Step by step

3. Exploring Impact XT’s new features

1 Let’s take a look at Studio One 4’s upgraded drum instrument, Impact XT. Load it onto a track and import ‘ Beat. mid’ from Tutorial Files. Impact XT comes with a ton of new sounds and kits. Work through a few kits from the preset menu to try them out, then select the UK Garage kit to continue.

2 Click the Kick 1 pad to select the sound, then head over to the Pitch, Filter and Amp panels on the right. Lower the Filter Cutoff to about 3kHz, and add some Resonance. The Drive and Punch dials sculpt the sound – we’ll add Drive here to replace the lost high frequencies, but no more Punch is needed.

3 Our MIDI line uses three separate hi-hats. Let’s play with the Tune parameters to match them up for this particular kit. A little tweak makes a big difference here. Vel controls how much velocity affects pitch – set each hat’s Vel to about 2 st for a bit more of a dynamic metal clang.

4 Let’s turn to the Clap channel. To thicken this up, we could duplicate the Clap MIDI note onto another drum pad, but we can also change the pad itself. Click the + button on the left below the waveform display to select a file to layer with the original clap sound. We’ve included a few samples from 200’s Goldbaby pack for you to try out.

5 The two layers are currently triggered D# based on the Velocity of the input note. There are a few other ways to activate them, though, using the Layer Mode selector on the right. Round Robin plays one sample then the other; Stack plays both at once; and Random leaves it all down to chance. You can stack up to 32 sample layers on any one pad.

6 Turning to Bank B, we get another 16 pads to play with, as showcased in Beat and Music.mid. These are gated, looping pads with musical elements, rather than drum elements to tap and strike. The endlessness of the possibilities becomes apparent when you realise that there are another six whole banks to play with in Impact XT!