Workflow for preparing samples for use?

Elektron Gear Octatrack
#1

Hi folks. I recently got myself a handy recorder and I was wondering if any of you had some recomendations when it comes to preparing them for use with the OT. I am talking about trimming away silence mostly I guess. (unless there is something else you like to do as well). So whatever is fast is good…

I was planning on doing it in the OT. Is there a good way to do this? I don’t want to save just add a “sample setting file” I want to save the trimmed sample as a new wav.

Thanks :smile:

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#2

You could write yourself a sox script to remove silence (below a preferred threshold db, once detected for a preferred number of seconds/samples) and leave you with a more compact file. Also perhaps a good idea to combine L&R to mono, depending on whether nonzero crossing LR looping is important.

Would make for a more focused effort mining the file in the OT audio editor.

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#3

Thank you for this. I was thinking about recording my own samples, and was wondering the same thing

#4

What is a sox script?

#5

It’s a free tool you can download and write small files to perform audio tasks on a file or folder of files.

I use it to make chains suitable for op1, OT or rytm. Lots of handy features for affecting each file, trimming, normalising, filtering or whatever.

Idea is you create a script file and then you just use it over and over again to process target files. An hour of brain damage figuring it out, and then click of a button after that!

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#6

Brilliant! Thank you for the heads up!

#7

This sounds useful for Op1/OT, thanks!

#8

Audacity for PC is fast/free/good.
I also have a video tutorial for Reaper if you have that, which I made in response to a similar question on this forum. It’s here - https://youtu.be/1HlgaJN0ZMA

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#9

To get you started, here’s a 3 line sox script (windows) I made, idea being to squeeze 24 shots into a file below 12s. So the 24 samples you choose shouldn’t be too far off 12s length in total sum:

mkdir trimmed
for %%a in (.wav) do sox “%%~a” “trimmed/%%~a” --norm remix - fade 0 0.5 0.05 silence 1 1 -42d -1 1 -42d pad 0.025 0.025 rate 44100
sox "trimmed/.wav" “chain.aif”

how to use:
ensure you have sox installed and on your path
save the script in a .bat file on windows in a New Folder. Put 24 wav files into the New Folder.

what it does:

  • creates a directory in the New Folder called ‘trimmed’
  • Loops through the 24 wav files,
  • changes them to mono,
  • trims silence before and afterwards, including some tail from the likes of long fade out cymbals etc,
  • puts in a very short silent gap between them to help with chopping on the Op-1,
  • set them to 41.1k.
  • saves them in the trimmed folder
  • Joins them all together as ‘chain,aif.’
    then just upload chain.aif over usb to your Op-1.

with a little bit of work you can make an OT or RYTM version.

tip: for this script I renamed the 24 samples as 01 BD xxx, 02 BD xxx, 03 SD xxx etc to keep them sorted and have a ‘memory’ in my folder that I could drop alternative BDs, SDs etc in if I wanted to alter the chain in future

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