Is there a way to create custom samples?

Hi Guys,

I’m still playing around and keep on learning new stuff on Renoise by just doing stuff. But i just hate to be dependent on samples from other people, and it would be awesome to be able to create my custom samples.

Is there a program allowing someone to create their own samples based on a standard preset or something, so for example you get a really basic drum, and you can re-build this drum to fit your needs, then save it as a .wav and use it in Renoise.

I’ve been searching the forum but could not really find anything that i understand yet, i’ve found stuff like compressors, vst’s, these are new terms for me and im not even sure this has anything to do with custom samples :P

Hope someone wants to help me with my beginner questions :D

Thanks in advance!

Either draw your own samples in Renoises sample editor using draw and combining loop settings with dsp/vst’s, tweaking instrument envelopes in the instrument setting or get some tools that generate wave shapes and go from there.

Tools like:

For l33t math synthesis get this tool: Overtune | Renoise

and check out Cas’s posts:

Drawing simple waveforms is very easy in Renoise.

  1. Start renoise.
  2. Click “sample editor” tab at the bottom right
  3. Click the “draw” button near the top, then click again in the center area
  4. Confirm “create new sample” (defaults should be ok) then click “process”
  5. Have fun with the mouse =)
  6. While doing so, you can hear the results by playing notes either on a midi instrument, or the computer keyboard
  7. Duplicate, copy, paste, adjust, retune, …go wild!! :D

That sounds awesome, thanks a lot for your information! I’ll go ahead and try this tonight!

@ Djeroek

Great tools, i’ll try these tonight also!

Oh, what i described above, don’t get discouraged if a single hand-drawn chipsample doesn’t sound very interesting. The real fun starts when you layer them, add filtering & other effects, and so on… check out the instrument “Super Saw Pad” that comes with Renoise for an example of how to make a really nice synth sound with just… i think 5 or 6 overlapping chipped sawtooth waveforms =) (check the Sample Keyzones tab)

A “chip sample” is a typically small sample with a very short loop that repeats many times per second, producing the sound with the waveform in the loop. When you create a sample with the drawing feature i mentioned above, it automatically creates a chip sample with the whole sample looped.

They’re called “chip samples” because such very small and memory-efficient sounds were typically done on sound chips back in the day. In a more “serious” music/sound production context, they can be regarded as basic building blocks of a synth sound, kind of like an oscillator on old analog equipment.

Hmm, are these hand drawn waveforms always “in tune”, or does one have to take care which pitch they actually generate?

have you tried it? Default pretty much corresponds to in tune.

Do you mean the default sample length 168? I expermented around as you
suggested, it matches C-4 a bit, but it needs alot of fine tuning. After
digging around in the forum I found out that a sample length of 100 with a
finetuning of +16 is pretty much an A-4.

Yes, VST instruments. There are plenty of VST websites to download free VST and VSTi from, such as www.kvraudio.com/

VST instruments are many things like synthesizers, samplers, drum machines, etc. VST are aslo FX/DSP. You can download a VST, load it into Renoise and then edit your sound from presets/patches or from the default patch. You won’t be able to save the sound into a wav file at the press of a button but there is another way. When you make the sound you want, you can add some notes to a pattern then right-click and choose Pattern then Render to Sample to make a wav. You can use the Render function explained at this link to turn your patch into a Renoise instrument you can edit like samples and also save to wav files:
http://tutorials.renoise.com/wiki/Render_or_Freeze_Plugin_Instruments_to_Samples

I’m not so good at explaining the Renoise method. I am also new to using Renoise but coming from other tracker software.

An old staple before were sound generator synthesizers like Orangator, Sim Synth, Seqgen, Stomper and others. They are all freeware and you can make your sounds from scratch or presets and then at the press of a button you could turn them into wav files for use in making music. Google those names, they’re pretty easy to find and download. Some are difficult to start using, but moving sliders and pressing things will help you understand just by hearing what you are doing. Have a look!

When you draw from the default length it is in tune only of you have one duty cycle (one time over the line, one time under.) If you draw more than one cycle each one must occupy equal space or you’ll have a form that’s out of tune or has funny overtones. Experiment, because it can be desirable sometimes.

I am new here so hi, :)

On this subject I am interested in knowing if strobe tuning might be a possibility for development.

VSTs like GTUNE are good for that

To make drum sounds, synth sounds, and other samples, Overtune is very apt, but really not for a novice user that does not have a background in math or programming, I think. Like Djeroek posted (thanks!), I have had some examples around the forum, also uploads in the form of demo songs where everything comes from Overtone samples - especially check the later ones I posted in the topic about drums (link and link and below). There’s also a lot of mad theory in that topic. Maybe a ‘getting started with Overtune’ short how-to makes appearance here on the forum shortly. But even though I made Overtune, I started experimenting first with ReSynth and CustomWave. Drawing waveforms can be a lot of fun, too. For example try and make a song with only drawn waveforms :D (not all have to be 168 in length of course, the envelopes don’t have enough flex to make a single cycle wf into a good sounding kickdrum)

Check out this video.

fairlight sample tuning.

This is the kind of tuning procedure I was talking about.

Cool vid… That guy is trippy as all

Hmm, somehow the fundamental frequency only depends on the length of the sample as it seems. of course the octave and overtones are changed
by drawing crazy waveforms, but the fundamental seems to stay. Weird…

Somehow I think you guys are talking about techniques way beyond what the OP was asking about :P

It sounds like he’s asking about how to record samples from VSTs and other sources. Custom doesn’t have to mean drawn in the sample editor, and I seriously doubt this is what he meant. He’s looking for samples that aren’t already sampled by somebody else.

Interesting stuff you’re talking about, though.

Has nobody yet mentioned you need the registered version, not the demo, to record samples into Renoise? I think (but can’t test) that this includes the plug-in grabber. Hand-drawn ones you can do with the demo. I think the tools mentioned work similar to drawing (direct manipulation of sample data, no rendering) and so are also possible with the demo.

Most custom samples are resamples of something else taken through a chain of FX, so, yeah, you definitely can make drums sound more big/interesting/real/artificial/whatever with Renoise FX!

Also it’s partly true what kazakore said; if you have the demo version of Renoise you can record samples. However I’m not sure if you can resample (that is, select, right click, Selection=>Render to Sample). What you can basically do with any sample (say one shot kickdrum) is try it out at different pitches first by setting Keyb. Octave to 3, then pressing from zxcv to uiop… Then try the same thing with reverb on it, later you learn to work distortion (handle with care and most of the time very low ‘wet’ signal), filtering, then the shelve filter settings and the different types (4Pole, Moog etc), Ringmod fun, the mpReverb, then try all the other standard FX on different settings. Cabinet Simulator works magic on many types of sound, but learn to recognize it’s sound before you use it on everything to make it sound “cool” ;).

So anyway, do you want to sample from records / internet sample packs and stuff and go from there or are you looking to make drums out of thin air? :)
Just asking because that’s my specialty.