Writing A Piece Of Music In 25 MINUTES With Only One Sample And One Kit!!!

I had the idea in the middle of the night to give myself more creative challenges.

Create more without editing, not giving my inner critic a chance to kick in.

The idea is that I choose a drum kit and then a single sound sample that then become the ONLY instruments and sounds I can use in my Logic session.

Limitation sparks creativity, or something like that.

So that is exactly what I did this afternoon.

I recorded myself singing “Bo” (at C3) into my Rode Podcaster USB mic (no frills here either) and then loaded it into Kontakt.

From here I proceeded to create my track ‘Body and Soul’.

I didn’t manage my ambitious task of doing it in under ten minutes but I did manage it in 25 minutes which I am pretty chuffed with.

I then used a further 20 minutes to bounce down the samples so that I can create a sample library of those sounds which I will probably call “Bo” or something to that effect.

You can get your copy of that little library by supporting me (here on this site) for the price of a couple of coffees per month.

I hope you enjoy this show and would love to see/hear anything you make as a result!

How I turn a single sample into a Kontakt instrument

You don’t need expensive gear to make your own instrument. My philosophy is to use the mic you have, get close to the source to capture detail, and keep it simple.

Think about the end point first. Too often I’ve recorded sounds without thinking about how they’ll work as an instrument, and regretted it later. Decide whether you need round robins or velocity layers before you record. For a simple, pitched texture you often need neither.

Clean and normalise. Once the recording is denoised, I normalise it so it sits at a healthy level. Normalise the whole file rather than one section, otherwise you can end up with odd imbalances, especially once you have velocity layers or round robins.

Name your files well. If the file name includes the note it was played on, Kontakt can map it for you. That’s where good labelling really pays off.

Map it in Kontakt. Drag the samples into Kontakt, open the editor with the spanner icon and go to the Mapping Editor. Select all zones, then use Auto Map Setup to read the note from the file name and set each one to a single key. Then use the batch tool to move the root key to the centre, and Auto Spread Key Ranges via Root Keys to stretch the samples across the keyboard.

Don’t stretch it too far. Pitching a sample a long way from where it was recorded can sound rubbish, so I limit how far each one spreads, often to about an octave down. Sometimes it sounds better than you expect, so trust your ears.

Tidy the start. In the Wave Editor, move the sample start so the note plays as soon as you press the key, leaving just a tiny bit of space before the sound.

For more, read Make your own Kontakt instruments EASILY, A Single Violin Pluck Did All This and Bored of the Same Old Samples?.

Happy composing!Rich