Beginners Guide To XI _____________________ This one is dedicated to those who tracked their first songs and now want to generate their own instruments. I will explain the basic concept (one sample per instrument) in this article. We'll use FT2's integrated XI-tool. 1. Click on a free row in the instrument-bank. 2. Now choose 'Sample' from the 'Item'-bar and load a WAV into the tracker. 3. OK, time to start now ;) First, press F6 and play a 'C' (you know, it's the 'Z' or 'Y' on your keyboard). At the end of this article the wavefile will be played correctly as it should be, but at the moment it's just an awful roaming. Now click on 'Instr.Ed.' to see the instrument editor. At first we'll change the playing rate. Look at 'Tone relative to C-4'. We see a 'C-4' in the field right of it. But this is wrong for our way. So simply click 'Halftone up' until you get a 'F-4' and then press 'Octave up' to tune it on 'F-5'. Damn right, we now have the 'perfect' tone for our instrument. Stop. Not really. There's something that will be hard to hear but fatal for your songs. The XI is not correctly finetuned yet. Look at 'Tune' and change it to -27. Oh, good now. Save the whole thing as an XI (under 'Instr.' in the itembar). Time to make all better. Hum, OK, just a little bit better. If we play our instrument now it simply gives us the sample and then stops without any release-time. But this is not very natural and sounds unprofessional. So we will change it. XI gives you the possibility to design a ADSR-shape for each instrument. Attack, Decay, Sustain, and Release - they are the important values that can form simple WAV-files to kewl and impressive sounds. Nevertheless, at the moment only release is important for us, so I'll deal with this on a basic level. Take your instrument and open the editor. You see the little checkbox 'Volume Envelope'? Simply click to activate it. Now click 'Del' to delete all preset points in the ADSR-window, two points will automatically stay in the field. Drop the first one to the upper left corner and the second one to the bottom of the first quarter. Jep, and now activate 'Sustain', it should have the value 0. Play 'C'... stop playing... and hear the release! This sounds good with pianos, strings, or synths, but also with other things like hallnoises. I hope I could help you :)). Experiment with all values, have fun. Article 1999 by BassPlace ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Followup: First of all, do exactly as BassPlace told you in "Beginner's guide to XI" - set the relative note to F-5 and finetune to -27 (it's not quite accurate since this is only the case for sound files sampled at 44 kHz, 16 bit, but we'll deal with other cases later). Once you've done that, you have a perfectly tuned C-5 sample. Right? Left. Or Wrong, if you prefer ;) This method ONLY works when the sample (which you made, sampled, got from a sample CD or something else) is played at C-5 in the original wave stream. Let me clarify this a bit - if you sampled a nice string from some mega-popular pop band, and the guy on the keyboard was playing it at F#5, you get just about nothing. When you tune that sample to F-5/-27 and play it at C-5 in your tracker, you get exactly what you sampled - a string which is being played at F#5. Therefore, if you play your sample at D-5, you will hear the string being actually played at A-5. That's not good. What you need is a tuning value for your sample that will play your sampled string at C-5 when you play it at C-5. (Confused? I hope not :) In order to accomplish that, you'll need to lower the relative note for 6 semitones. If you're wondering why, here's the explanation. The scale, as you know, goes like this: C C# D D# E F F# G G# A A# B So, if you need to lower F#5 to C-5, you need to descend 6 semitones: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) F#5 - F-5 - E-5 - D#5 - D-5 - C#5 - C-5 As the base note (relative note) is set to F-5, you need to descend to (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) F-5 - E-5 - D#5 - D-5 - C#5 - C-5 - B-4 Leave the finetune as it is (for now), and play your sample at C-5. Congratulations! You got just what you needed - a sample that is played at C-5 when you play it at C-5 :) (We're still not done with finetuning, but I'll address that later.) If you need to test what you've done, play that sample at F#5 - you should hear exactly the same thing as the original sample before you started tuning it. If that's not the case, then you probably screwed the semitones up (or I did that in this article ;) But wait! I hear you yelling: "HOW THE HECK AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW AT WHAT PITCH THE STUFF I SAMPLED WAS PLAYED?!?!?!" That's easy. All you need is a certifiedly tuned sample, of which you're certain that it's tuned properly. You will, most likely, find one on "No.1 instruments" by MAZ (you can also find some tuned samples on his web page, www.maz-sound.com). What you'll need is a crisp lead, of small proportions, minimal distortions, with no sample effects, mighty as a T-Rex, with a cold shade - just like a blade. (c) sublyme '99 ;) Okay, now that you've overcome the shock caused by this bad poetry (i could easily compete with Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz ;))) , let me explain what i meant with this poetical load of garbage. You'll need a lead sample, as simple as possible, with a somewhat "cold" sound, looped properly, and with *NO* cutoffs, distortion, flanger & other type of effects - perhaps some sort of a "triangle oscillator" lead would be nice. It also shouldn't contain too much low frequencies, so that the sound will be crisp. Once you've got hold of such a sample (I use a sample made from my AUTOEXEC.BAT file - no, you can't have it, go get your own! :) , load it up in your tracker, put it as C-5 (or C-4/C-3, whatever suits you best) in channel 0 and play the song, looped. This