Sample Selection in XY Space

Selecting a portion of an audio sample is something that we do often. Digital Audio Workstations (DAWs) like Logic and ProTools or even Sample Track Editors like Peak and Audacity allow users to select a portion of audio.

Figure 1. Selection of Audio in Audacity.
Figure 1. Selection of Audio in Audacity.

The process of selecting audio with a mouse for out-of-real-time control (and in the comfort of one’s studio) isn’t a bad paradigm. However, what about live performance contexts? What other paradigms exist, may be altered, or can be created to benefit live performance?

In conversations with Ted Coffey one such idea came up. With the Wacom tablet, one may alter the start and end selection times of an audio sample based upon the pen’s position in XY space. This idea, sample selection times in XY space, is entirely Ted’s and I can take no credit. Still, I was and am excited about his control idea and I really wanted to listen to a sound using the XY control paradigm. This blog post documents my implementation of sample selection times in XY space based upon Ted’s description.

The What

In order to control sample selection times we need to control three things:
a. sample selection start
b. sample selection end
c. start/stop sample

Figure 2. Sketch of sample selection control on the XY axis
Figure 2. Sketch of sample selection control on the XY axis

Using the Wacom tablet, we map XY space onto  the sample selection start and end times (Y-axis is selection start, X-axis is selection end) and use !PenDown to trigger the sample start/release.

So, what does this sound like? Here are two examples.
The first example uses to pen to scrub different locations of the tablet. Source material is the opening theme to Beverly Hills Cop.

The second example uses grid quantization for the Pen location. Dividing the sample start location and end location times by a beat factor (e.g. 32), we can quantize the length of the selection by a fraction of a beat. Match the playback of this fraction to the !BPM of a drumbeat, and voila! Instant gratification. Source material: Beverly Hills Cop theme + Bob James “Take Me To The Mardi Gras”

To sum up, using XY space to dynamically alter start/end selection times of a sample has strong performance possibilities. For those interested, I’ve shot a quick video of the controls inside Kyma and placed my source Kyma 7 files here.

Quick Kyma notes to no-one but myself:
a. use SampleWithTimeIndex.
b. for Beat quantization,

  • Duration must be ‘audioFileNameOfDrum’ sampleFileDuration s.
  • Rate must be !Rate * (!BPM / (‘audioFileNameOfDrum’ closestBPMTo: !BPM forBeats: 64))
  • Start, End, etc. must use this syntax… ((!PenY * 64.0) rounded / 64.0)

c. for On-the-beat triggers, use Capytalk

((1 bpm: !BPM) hasChangedReset: 0) trackAndHold: !PenDown

This means that the value starts at 0, PenDown will trigger 1 when next beat occurs.

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