RESAMPLING: What is it ?, what use is it ?, and how's it done ?.

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This page has no connection with Yamaha, Keyfax, or motifator.com.
Many of the links here will take you to an explanation within this page, press the back button to go back where you were.

I realise that this webpage is rather large,very detailed, and perhaps confusing to navigate... if enough people tell me what problems they find, I may improve it.

(Forget the explanation...cut to the chase!)
All the information here is offered in good faith : it works on my Motif 6.
But as always...backup/Store your precious data before trying anything new.
Although the title says re-sampling...much of what follows applies to sampling via the AD inputs too.

  • What is resampling?...
     Literally.....sampling something that's already been sampled.
    With regard to the Motif....resampling means sampling the Motif's own sounds...
    Or a sound you sampled, or loaded.
    You can sample the Voices,Performances,Songs,Patterns,Arpeggios.... (almost) anything : with or without the effects.
    If Motif can play it....you can resample it.... (actually, you can't resample a pattern chain without converting it to a song)

  • What use is it?...
    You might resample a riff you like....then be able to replay it just by pressing one key.
    Or maybe you like a particular drum hit, with loads of reverb..., but there's not enough effects left for the other tracks in a Song (are there ever enough?).
    You could resample the hit with the reverb, thus freeing up the fx for another track, or for an overall effect to suit the mix.....That way you get your heavy drum reverb and you can use the effect "unit" for something else.

    You want a snare sound with chorus, reverb, amp simulator, ring modulator and compressor?.( Huh?)
    No problem!
    Resample the sound with the chorus, reverb, and simulator...then resample again with the ring mod. + compressor.
    Five fx....but you don't need any of the Motif's fx "units" to play it back.

    Or you run out of polyphony in a Song/Pattern?...just resample the part that's causing the problem.
    How ever many polyphony slots are used originally...only two are needed once it's resampled. (just one if you sample in mono).

    There are many other uses for resampling...too many to describe here.

  • What's the downside?...

    Flexibility.

    Once you've resampled something, it's fairly "fixed".
    If you resample a piano solo or a sequenced drum loop, you can't go back and alter the "feel" by using Motif's "Grid Groove" function, or quantising, for example.
    If you decide that the compressor on the resampled drums was a poor idea....too bad!.
    You'll have to resample again.

  • For that reason, if you resample to save polyphony...it's not necessarily a good idea to resample the busy, note-hungry track that seems to be the problem.
    Sure, you'll free up a lot of polyphony "slots", but do you need them all?. Sometimes resampling a different track will create enough spare polyphony, and retain the flexibility of midi for the busy track.

    You may have seen comments on the Motiforum along the lines of
    "....the polyphony's no problem, because it's got resampling...."
    or "...only one voice can have insert fx in song mode, but no problem...it's got resampling..."

  • How exactly does that work?...

    Hopefully....you'll find out below.

    The best way to describe the process of resampling on the Motif is probably to run through an example where you'll resample a section of one track of a song...you can then adapt the example to your own work.
    Use one of the demo songs that come inside Motif (you'll find out how to load them later ).
    You only need the stock 4MB memory to work the example

    This is just my way of working....find out as many different ways as possible, and use what you're comfortable with.

    You need to be familiar with Motif's File Loading/Saving pages,
    know how to mute tracks in a Song (manual p.179-181), read about Mixing Mode on p. 205-214 and Sampling on pages 58-62 and 234-248.
    Also, don't expect absolutely every button press to be covered here.....(although most of them are!)

    On paper...it might seem a long, complicated process, but it really isn't.It looks worse than it is, because I've tried to explain a lot of other things on the way.
    Be patient, you'll get perfect results. You might learn more about Mix settings and event editing too.

    First, a summary of each stage,then the step by step details....

  • Click here for a checklist to help when resampling your own work.

Only steps 3 to 8 are needed for your own work, 1, 2 and 9 are just for loading the demo songs etc.

The Details....

In this example, you've resampled measures 17-28 of Track 5, and used sample+note to play the sample as a "Samplevoice" (p.59), on Track 6.

You can resample one or all of your own sequencer tracks...just adjust the track number(s) to adapt the example to your own work.

  • Click here for a checklist to help when resampling your own work.

  • So why sample without system fx?

    Flexibility again......
    If you later change the reverb or chorus type, or levels... the resampled part might sound out of place because the fx were sampled with it.
    This way, you still have the ability to change the system fx type and levels for the part.

    Remember that if a track has it's dry level set very low or at zero (Mix-edit-track-Output(F2)-Efsend(SF2)....There will be no output when System fx is bypassed.
    To retain fx flexibility, set dry level to 127 for resampling.

  • So why sample with flat eq?

    Mix eq cannot be bypassed....if the eq was not reset for resampling....the sample would be eq'd twice.
    Once when you resample....and again when you play it back.

    Useful tips:

  • Clearing your own tracks.

    If you wanted to clear a track in your own work, do the following...

  • Press Song-Job-Track(F5)-Clear Track(04)...see manual p.202-203
    and clear the track number you want empty.
  • Song Scenes...
    Song Scenes recall all the Mixing parameter settings controllable from the knobs and sliders.
    That includes fx send levels. In the example, you need to alter fx sends for one track, so if you recall a Scene that was stored before the alterations...you'll recall the wrong fx sends too!.
    If you do use song scenes, you need to set/store them again after any mix edits that can be controlled by the knobs or sliders.