way you'll have a constant buzzing sound as a background for tuning up your sample. Load your sample, set it to F-5/-27, press F5 on your keyboard (in FT2 that sets the fifth octave) and hit the Q key. If the sounds seem to blend with each other (you DID play the song, did you? ;) then you're fine - skip the following sections. If not (that's most likely), read on. So, you have something ugly coming out of your speakers? Good! :) Now, keep lowering the relative note of your sample and hitting Q until both sounds seem to play well with each other. Keep in mind that C and F notes also play well together, so if you're not sure that this is your proper base note (relative note), try hitting the R key - that will play your sample at F-5. If the result is better, lower the relative note for a further 5 semitones and hit Q again. That should do it. BTW, if you start at F-5 and end up at, let's say, A-4, you probably should raise the base note to A-5, since it's closer to the original value. Also, in this case, you could have tuned your sample faster if, instead of lowering the relative note, you raised it. But after a few sucessfully tuned samples, you'll get a good "grip" on the pitch of the note, so you can basicly tune it with your ears closed ;) We need to attend to finetuning now. The default setting of -27 should be okay for most cases. However, if you find the sample "stranded" between two semitones (e.g. at C#5 it's too low, at C-5 it's too high), pick the one you like best and adjust the finetune value until the sample blends with your tuning sample. You'll probably find the best value in one of the following: -123, -91, -59, +5, +37, +69, +101 (-27 is the base, I added/subtracted multiples of 32). Anyway, it's up to your ears now. But you'd have to have ears like a bat to notice an error of +/- 5 in finetuning ;) If you're wondering how to recognize when your sample is perfectly tuned, don't worry. You'll know it when you hear it. Here are a few things to keep in mind: - The human ear is not linear: it's more susceptible to higher frequencies than the lower ones. Don't try to tune a note playing it at C-3. - If you're tuning a bass sample, play it at C-7, and SET A SAMPLE LOOP - bass samples are short and you won't hear much in a few tenths of a second the bass sample plays. That's why it's important for you to set a loop in the sample. Also, don't loop the entire sample, pick a spot between the middle and the end, and set a forward loop in there. Like this: (boy, this ASCII is ugly ;) _ | _ | / \ | / \ | / \ | / \ | / \_/^\ / \_/^\ / | \ / | \ / \ _ / | \ _ / | \ _ / | | start end - Use headphones. I mean, use REALLY GOOD headphones. Not that crappy type that you stick in your ear. Nor that crappy type that you stick on your head and then on your ear. Use those really really big headphones which make you look like Dumbo the elephant. No, wait. Use the type of headphones that would even look big ON Dumbo the elephant. Size *DOES* matter ;) The bigger the headphones, the better the sound isolation from the rest of the world. And usually the bigger the headphones, the better sound they have. Try to pick ones with a high level of sensitivity (105 dB sounds nice). You'll be surprised how many new things you never heard before appear in songs - from bad loops, badly tuned samples, to a lot of noise. Trust me. When you start swearing at the fact that there isn't a volume value in a tracker that's between 0 and 1 and start making a copy of the sample with a lower volume envelope, you'll realize how much you've missed before. However, be prepared to cash some $$$ to get a good pair of headphones - and don't buy them "in a box"! ALWAYS prelisten them in the audio shop. If you hear music when the amplifier volume is turned all the way down, then they're probably good ;) Take notice of the bass and treble, make sure the hihats are crisp and the bass is clean. The maximum volume is not that important - it's the quality that matters. If you don't have a Hi-Fi system hooked up to your PC, but use those crappy "1000000W" computer speakers, you should plug your headphones into the Speaker Out connector on your soundcard. Don't plug them into Line Out since it's unamplified - the volume is low and you don't get much bass out of it. (Also, this would be a good time to rethink why you bought that "Meead iyn Theiwuan" noname soundcard which makes more noise than the local heavy-metal band which plays in your building's atomic shelter thursday nights ;) - Don't forget to save your tuned sample! ;) If your sample is NOT 44 kHz, 16 bit, but is of another format, your best bet would be to download MAZ' WAV2XI utility, and use it for converting your sample. It will automatically set the base note (relative note) and finetuning according to sampling rate and bit depth of the sample. Everything is the same from that point - except for the fact that your base values are no longer F-5/-27 but something else. It can't magically detect the proper tuning values, of course (I think there are some .WAV tuners out there - i don't know, i haven't used them), but it's a good starting point. Not only that - in addition to this sample converting comfort, which saves you a lot of clicks, you also get a nifty ADSR envelope for the sample. Use WAV2XI. Really. --- And that's it. If you read all of this, you now probably know how to properly tune your samples. So go on, tune everything you've got! If you have any questions at all about this article or you didn't quite understand what I've written here, don't hesitate to mail me. (for the last time, NO, you CAN'T HAVE MY TUNING SAMPLE! :) ___ ___ / / / / ___ ___ _ / /_ / /__ __ _______ ______ /' __) / / )/ / / / . . ) __ ) :subliminaltransmissionflying (__ / / / ' / / / / / / / /___/ :throughwhiteholesandsubspace (___.(__.__(__(__.(__(__ .(__(__(__(______/ :causingfloatingfluffdisorder mkrnic@jagor.srce.hr (__./ [7bitcompatible]