The challenge: Ten random samples. One epic beat.
Today, beloved beatmaker Larry Ohh sets a course to warp, stretch, manipulate, and bend ten different samples into one harmonious beat. Can he do it? Let’s go behind the scenes for a snippet of how you can manipulate and have fun with random samples.
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Now, let’s see what Larry can do with a few of these.
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The Samples
- Airport
- Astral Glide
- Choir
- Dolphin
- Ferrari
- Guitar Shred
- Melodies
- Metal Factory
- Please Mind The Gap
- UFO
Airport
We’re gonna trim the length right at the last little peak and pitch it up a full octave. Then we’ll add a little reverb and delay.
There’s a short little chord progression Larry came up with too with this sample. He also added some Chorus to make it wider and a little more “stereo.” He also used Effectrix and selected Vinyl for about every other step. It’s very faint though, with the Mix dial at about 54%. It adds a little bit of pitch-warping too. He then finished it off with a Limiter so that the volume isn’t peaking too much and sounds flatter.
At the end of the 8th bar and the 16th bar, he duplicated the loop and made the chord progression more transitional. He took the first half of the chord progression and then repeated it to give the effect that it’s resolving. Throw in an extra note at the end if you feel like.
Astral Glide
Larry will use this sample as more of a background/space filler but pitched down into the proper key about 200 cents so that it matches the key of the chord progression. He also threw on the Fruity PanOMatic. This will slowly pan the sound from left to right automatically.
EQ was used to clear out some of the low end and then boosted to around 1100 Hz.
Dolphin
First, we changed the length so it’s just two squeaks (or whatever you wanna call them), pitched it down a full octave, and then pitched it down another full octave on the Range. This is the same technique we used on the Melodies sample by the way.
We also used Effectrix and chose a random preset (Bassline Basher). With EQ, we cut out some of the high-end info, and the end result has a super nice groove to it.
Melodies
For this one, we wanted to do something a little different.
First, it’s pitched up 300 cents to get it in the same key but also pitched down a full octave. In order to achieve this without leaving the sampler, turn on Stretch mode, turn the Range to 12, and then adjust the pitch dial all the way down to get it down a full octave, but after you’ve already pitched it up to the correct key that the rest of the track is in.
Then you reverse it and apply a heavy EQ to get rid of a lot of low end, plus a few highs too. The level is also down super low, and then it’s stereo-separated. It’s actually barely noticeable but adds a very nice element to the track.