MIDI Keyboard

[the]

OK as you have probably gathered I'm shit at describing things so bear with me. There was a show Bill Bailey did where he got someone in the audience to make a noise into a mic then he used that as a keyboard sound so when he was playing the keys it was the same sample being played pitched up or down. Is there a plug in that does this kind of thing, assign a sample to one of the keys and then have it pitched up or down when you play the other keys??

That's basically what a sampler does. Most DAWs (the studio software you would use for creating music) have a sampler instrument available - usually where you would take a sound file that you'd recorded, and the load it into the sampler instrument for playing back (including up and down the chromatic scale, if desired).

But that said, yes, I'd assume that there were also plenty of plugins that function as a sampler instrument in their own right. Search for "free sampler plugin". Just be aware that it's probable that the DAW you're poised to use the plugin within has a sampler instrument available in it already.

I've you're looking to record the sample directly into the software and then play it back, many DAWs will do this too (usually where you'd record your sample as a short audio track, but then drag that audio clip into an adjacent sampler instrument for use as a sampled sound).

[BeardFaceMan]

Thats what I've been doing with various samples, I can load them all up and assign them to the pads and keys, no problem. I just dont know how to assign one sample and have it play at a different scale. Recording the sample isn't important, I was just using that Bill Bailey as an example as I'm not very good at explaining things. Especially when I dont know what I'm talking about.

[the]

Thats what I've been doing with various samples, I can load them all up and assign them to the pads and keys, no problem. I just dont know how to assign one sample and have it play at a different scale. Recording the sample isn't important, I was just using that Bill Bailey as an example as I'm not very good at explaining things. Especially when I dont know what I'm talking about.

It might be easier to get to the root of the problem if you say which software you're using, but I suspect we're just talking about key zones here.

When you bring samples into a sampler, you can assign separate samples to different keys or ranges of keys (which is used for multisampling-based instruments). So if you want just one sample to be played over the whole keyboard range, you have to set the key zone for that sample to cover the whole of the keyboard (or the majority of it). Then the sample should play chromatically throughout that range of keys (unless it's set to some weird mode that prohibits the sample playback from scaling according the the key being played).

[NoSleep]

Being able to play one sample up and down the keyboard tends to be the default if you load just the single sample into the player; this is the case in Logic's EXS24 sample player, for example.

[BeardFaceMan]

I'm using Mixcraft which has something called an Omni Sampler, this is what I've been using to assign samples to individual keys and pads. Turns out its got something called Alpha Sampler too, which is where you load one sample and the keys play it at different pitches. So there were 2 different sampler programs with the DAW I'm using and I was only using the mutli sample one, not the single sample one. Doh. Cheers guys.