've been working is by loading a track into the arrangement view, turning on FOLLOW/SROLL, and inserting a warp marker on every downbeat of the track as the waveform scrolls by. i find this creates fairly decent chops but can take a while going through the whole tune and zooming in/fine tuning each warp marker insertion.

so how do you guys like to do it? are there any tricks for getting deadly perfect chops or something i should know about? i'm fairly comfortable with chopping drums out of drum breaks, i'm mostly curious how you guys work 9th wonder-esque soul samples.

lastly, do you like to make your slices in another program like audacity or cool edit before loading into live or other?


thanks in advance

I just started my production journey in february, and i havnt really sampled soul but...

I will say that when looking for things to chop up i tent to try to find percussion-less portions of the track.

When i do chop samples up i usually just do it in an audio track and then assign the buttons on my midi controller to the clips that the sample was chopped into.

For sampled drums though i throw them in the drum rack.

The one time i chopped up a sample that had percussion within it, i pretty much chopped it into a "kick, Hi Hat, Snare, cut the bass, dropped it into the drum rack and then lined up the notes with the main drums i had already set up on another channel .

to get your samples to retain their warp, warp them in session view, then freeze/flatten the track then chop :_)

yes. you can notice this if you change a lot the bpm and have a loop or something. no problem if it just hits


What i do when the tempo is a problem, I set the tempo that i want to use with the loop warped on the arrangement, and then consolidate. I also make some edits there with reverse pitch or some glitchyness, consolidate that new loop and then chop it in drumrack.

Another trick I usually do is use the "slice to drumrack" and then replace all the files with single samples (drums for example) so I don't have to create all the macros and velocities to work. THe bad thing about drumrack is that you can't copy-paste samples with their macros

I do a very similar style in which u are disussing.. Click my link and see if you agree.

I use all diff techniques to chopping my samples.. U can use manual chops, warping chop/glitches, slice to new midi, session view chops... All these diff ways can be used to express your chops in diff manners. Its all in how u want to present that chop. so, youre on the right track!

As far as what u wanna how i get my sounds out of samples?.. FILTER FILTER FILTER.. once u an figure out how to focus in on the frequency range u desire then youre set!.. I typically tell beginners to grab a recipe that calls for an EQ 3 and an EQ 8 .. its a good way to start... I also use plugins such as the PSP vintage warmer2 to focus in on certain frequencies. And i typically will pull any sound i desire... NO LIMITS is what i tell myself when sampling.

hope this helps.. and good look into your journey of sampling!

i started chopping up samples when i was like 18 im 21 now...so ive got alittle experience. at first i was using reason and then i said fuck it and worked my way onto ableton ( so difficult to ween myself ) anyway

when chopping in ableton i like to look at in the warp view first... make sure that i know what tempo i wana mess around with and then start to warp accordingly... sometimes if i just want to chop it how it is...ill do that and skip the warping part. but you can get some interesting effects by slowing down time, and messing with the warp modes... anyways After you get it warped up into even sections..take the clip and find what you want.. wether it be a loop... a sound, 2 bars, 4 bars , 3 bars w.e ...make sure you splice it right..however the sounds mesh together common teq is 1 2 3 4 | 2 2 3 4 | 3 2 3 4 | ect//\\\ or 1|2|3|4|2|2|3|4|3|2|3|4 etc.

i hear alot of dilla samples were on the highhats ...i think he liked doing that. but im sure he also chopped up on kicks and snares aswell ...mess around and see what sounds right atm.

once you have your sample chopped into 16ths or 8ths or quarters w.e you can play them back and they should all be onpoint if you had your warpmarkers on right..

ALSO

its better to leave alittle room at the end rather than in the beginning of samples.. so that you can run them long but the warp attacks are still on point.

i mean honestly... do what works...aslong as it sounds dope its dope... oh and
alot of the time cats seem to transpose the song to double time... it tends to help the playing back...

Soul tends to be really easy to sample once you get the hang of it man. JUST TRY EVERTHING you will find your own way to do everthing im telling you... keep it real ! pz



ps. sorry if this dosnt make any sense ... somebody will understand me lol

oh shit...and recycle by propellerhead is a good product for chopping up samples outside of ableton but ableton does the job pretty well for me .

Dope Thanks man !