Ableton/Live/UG/31 Instrument Reference/04 Drum Sampler
- Drum Sampler plays one-shot samples in Drum Racks, with start and length, an AHD amplitude envelope, pitch, a filter, modulation and nine playback effects.
- Load a sample by double-clicking it in the browser or dropping it on the waveform.
- Sample Start and Sample Length — as percentages of the sample;
Shift-drag Start for fine steps and a zoomed view. - Sample Gain — -70 to 24 dB.
- Attack, Hold, Decay — the envelope. Hold can be inf to play the whole sample, and is unused in Gate mode.
- Envelope Mode — Trigger plays through the Hold time after note-off; Gate fades by the Decay time at note-off.
- Transpose ±48 semitones and Detune ±50 cents.
- Hovering the waveform shows Swap to Next/Previous Similar Sample and the hot-swap button. Right-click for Show Similar Files, Return to Reference and Save as Similarity Reference. The title bar's hot-swap button replaces the whole instrument. Shortcuts: Ableton/Live/UG/42 Keyboard Shortcuts/23 Similar Sample Swapping.
- One effect at a time, turned on with the Playback Effect toggle and picked from a menu. Each has two parameters, on knobs or an X/Y pad (vertical first, horizontal second).
- Stretch — changes length without pitch, with grainy lo-fi artifacts; Factor and Grain Size.
- Loop — repeats part of the sample; Loop Offset and Loop Length.
- Pitch Env — pitch sweep; Amount ±100% and Decay back to base pitch.
- Punch — fixed-attack ducking that brings out the transient; Amount and Release.
- 8-Bit — filtering plus bit and sample-rate reduction; Sample Rate and the filter's Decay Time.
- FM — a sine modulates pitch; Amount and Frequency.
- Ring Mod — Amount and Frequency; low frequencies give tremolo, high ones the usual ring-mod artifacts.
- Sub Osc — a 30–120 Hz sub layer on the device's envelope; Amount and Frequency.
- Noise — a noise layer on the device's envelope; Amount and Color.
- Time and frequency controls in most effects follow the played note and global pitch. FM and Ring Mod modulation decays with the global Decay, so short decays touch only the transient.
- Filter On and four types: 12 dB low-pass, 24 dB low-pass, 24 dB high-pass and peak. Low- and high-pass have Resonance and Frequency; peak has Gain and Frequency.
- Volume -36 to 36 dB, Pan, and Velocity to Volume.
- Modulation Source — Velocity or Slide (MPE), sent to one destination: Filter cutoff, Attack, Hold, Decay, or FX1 and FX2 (the current playback effect's two parameters), with a Modulation Amount.
- Enable Per-Note Pitch Bend — on by default.
- Envelope Follows Pitch — scales the envelope with pitch so it covers the same part of the sample when transposed.
- Drum Sampler > Simpler — swaps in Ableton/Instrument/Simpler, keeping start and length.
- In a Ableton/Instrument/Drum Rack, a pad's Save as Default Pad makes Drum Sampler load for every sample dropped on an empty pad.
