How could I help you?
I know Ableton, but you lost me at āput 120 samples on a drum rackāā¦
Iād appreciate more details, on the following steps.
I find Octachainer to be extremely easy to use (plus it does .ot files, so you can get out of the grid for OT). So if you can do something easier, Iād love to know more about this workflow 
Ok! I would try to explain it but my english isnāt the best haha.
I have started to make samplechains on ableton because I donāt know why but Octachainer always leave silence between the samples that I use. I donāt know if you can change that but I havenāt been able to do it. So when I import sample chains made it in Octachainer if i want scroll between samples I have to make increments of 2 on the start point; value 1 will be my first sample, value 2 silence and value 3 another sample so this doesnāt work for me.
Another thing that bothered me was the size of the samples, they were very big.
So I decided to start making make my sample chains on Ableton Live.
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I select 120 samples that works for me and import it to a folder.
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Open Ableton Live and open a empty drumrack on a midi channel
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Import 120 samples to the drumrack, so each note itās assigned to a sample.
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Next step is to put all the samples on the same choke group, so when I trigger each sample I donāt get overlapping
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Next I make a midi clip of 121 bars and create stairs of midi notes like this. (I put the grid on 1/1, so I get a sample per beat).
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Next step is to render to audio and now you have your sample chain.
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You can make the sample chain more shorter or more longer changing the tempo, you have to adjust it according to the length of your samples.
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If you change the exporting settings you can reduce the mb size of the sample chain, and if you repitch by +12 semitones before export you could reduce the size too, and later repitch on the Analog Rytm -12 semitones.
I would like to try the repitch method someday, it somethings that I thought yesterday when I explained my method but that I never use.
And finally add that the last chain of 120 samples that I created had a size of 22MB, but probably changing some settings I could reduce it.
I hope this tutorial could help you!
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I keep trying sample chains and using some of the tips here.
If Iām seeing any light it still seems dim.
It always feels fiddly to me and I resort back to individual samples.
Iām sure itās been mentioned in a feature request thread, but it seems like a āsample selectorā machine would be ideal
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I get it.
OctaChainer offers many option, one being the evenly spaced grid.
On such configuration, if you have say 119 hats and one long sample, it will add some silence so that the grid aligns with the 120 graduations of the Rytm.
So best practice is to choose samples that are similar in length so that the chain isnāt mainly silence.
But indeed, the tool doesnāt offer to use down sampling or to shorten samples, to my knowledge.
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One of my fav uses of samples chains is to make one of bass or chord stabs, but have the notes in a scale, then throw a bunch of trigs down and do assign random locks (on either OT or DT) keep randomizing / moving trigs around until you hear something cool to build on.
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Great post man!
Few questions:
- When you say āput all the samples in a choke groupā, how do you do that in Drum Rack?
- How are you creating those MIDI stairs? Are you manually drawing in the notes, or are you using the shortcut to divide MIDI notes equally?
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The choke groups are visible when you expand the Input/Output section of the Drum Rack
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If you have Ableton, sample chains can also be done relatively easily, and then you can go crazy with the various modulation options afforded to you.
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Great job. Iāve been doing this in Ableton for a bit now and it is so insanely powerful. Mixing in lfoās and other modulations can really create some nice organized chaos.
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I draw the notes and later you can save it as a midi clip