Improved sample mapping

dBlues · June 21, 2007, 21:45:16

It would be better to display sample name instead of a number in the instrument map list. It would things whole lot easier if you could see the mapping straight away.

Another thing; when I map a new sample, I usually want to see the already mapped samples at the same time. It makes the mapping easier and faster. FTII had this feature made simple and mapping was really convenient.

dBlues · July 30, 2007, 16:41:29

Seriously, doesnt anybody dislike the current sample mapping? It is the worst I have ever seen. Do not read the following if you love the current way to do it...

(rant) I mean, the horror starts at first when you need to load a sample to specific slot. You need to click-click-click your way to this sample (maybe 100 times).

Okay, when you are ready with your wrist infection and your sample opening, just go to the instrument view and ... well, click another 100 times to find the right instrument (oh, the pain). Oh, but now it should get easier? No. You dont have a clue what to do next, only the cryptic looking excel-table on the right, which has some letters followed by numbers. Hmm, maybe this is some kind of secret keycode.

After ten minutes of scratching your head, you gather the lost, grayish hair and double-click the number. A dialog appears, with a picture of a keyboard. Finally! This must be where the things get easier.

You sigh and click the drop-box. Wow. Now you start re-arranging your drumkit. "But why cant I remove the red dot from the keyboard? I can add new ones but not remove that one. I want to put my bassdrum to C5. And my snare to D5. But where is my open hi-hat? I dont want to overwrite its mapping. But I can only see red dots", you think, doubting that you are becoming crazy. This cannot be what sane people are seeing. After all, it is such a great program otherwise. You can even smell something foul, as if the sample mapping was rotting the whole computer. But after some detective job you find it is because you sweat so tremendously. The vein in your forehead is about to explode.

You click cancel with your trembling hands and open FTII, where the sample arranging is a five-second job. You open the instrument in Modplug. You can feel your bloodpressure finally starting to decrease from five atmosphere levels. (end of rant)

dBlues · July 30, 2007, 19:43:47

...or is there something I am missing?

älskling · July 30, 2007, 19:57:38

Quote from: "dBlues"...or is there something I am missing?

I don't know... I never remap samples cause it's so much work and so little reward :wink:

Sam_Zen · July 31, 2007, 02:17:14

I agree about the fuzzy crappy dialog when importing samples. Defining them as an instrument, same pita.
Sometimes preset numbers are increased, sometimes maybe. Names copied maybe.

Snu · July 31, 2007, 02:50:17

Quote from: "dBlues"Seriously, doesnt anybody dislike the current sample mapping? It is the worst I have ever seen. Do not read the following if you love the current way to do it...

(rant) I mean, the horror starts at first when you need to load a sample to specific slot. You need to click-click-click your way to this sample (maybe 100 times).

Okay, when you are ready with your wrist infection and your sample opening, just go to the instrument view and ... well, click another 100 times to find the right instrument (oh, the pain). Oh, but now it should get easier? No. You dont have a clue what to do next, only the cryptic looking excel-table on the right, which has some letters followed by numbers. Hmm, maybe this is some kind of secret keycode.

After ten minutes of scratching your head, you gather the lost, grayish hair and double-click the number. A dialog appears, with a picture of a keyboard. Finally! This must be where the things get easier.

You sigh and click the drop-box. Wow. Now you start re-arranging your drumkit. "But why cant I remove the red dot from the keyboard? I can add new ones but not remove that one. I want to put my bassdrum to C5. And my snare to D5. But where is my open hi-hat? I dont want to overwrite its mapping. But I can only see red dots", you think, doubting that you are becoming crazy. This cannot be what sane people are seeing. After all, it is such a great program otherwise. You can even smell something foul, as if the sample mapping was rotting the whole computer. But after some detective job you find it is because you sweat so tremendously. The vein in your forehead is about to explode.

