Triggering analogue waveforms

James moves on to another analogue-replicating method. “How about if we sample analogue synths? I’ve taken my [Roland] Jupiter-8 and sampled a load of raw oscillator waveforms through nice equipment. I’ve loaded them in a variety of software samplers – here’s Live’s Sampler.” James plays his multisampled patch.

“We have a problem. Every time you hit a note, the sampler is machine-gunning and retriggering the same sample every time.

“Think about how an analogue synth works. Every time you press a key, a gate control opens the VCA, but the oscillators are totally free-running in the background, so it picks up the waveform at different points of its oscillation phase. When triggering a sample, however, it’s starting from the same point each time – that’s not analogue behaviour.

“The solution? It’s dead simple: add some chaos to the sample’s start point.” James uses Sampler’s second LFO, set to a Random shape, to modulate Sample Offset by around 40%. Now, when repeatedly pressing a MIDI key, every note sounds slightly different. “This is taking the start point and throwing it into a different position with each new note.”

Next, James turns on Sampler’s filter and pushes up its Drive a bit. “This emulates high oscillator levels going into a filter circuit and clipping.” He then loops the samples within Sampler, to prevent sustained notes from ending; then, a bit of enveloped low-pass filtering creates a funky analogue-style Moog bass.

James repeats the process with Logic’s EXS24 and Kontakt samplers. Download all these sampler patches with this issue.