  • Motif stops sampling at the start of the punch end measure, set in sampling-standby, so add 1 measure to any figure you come up with.
  • The RecGain setting and the input level/clipping display.
    RecGain sets the recording gain when resampling...

    When you resample your own work, you may notice the clipping indicators (little x's at the end of the level meter) come on.
    If they do...RecGain is probably too high. (If they come on only very,very briefly....that's sometimes OK.)

    Actually it's possible to play the Song in "standby" mode, and adjust the RecGain according to the level display before sampling....or you could return to Song,Mixing and tweak the track output level there....
    But to make the sequencer play in "standby".... TriggerMode has to be set to "manual" or "level"....then reset to "meas" when RecGain is set correctly.

    You can also "audition" the sampling rates in the same way...what you hear will be the resampled output

  • If you make a mistake...
    and need to re-record a sample, and you specify the same Keybank.... Motif will not delete the old one.
    You'll have two (or more) samples on the same Keybank, but only one of them, (sometimes two, if one is mono),will sound.
    The original(s) will still be taking up memory, and sometimes causing problems when editing or using Jobs.

    Either use another (empty) Keybank,and delete the original later...or delete the original Keybank first using Sampling-Job-Keybank(F1)Delete(02).

    Also remember that if you record samples as "sample+note"...Motif will put a note event on the track each time you record....so if you make a mistake, and want to delete the samples as suggested... the note events will still be there, and need to be edited out.

    If you want to delete all the samples assigned to a track, and the note events... try the Clear Track job (manual page 202-203).

  • More about the Sampling structure...
    Remind yourself about the sampling structure first by reading manual pages 58-59.
    To which I would add the following...

  • A SampleVoice is a Waveform,assigned to a Song or Pattern, note that the only way to make a SampleVoice is to have Motif create one automatically, when recording or Loading samples.
    Once you have a SampleVoice, if you Copy or Move Keybanks into the Waveform that the SampleVoice uses,those samples can be played by the SampleVoice. You can also Load individual samples directly into the SampleVoice without overwriting the existing ones.

  • A Waveform is a group of one or more Keybanks. A Keybank is best thought of as a single sample (mono or stereo) mapped to a bank or range of keys, sometimes a single key.

  • When you sample from the Song or Pattern mode,to a midi track a new SampleVoice is created and assigned to the "Target" track you specify in the Sampling Destination settings(p.235).This will not delete existing midi events.

  • When you sample to a Target track that already has a SampleVoice assigned to it, Motif adds the new sample to the SampleVoice, using the single Keybank you specified in the Sampling Destination settings.(p.235)

  • Normalizing

    If you (re)sample+note several sections of the same sequence,it's often better not to normalize the samples.
    Normalizing increases the level of each sample to maximum (they'll all be at the same volume), so you might have to manually edit the velocity of each note produced, to restore the volume balance between samples.

  • Try to always name your waveforms.
    It makes keeping track of them much less trouble, and the wave name will show up in the Mixing-part-voice display, which makes telling the SampleVoices apart nice and easy.

  • Increasing note velocity.
    If you've resampled many times to the same track, or have used slice/seq, you'll have a lot of separate samples, each with their own midi note. If you've already got track level at maximum, you have to edit the velocity of each note event if you want more volume, right?.

    Well no...VelSensOfst Mix-edit-track-Voice(F1)-Other(SF5) lets you adjust the effective velocity of all notes in a track. And you can do it while the sequencer plays.

    Pages 210 and 171 of the manual explain.

  • If you stop, or rewind a sequence; pan,modulation, pitchbend etc could be stuck "on".
    Look again at the events in track 5 of the example in step 3 (set the view filter to ALL).
    Notice all the modwheel events, they start at measure 18, after the first three note events, so if you play the sequence up to measure 26, then rewind to 17...the modwheel will be "stuck" at 085 until the first modwheel event occurs.
    The same thing could ( and does...) happen with the pitchbend and channel AT events in that track.

    If you encounter this problem in your own work, my suggestion is to place a "reset all controllers" event at the start of any track that uses controllers.
    This is done by inserting an event for controller no.121.
    (use event edit to look at some of the tracks in Mondomotif).

    Pitchbend and aftertouch can be dealt with separately,by inserting an event for each, with a value of zero.

    Then set SongEventChase in Utility,seq,other to "PC+PB+Ctrl".(program changes,pitchbend,controllers).

    Now...if you play a sequence from say, measure 17, Motif will look through the event list for every track to find out what values the PC,PB and controllers would have reached, had the sequence been played from the start...and set each track's parameters to those values. It does this before playing the sequence, so everything sounds just as it should at that measure.
    Clever stuff...although if your tracks have a lot of PB and controllers, you might get a delay between pressing play, and the sequence starting to play. But you can turn off SongEventChase at any time.

  • If you have program changes in a track that you want to resample, they will not work while the sequencer is playing in Sampling mode.
    If you have created a Song by converting a Pattern Chain, there may be program changes, even though you didn't place them manually.
    See here for more details