LinuxMusicians

Hi Folks! I'm new here, but a quick search of the archives didn't reveal much about this topic. I just bought a Korg Nanopad (v1), and want to get started doing some live sampling with it (It's still in the mail, but I want to do my homework first). What I want to do is to load up some chopped .wav samples (mostly from old blues songs), and assign them to the various pads of the nanopad. I'd also like to put some FX on the XY controller of the nanopad (e.g., Low pass filter on x, and bitcursh on y). What I want to be able to do is to "play" the pads with one hand, while running the XY FX in real time over them with the other (plenty of vids on YouTube of folks doing this with the Nanopad, using various propietary software solutions). Up until this point, I've been using an Android tablet with Electrum Drum Machine to "play" samples, but I hate using a touchscreen for that, and there's no "live" FX control possibilities with that route either. I've been looking at the state of soft samplers on *nix, and it seems that samplv1 is the piece of kit I want to be working with, although I'm totally open for suggestions.

Does anyone have any expereince with using the nanopad on *nix for doing something similar to what I want to do? Anything I should be aware of? From what I understand, the korg configuration software runs fine in Wine, so i ought to be able to configure the midi mapping of the pads okay. Does anyone have any experience of using a midi controllor with samplv1 (or another *nix soft sampler?). Any advice, suggestions, tales of woe, etc., would be greatly appreciated!!!

~OneHarp

I can't really say anything about the Nanopad as I've never used it but you might want to look at using Hydrogen, you could load a lot of samples in it and only have one instance on it. It doesn't have the same kind of modulation possibilities that Samplv1 has though.

I'm not sure how you would do the fx stuff you want to do, I suppose you could have Hydrogen running in to Carla or use the fx inside Hydrogen assigned to midi, if that is possible. You might want to have a look at Renoise, it has an xy controller thing (in the new beta I think) and the sampling possibilities are immense.

Thank you for the suggestions! I did check out Hydrogen some years back, but that was well before I was thinking about using a laptop for this kind of thing live... I'll look at it again... Also thank you for the suggestion about Renoise. That one looks pretty darn cool! I'll read up on it for sure!!

Reading up on the Hydrogen webpage led me to this tutorial: http://www.hydrogen-music.org/hcms/node/29. It even mentions the korg nanopad by name! Seems like hydrogen will at least do the sampling part of the equation. I'll read up on the FX possibilities. If worse comes to worse, I suppose I could use some other FX processing software (JACKRACK, etc.) and hook it all together in JACK. Seems like there are multiple options here, so I'm pretty happy so far! Can't wait for the controller to arrive!

I think samplv1 maps samples pitched differently across an entire keyboard. Using a sampler as you've described is probably more drumrack-y, so as sysrqer mentioned you could use hydrogen, or you could use drumkv1 or fabla, both of which are available as lv2 plugins to be loaded by a plugin host like carla, which can also host FX plugins. (don't use jackrack please it's way too old)

I don't have experience using a pad controller with linux or with using a hardware xy controller, but I have used pad controllers before and I have used xy controllers with linux. The pads are usually mapped to midi notes so it's straightforward to connect to the midi-in of the drum machine you choose (make sure you assign the proper notes). You'll probably have to figure out what midi-ccs each axis of the xy-pad is mapped to but once you figure that out you can connect to the midi-in of whatever plugin and modify the CC binding of the plugin parameter you want to control (for carla there are a few threads on these forums about that).

also it sounds like you've already bought the nanopad so maybe it's late saying this but I have a feeling the beatstep will be much more versatile and better-built (though it hasn't yet been shipped). But it lacks an xy pad and is twice as expensive, so perhaps the nanopad will still remain useful to some.

Thank you tach! Good to know that about samplv1... Honestly, the terminology is so crossed for this kind of stuff that I'm never sure how to properly describe what I want to do. Probably the best term (and the one I should have used) was "groovebox", like the Akai MPC's or BOSS Dr. Sample. I'm not interested in live sequencing, nor "keyboard" like sample playing, but in assigning clips and beats to pads, and then playing them. As context, I'm mainly a blules and reggae/ska harmonica player, who does a little one-man-band thing by using a looper, beatbox, foot stomping and lots of FX. What I want out of this computer stuff is to be able to work some samples with my right hand while I hole the mic in my left. I was looking at usb midi controllers, and franly most of them did waaaay too much, and were over priced. It came down to the Korg nano's and the Akai LPD8. What sold be on the korg was that the older model was on sale for $25. At the price, I figured I was dumb not to jump on it (limited time only until all old models are sold and all). So that's what I did. I figure that I can "cut my teeth" on the cheap little korg, and if it turns out that this something I really want to bring to my set, then I can always upgrade later... The Beatstep you linked to does indeed look like a neat bit of kit, but probably too much for me right now!

I think you are right that what I want to do is more like what a drum machine does... Hydrogen looks like it can do everything but the FX, but perhaps drumkv1 can do it all! And I suppose I'm dating the last time I really messed around with live audio processing on linux by my reference to JACKrack! I also messed around with rackarrack and calf back then too! At the time, the latency was too high on my crappy laptop, but these days that's not much of an issue from what I can tell. I also use external sound interfaces (Zoom G3 or an Alesis Multimix 8 USB), and I've found there to be no audible latency when tracking in a DAW, so I figure it's probably good to go for live use!

Thanks again for the tips! I'll read up on Carla too...

Fabla looks pretty sweet! It also has an interface that seems familiar to me too (similar to the Electrum Drum Machine that I used on Android). Actually, all the software from OpenAV looks pretty great! That Luppp looks like something I defintely could use! I messed around with sooperlooper some years back, but I really hated the interface. There was a great piece of windoze freeware called Ambiloop that I used to use many years back, which was probably the best software looper I've ever seen. Luppp seems to come pretty darn close to that!

Another looper program for linux is giada. I'm not much of a looper person myself so cannot give you a real comparison to other loop programs except to say that giada is being very actively developed these days.

This board is the best! Thank you so much for the tip about giada! I had a look at it's feature set (http://www.giadamusic.com/features), and it looks like the _perfect_ tool for what I want to do. It will allow me to *combine* live looping of my beatbox/harmonica and the triggering of pre-recorded samples (cut from old blues tunes), both controlled from the nanopad. If I can hook up an external FX processor to the XY pad in the JACK chain, then I'm in serious business!

PS. My nanopad just came in the mail last night, so I'm hoping to start experimenting this weekend! I'll let you all know what I come up with!