Decent Sampler - Ryan Noakes Composer

I was introduced to a wonderful sample player, much akin to the Kontakt Player, called the DecentSampler, created by David Hilowitz. (you should really click both those links and check out the player and his YouTube channel) It is a FREE player, and included on the website is a section with very well-written documentation on how to create an instrument/sample library for DecentSampler. So, since I’m that kind of nerd, I set about to start learning the ins and outs of coding a DecentSampler patch. I’ve been having a lot of fun coming up with ideas of sounds I want to create for the DecentSampler – it’s been very reminiscent of my time in university. Now, all I need is that most illusive commodity… time to record, edit, and process samples and then build a DS patch.

So, if you are interested in checking out the patches I’ve created, explore them below. If you find one that interests you, I wish you happy composing with it!

Raindrops

I took a recording of rain on my umbrella, ran it through an aggressive EQ to isolate specific notes, and created a pad instrument from the results. This instrument has controls for the length of the attack and release of each note, plus controls the settings of reverb level, room size, and damping settings.

Djembe Duet

I recorded 6 different types of drum hits with 2 velocity layers and 4 round robins in each velocity layer for each drum hit on my two djembes. I felt that the thing to do was to keep this instrument pretty simple, so the only extra thing I included is a knob to control the wet/dry mix of a convolution reverb, which can be controlled via the mod wheel.

Plucked String Pads

A Synth Pad instrument with the initial sound samples coming from three plucked string instruments: An electric guitar, an acoustic guitar, and a Celtic harp. Each instrument has a Straight Tone (the root note doubled both 1 and 2 octaves above), Power Chord (expanding on the 3 octaves of the Straight Tone by adding in the 5th above the 1st and 2nd octave for a big Power Chord), and Sus Chord (root-5th-2nd-4th-root to create a nice 2/4 Sus Chord) option, and there are controls for the Attack and Release, plus a low pass and high pass filter to shape the sound.