Hi, new GP user here! I’ve been working with GP for a week or so now as an experiment to possibly replace my Roland Juno-G, Moog Minitaur and Behringer Poly D synths for live gigs. I’m in the middle of building out the rackspaces for all of the songs in my setlist and so far so good. For the GP rig I am using an M-Audio 61 key controller and a Novation Launchkey 37 controller, and 2 older MIDI Organ pedals connected via 5-pin DIN to a USB-MIDI interface into my MacBook Pro. Like other bands that I see posting here, our band uses samples. But after searching for and reading other posts on triggering samples I still have a couple of questions.
I’ve tried both the Audio File Player and the Streaming Audio File Player for triggering .WAV files, but the playback behaviour has not been what I expected. After assigning a LED pedal to the AFP and setting it for “Play From Beginning” I was hoping to press a key and the sample would start playing, and if I lifted my finger off of the key the sample would stop, and if I pressed it again it would play again from the beginning. But once I press a key and lift my finger off the sample keeps playing until the end, and none of the pedal’s settings seem to allow a standard Note On and Note Off behaviour. It feels like I’m trying to make the AFP do something it wasn’t intended to do by treating it like another synth source, so can anyone recommend another sample player plugin that works more like a synth?
I see the looping function in the Streaming Audio File Player, but it just loops the section you select as opposed to the kind of sample loop editing that allows the initial start of the sample to play and then loops a remaining section of the sample over and over as long as a key is pressed down. Probably same answer as question 1, is there a way to edit the samples with the SAFP or am I looking for a different sample player plugin? Thanks!
There is the free Decent Sampler but you have to create XML files to use it. The GP Auto Sampler can actually do that so that’s one possibility.
The TX16W sampler is another option, there’s a free version and a paid version.
Frankly, my goto for sample playback is still Kontakt (and I’m still using Kontakt 6 for live performance). Multiple samples, multiple simultaneous libraries, tremendous control over start, stop, looping and quite a few effects as well.
Unfortunately it’s not free but I couldn’t perform without it.
Regarding the first issue, when you refer to an “LED pedal”, do you mean a widget?
If do, did you use midi learn?
If so, did you try triggering “midi learn” while the keyboard note was held down (“note on”). Then release midi learn before releasing the note (so “note off” is not included in midi learn).
Then hit the key on the controller again (“note on”) and then start midi learn to learn “stop playback” (or something like that) and then release the controller note (“note off”) so the note off triggers “stop playback”.
Sorry, if I am totally off base. But, this is what I would explore.
Thanks dhj. I read about these solutions in one of the posts about triggering samples and I am looking into them all. I’m not afraid to dive into the scripting and XML but it’d be nice if GP were to build a basic sampler player that is made for keyboard players. I’ve heard about Kontakt and checked it out at lunchtime today. It’s a whole lot of sampler for what I want to do and it ain’t cheap, but I’ve already anted up for some of the plugins I’m using for this rig to make sure I’m using good tools so Kontakt may be the way to go.
Hi jeffn1, I did use the MIDI learning function but just to press the key so that it learned the note. It was confusing because I thought it would learn “Note ON” when I pressed the key but instead it ended up being “Note OFF”. So you’re instructions explain why I was seeing the apparent backwards behaviour Going to try this tonight. Thanks!
Hi @askuse7
I use the SAFP for all of my triggered samples.
First make a widget ie: button then in the “Edit” menu go to “Mapping” then choose “Play” Now assign a key, button, or pedal in the midi options. The wav will play till the end and go back to the beginning.
Good luck bro and welcome!
Hi Tim, thanks for the suggestion! I worked on the widget config and got a pedal working with the SAFP and it works great for one-shot type samples that just play one and done. But I also needed to trigger samples that play, reach the end, then loop back over a portion of the sample in sync with the tempo so that it sustains as long as I hold down the pedal or key. A good example is the sequenced OB-1 loop in Spirit of Radio during the section “Invisible airwaves…” So I installed the Yamaha TX16Wx sampler. There was definitely a learning curve as the interface is overly busy and not very intuitive. But I eventually figured out what I needed to do to add samples and then create the loops. The biggest light bulb moment was that once you create a loop region you need to Assign the loop region or nothing happens. Like a lot of these proprietary programs, it was one simple setting that was elusive and had me pulling out my hair. But the TX16Wx is working great now! Thanks to everyone that responded!
Going to try this tonight. Thanks!