Samplers

[humancertainty]

Ok, dudes.
So Indian booted our noise guy shortly before we recorded the new album. I did most of the noise on the new album, with some additional contributions from a few friends. We haven't replaced him and haven't talked much about it. Our friend Mark did noise for us on the one show we have played since, but he can't really join the band.
So, I'm thinking that I need to get some sort of sampler that I can control with my feet for our live shows. We'll use friends when we can, but we are going to Europe next year and can't afford that fifth ticket.
The four button JamMan looks like the best option but I have absolutely no experience with samplers.
I'm going to have to record the noise stuff to put on the sampler, which I haven't done either, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Advices, brahs?

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

maybe check out sp404?

[misterstomach]

just get a macintosh computer and it'll play the entire set for you.

[conky]

Ok, dudes.
So Indian booted our noise guy shortly before we recorded the new album. I did most of the noise on the new album, with some additional contributions from a few friends. We haven't replaced him and haven't talked much about it. Our friend Mark did noise for us on the one show we have played since, but he can't really join the band.
So, I'm thinking that I need to get some sort of sampler that I can control with my feet for our live shows. We'll use friends when we can, but we are going to Europe next year and can't afford that fifth ticket.
The four button JamMan looks like the best option but I have absolutely no experience with samplers.
I'm going to have to record the noise stuff to put on the sampler, which I haven't done either, but that's a whole 'nother story.
Advices, brahs?

The SP404 is an awesome sampler and that is what i use. The only thing with it is that you can't trigger it with your feet. I haven't found a pedal that will work with it. I just sold a Jamman solo with aux switch that i used to trigger our samples with for a bit. It is super easy to setup and record stuff into it. You can easily move stuff from the card to your comp and vise versa. The only reason I got rid of mine was because I don't have an effects loop and when i run dirt alongside the Jamman, the Revelation just overpowers it and with the compression from everything the samples got lost. So I just went back to my SP404 running into the PA. We were supposed to get a guy doing synth for us but after one practice he never showed back up. Sucks because he sounded pretty good.

[Dr. Sherman Sticks M.D.]

u could get a midi footswitch board and trigger the sp that way. 2 devices tho.

[moose23]

Midi footswitch and Ableton perhaps? As for the noises can you just use the ones from the album? That's what our synth guy is going to do.

[Ancient Astronaught]

Midi footswitch and Ableton perhaps? As for the noises can you just use the ones from the album? That's what our synth guy is going to do.

This is the direction I would head in personally /\

Disaster Area just released a midi / USB pedal exactly for this purpose:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mK-0Dopqqbw[/youtube]

http://www.disasterareaamps.com/shop/dmc-6d

You plug it into your comp via USB and set the samples to trigger and boom good to go, but you would also need a small 2x2 interface so you could send 1/4's to FOH.

[ridingeternity]

How many different samples do you need to utilize? If you don't need any more than one per song, the Boss RC-2 worked just fine for me for awhile. You have to manually switch samples on the pedal which is a bit of a hassle.

I personally like to steer clear of using a laptop unless it has more than 2gigs of RAM...plus its also just kind of cool when people can't tell where the fuck some of the crushing noise is coming from...but if you go that route...based on price this unit ->cheap midi interface ->laptop ->DAW(Ableton, Fruity Loops, whatever you fancy):

http://www.musiciansfriend.com/keyboard ... controller.

I think the expression pedals would be a rad point of control for this type of stuff. Say you are sampling from a program that you can alter the synth parameters with a pedal, you could fade the samples in/out and control the modulation as well.

[ridingeternity]

This looks like a decent, simple, inexpensive solution for the midi/laptop route as well. If you need more switch options they have rackmount 8 switch versions as well.

http://www.midisolutions.com/prodfsw.htm

I remember the dude from Megaton Leviathan talking a bunch this year about his midi setup for all his backing tracks crapping out on him, which is why I advise the 2 gig RAM minimum if you are going to be running anywhere from 3-12 tracks simultaneously, 4 gigs of RAM if beyond that. Of course if it doesn't alter the sound too much you could bounce them all to one sample, run it that way and you should be fine no matter what.

Then again...you wont be using this as your backing band so it probably won't be so complex.

[chamberpain]

I did the boss rc-2 and controlled it with an external foot switch. This allowed me to cycle through the samples an stop playback. I wouldn't suggest the rc-2 though because transferring the samples onto the pedal sucks and there's no visual indicator other than a flashing ligh as to which sample you have cycled to. I'm sure other pedals in the same price range would work the same way. Jam man solo maybe. The foot controller was easy to DIY and was pretty small.

[ridingeternity]

I did the boss rc-2 and controlled it with an external foot switch. This allowed me to cycle through the samples an stop playback. I wouldn't suggest the rc-2 though because transferring the samples onto the pedal sucks and there's no visual indicator other than a flashing ligh as to which sample you have cycled to. I'm sure other pedals in the same price range would work the same way. Jam man solo maybe. The foot controller was easy to DIY and was pretty small.

I found transferring samples rather easy, just feed a 1/8" cable from the source into the pedals aux input, depress pedal so that the orange light flashes, click play on the sample, when the sample reaches the end stomp and there you are. While getting the perfect stomp at the end is a hassle, its doable.

And the newer RC-2 has an LED indicator so you know which sample you are since it now has 99 slots of memory rather than I think the 12 before:

[chamberpain]

Yeah that's how I did it. The rc3 does look like a vast improvement. I just think it would have been easier overall by transferring the sample on a card or USB. Drag and drop vs sitting through the sample and timing it all out, etc.

[ridingeternity]

Yeah that's how I did it. The rc3 does look like a vast improvement. I just think it would have been easier overall by transferring the sample on a card or USB. Drag and drop vs sitting through the sample and timing it all out, etc.

You are onto something there...I smell a lucrative mod...

[humancertainty]

just get a macintosh computer and it'll play the entire set for you.

I don't think the dudes want to kick me out just yet.

Thanks for the advices, dudes.
I don't know anything about MIDI but the SP-404 with a MIDI foot controller seems pretty sweet. Not stoked for two pieces of gear but not opposed, either.
Don't really want to buy a new computer so I probably won't go that route.
The JamMan looks good and all.
Fuck. I don't know. I'm such a cave man with all of this shit.

[fallen]

I did this years and years ago with an Akai sampler that had trigger inputs on the back that you can plug any 1/4" footswitch into. I used momentary tap tempo ones and one latching switch that would forward/reverse loop samples for me as long as I had it clicked on.

These days I'd probably just get one of the JamMan loopers where you can prepare all the samples on computer and transfer them to the pedal via USB, and a small passive direct box.