You click cancel with your trembling hands and open FTII, where the sample arranging is a five-second job. You open the instrument in Modplug. You can feel your bloodpressure finally starting to decrease from five atmosphere levels. (end of rant)

wow... i agree the sample mapping dialog could use a lot of improvment, i have never made a drum kit tho (dont like using them, id rather have individual instruments), but it seems to work a lot better when making chromatic instruments.
i always have the most trouble with changing the freq of all the samples so they are on middle c.

wish there was a dialog i could select all the samples i need, and it would show them in a big table. then one column would tell modplug which note the sample is, and a second column with a mini keyboard showing what notes the sample is mapped to.
then, click that column, and it would open the keyboard window... this is where i havnt figured it out quite... maybe with the sample names on each key that they play... or at the very least, have red dots showing what notes are played by another sample and green showing which notes are played by the current.

also, btw, you can type in the number in the sample/instrument number box...

bvanoudtshoorn · July 31, 2007, 05:10:39

Here's a screenshot of Kontakt's sample mapping:

Although this includes velocities (which mpt doesn't), I think it's probably a much cleaner way of going about things. First up, you can define the range of the sample visually, and alter it's panning and tuning from the mapping dialog. Also, you can set it's root key from the dialog: that is, tell the sampler which note the plain recorded sample is.

The only drawback of this way is that samples can't "stop and start", as far as I know. But then most instruments won't need that capability. If this sort of GUI could be applied on top of the current system, it could be used for standard editing, and anything strange, like stopping and starting, could be manually tweaked in the sample map later.

LPChip · July 31, 2007, 08:49:45

Maybe some of you don't know this, but you can also enter the notes directly in the little list on the instrument page, without opening the sample selector thingy.

Rewbs showed me this, and that made editing alot easier.

Saga Musix · July 31, 2007, 12:27:18

i never used this windows, i also prefer the typing method. but still, it's kinda complex...

dBlues · December 15, 2007, 02:40:56

I like FT2-style sample mapping alot. I used to do alot of instruments back then.

Recently I managed to create a drumkit with Modplug, but it wasnt easy. The problem is that only single sample mapping is showing on the keyboard at a time. It is difficult to tell when you are stepping on some other sample's range, you need to memorize it - which is not good at all. In FT2 you would see the keyboard, with a corresponding sample number on each key. That eliminated this problem.

Sam_Zen · December 15, 2007, 06:10:47

I didn't use sample mapping so far, but I guess the FT2 model would be a nice one in that case.

LPChip · December 15, 2007, 10:31:06

Quote from: "dBlues"I like FT2-style sample mapping alot. I used to do alot of instruments back then.

Recently I managed to create a drumkit with Modplug, but it wasnt easy. The problem is that only single sample mapping is showing on the keyboard at a time. It is difficult to tell when you are stepping on some other sample's range, you need to memorize it - which is not good at all. In FT2 you would see the keyboard, with a corresponding sample number on each key. That eliminated this problem.

Then you've used the wrong dialog.

In the instrument tab, you'll see the current mapping on the right. You could click that button to set the samples, but you can also directly edit in that mapping list. That way you can assign each note by just typing it in, which is quite a quick and easy way to enter your samples, and that'll make sure that you don't overlap a previous sample.

Saga Musix · December 15, 2007, 11:05:31

sure, this is a possibility, but to support dBlues' point, i'd suggest that keys that are already mapped to another samples are maybe greyed out or something.

LPChip · December 15, 2007, 11:16:05

Quote from: "Jojo"sure, this is a possibility, but to support dBlues' point, i'd suggest that keys that are already mapped to another samples are maybe greyed out or something.

Grayed out means that its disabled. Perhaps a blue circle in them is better (red = set for this instrument, blue = already used?)

dBlues · December 15, 2007, 14:38:45

LPChip: Sure, the blue dots would help. Even more if they had a sample number inside (if you got the blue dots already, it is probably not that hard).

Another thing: When I load a sample, I would like to hear it play before I choose it. If I have e.g. 50 bassdrums in a folder, I need to load each one and play it after that to hear if its the right one. The solution would be to play any file that I select, some trackers do this and it makes things whole lot easier.

Idea: From this kind of numbers and keyboard association, it would be easy to start building multilayered instruments. You could assign a second sample to a key easily.

From there, you could go further and say: "I want this sample to play when it plays quiet and other sample when loud." Like when you hit a snare hard, its totally different sound when you hit it quiet. Or a piano. Or a bass drum, or any other instrument you can think of.