Creating multiple zone instruments

So let's explore making a multizone EXS24 instrument. I have this drum track here, this TrifonDrums. (music playing) So earlier I showed you the shortcut to creating a new sampler instrument where it just automatically slices this up and assigns with the keys and you can just play it. So let me show you the actual manual way of doing that. So what we are going to do is select this track, and then I am going to turn on Flextime in Logic. So I can hit this Flex button or hit Command+F. Then I have to turn on one of these Flex modes.

So I am just going to select Slicing. So now I can just see the transients. What this allows me to do is when I Ctrl+Click, I have this Slice at Transient Markers options. So I am going to select that. So now let's cut it into a bunch of different regions. I actually don't need the Flextime right now, so I am just going to turn it off, but we still have all these regions. So when I open up EXS24, I am going to go to the Sample Instrument Editor, and what I can do is load in multiple zones. So I can go to the Zone menu and go to Load Multiple Samples, and I can go find all of those slices and load them in, but that's probably much less convenient than just doing drag-and-drop.

So what I am going to do is I will grab these here, make sure I have them all selected, and I am going to take them and drag them in. So when I do that, it brings up this choice here. It says, "Adding 51 samples. Please choose how to build the map." So it can auto-map by reading the root key info from the audio file. So if there is pitch metadata, it can read that and assign the root key. There is Drums mode, so that has zone without range, and so the root key is also from the audio file, and it usually stacks these vertically, just on top of each other.

The one I want to use is Contiguous zones. So with that it's going to map it chromatically, because I have my Zone Width set to 1, and then I have the Start Note set to C1. So if I hit OK, you can see it maps them all out now. So if I play on the keyboard, I can play through all of these different slices, and the cool thing about that is that then I can reprogram this beat in a different way by using the sounds of it. So one thing that you have keep in mind when you load multiple samples is the Playback options. So under this Playback column here, you can see that 1Shot is checked for all of these.

So for drums that's okay. What 1Shot means is that it's going to ignore the amplifier envelope in terms of the release stage. It's going to play all the way through the end of the sample. So for certain other kinds of sounds that aren't drums, that might not be what you want. So to uncheck that, what you can do is select all zones--so down here I am just highlighting all of them-- and then I just uncheck 1Shot. So now it's unchecked for all of them. Another thing I can do in this Playback mode is reverse particular zones. So I could reverse them all by just clicking on all of them here.

I can hear that those are reversed. Or if I just want to reverse a few of them, I could just choose whichever ones I want o reverse and select that, and there it is. It's backwards. So once you've created your multizone kit, it's actually important to save it. So I will pull up the Parameter Editor. I am just going to click this EXS24 button. You can see it says Instrument 1767. So that doesn't really mean anything. That's because we haven't saved this yet. So what I want to do is up here in the Instrument menu I want to make sure to go to Save As, and where I want to save this is actually in the Library folder.

So Library > Application Support > Logic > Sampler Instruments. And then I can create my own folder in here if I want. So I have this folder My Drums, so I could save it in here. The reason I want to use this directory is because then I open up any Logic session or create a new one, then this new instrument I have created will be in that list of the EXS instruments that I can load. So that's definitely useful, because if I only save it with this session, then it's only going to be associated with this session, and it's not going to show up when I open a different session.

So let's just name this TrifonDrums, and then I will just hit Save. So another thing to keep in mind when you're saving is it doesn't actually relocate your audio files, like, it's not moving or copying this TrifonDrums to a different directory; it just leaves it where it originally is. So I have to be careful not to accidentally delete that file, because then my sampler instrument won't work anymore. So a safe way to sort of make a backup so that you don't accidentally lose audio files is under the Instrument menu to do Export Sampler Instrument and Sample Files.

And what that will do is it will make a copy not only of your sampler instrument, but of all the associated audio files. So I will just call this TrifonDrumsBackup. Then what it's going to do is it will take a moment, but it will save the instrument, and then it saves all the samples with it. Now that we have made a multizone instrument and we cut up the drum loop and mapped it across the keyboard, let's take a look at making a dynamic velocity-layered instrument.