Intro
Lately I’ve been experimenting with more hiphop/triphop oriented sounds and after watching a documentary on the sp-1200 I got some ideas to experiment with on the digitakt. What especially got me fascinated was the lofi-sound when pitching down a beat-loop.
I like to keep perfect loops, so I can use the sample start value in increments of 7.5 to slice to 16ths afterwards. I found a way to create my own perfect loops with that lofi sound from my own drrumpatterns: here’s how:
The trick
- Make a nice drum pattern at tempo 140
- Resample the pattern and cut to a perfect loop
- Load the sampled loop in a new pattern, set tempo to 70, and pitch sample down to -12.00
- Apply compression, od and filter to taste
- Resample the pattern and cut to a perfect loop
- Load the sampled loop in a new pattern, set tempo to 105, and pitch sample up to 7.00
- Apply compression, od and filter to taste
- Resample the pattern and cut to a perfect loop
Logic behind the trick
Most of us know that pitching down an octave is effectively playing the sample at half speed,a perfect fifth down however is effectively playing at two thirds of the original bpm. Same for a perfect fifth up, thats 1,5 times the bpm
**Pitch** **BPM** **Fraction**
-24.00____ *0,25____ 1/4
-19.00 ___ *0.333___ 1/3
-12.00 ___ *0.5 ____ 1/2
-7.00 ____ *0.667___ 2/3
0.00 _____ *1
+7.00_____ *1.5
+12.00 ___ *2
+19.00____ *3
+24.00 ___ *4
How to cut a perfect loop
- With sequencer stopped go to the sample menu
- Select src intL+R
- Set threshold at 10 or so and pres “yes” to arm
- Press play on the sequencer
- Just after you hear the first beat after the pattern repats hit “yes” to stop sampling and then stop the sequencer.
- You now have a clear transient of the first beat after the repeat; put your endpoint of the sample just before that transient
- Press yes to save the sample