Friday Tip of the Week - Trolling for Slices

So there you are, with your shiny new Impact XT virtual instrument. You want to populate the pads with some fun drum sounds, and although you like the included kits, you're itching to get creative and come up with some kits of your own. Fortunately, it's easy to use Audioloops to populate your Impact XT with a custom selection of drum sounds.

Open the Browser, and under Loops, look for files with the .audioloop suffix. The reason why .audioloop files stretch elegantly is because the loop is cut into slices, with each slice representing an individual block of sound-kick, snare, clap, kick and cymbal hitting at the same time, snare and high-hat hitting at the same time whatever.

When you expand an .audioloop, you'll see each slice listed individually. Some have only one or two slices, but others-for example, the Combo Beat loops under Electronic > Drums > Loop (Fig. 1)-are rich sources of slices.

Figure 1: The Browser's Loop tab is loaded with slices, just waiting to be used with Impact XT to create custom kits.

Next, open up Impact XT. To audition the slices, toward the bottom of the browser turn off the loop and metronome options, select a slice, and then click on the Play > button. Click on various slices and when you hear something you like, drag it over to an Impact XT pad (Fig. 2). You won't have to click the Play button again to audition slices until after you drag a slice over.

Figure 2: Drag slices over to Impact XT pads.

The real fun begins when you start to use Impact XT's sound-shaping options. For example in Figure 2, one of the kick slices has been dropped in pitch, truncated, filtered, and given a new Amp decay setting to sound more like an explosion. Note that the pad's name will be the same as the .audioloop, so if you're using multiple slices from the same .audioloop, rename the pad to avoid confusion (right-click on the pad and choose Rename).

And remember, you're not limited to dragging over slices from the Browser-you can split any file in the Edit window at the Bend markers, and drop those slices into Impact XT.

Sure, Impact XT comes with a lot of preset, ready-to-go kits when you just want to load something and start grooving. But you might be surprised how doing a little mixing and matching with the Browser slices can create something new and different-and each new pad sound is only a click + drag away.

LINK:	http://blog.presonus.com/index.php/2018/08/31/friday-tip-week-trolling...
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