Why you need a sampler: Halion 2.

If you don't already own a sampler, or are thinking about getting one, then this article is for you. It's a practical guide to what you can do with a sampler, rather than another retelling of a spec.

Assuming you've already got a sequencer and a synth or three, I'll explain what a sampler offers, in fairly plain non-technical language (well, mostly).
I readily admit being heavily biased towards Halion 2, because besides owning a Halion, after 15 years as a user, I also trust Steinberg products.

For something as potentially complex as a sampler, you're completely in the hands of the software developer, and you have to trust them to get it right, to fix it when necessary, and to upgrade it in the future, and to ensure that it fits seamlessly with your existing sequencer setup.

What Can a Sampler Do For Me?

There are three main ways of using Halion 2 sampler:

A sampler lets you do things you cannot do with a synth or a rompler. And the sound quality is stunning. Importantly, a sampler doesn't tie you to a style the way a synth does.

A sampler is great at dance or trance, and yet equally great for orchestral arrangements, or acoustic folk combos. A sampler is the sounds you put into it. It's a platform for your sounds.

So what exactly can a sampler do ? ... Let's take a look at these applications in more detail.

Play Natural Acoustic Instruments, Synths or FX Sounds, or Loops.

A lot of people buy a sampler just to play natural acoustic instruments. Nothing else sounds comes close in this area except maybe a closed-system rompler, like SampleTank or Yellow Tools Culture.

Halion 2 offers 16 channel multitimbrality, 32 bit/96khz quality, up to 18 outs including 5.1, and 254 simultaneous voices. This means you can create quite a large setup, whether techno, orchestra, band, or any combo you choose, using up to 16 instruments, all from one Halion 2.

This is very convenient as you don't need to keep reloading fresh instances for each instrument. I wish all VSTIs were 16 part multitimbral. You can see how Halion lets you allocate instruments and tracks in the way you choose.

It's great to have this kind of choice and flexibility in the way you allocate your sounds. Halion 2 also comes with 4 cds worth of sample presets, produced by Wizoo for Steinberg.

These include guitars, basses, drums, synths, various keyboards, a high quality acoustic piano, 6 string bass, nylon guitar (nice one, this ... it sings) and acoustic drums and percussion, and some loops.

This is enough to start your sample collection off, but the truth is that samples are addictive and it won't be long before you want more. So it's best said now: A sampler is not the cheapest instrument to own. Once you've got one, expect to spend more on it as time goes by. You don't have to of course, but we all do.

You can get more samples in four ways:

Download Free Stuff.
There is a shed load of free stuff out there. Type "free audio samples" or similar in Google and see the pages stack up. You'll always have something new to do with your sampler, never get tired of it.

These are mostly loops or soundfont instruments, though there are some nice free giga and akai presets if you look around. All of these can easily be imported into Halion 2 for you to play, re-arrange or mangle to suit ... more on this later.

Budget Sample Packs.
Buy pocket money sample packs, like the Pro Sample series priced around $35 for a set of Halion multi-velocity instrument patches such as Steel Pick guitar, Steel Fingered guitar and such. There are over 50 packs in the Pro Samples range, and often they're cut down versions of expensive high quality libraries from the likes of Yellow Tools.

Another example of Pro Samples is, say, a set of ripping blues guitar loops played by Skunk Baxter of Steely Dan. Outstanding value if you need authentic blues riffs. Or a Steinway Concert Piano or String Quartet, similarly priced cut downs from megabuck Giga libraries.

Wizoo's own budget range includes a stunning 126mb 3-way velocity Acoustic Bass at a ridiculous $15, or a 4-way velocity 12-string guitar at $5 etc. Or maybe a super smooth cello section for $15. The number of budget packs available is growing every month, they're very affordable, and often offer state of the art quality as standard.

Non-Halion Samples.
You can access the world of Soundfont, Giga, EXS24 and Akai samples with Halion import.

While soundfonts are often cheap or free (see www.hammersound.net) and provide access to lots of new and interesting sounds and versions of instruments, the Giga library gives you access to the finest quality (and usually the most expensive) samples ever, but without the hassle of having to own Gigasampler.

And Halion 2's Giga import works well, complete with all the clever keyboard triggering features that often distinguish these samples. For example, $200 gets you the acclaimed Garritan Lite Strings, complete with up and down bowing, triggered from the keyboard.

If you already own a rompler, like Sampletank, you can buy a low cost utility like Extreme Sample Converter for $25 from extranslator.com and export your ST presets into Halion and do more creative things with them.

Hal 2 comes with an Integrated Loop Editor (see below) with features like crossfade, loop and loop release, all of which allow you the precise control you need to fairly easily make world class instruments, using material ranging from your synth or guitar playing, to junkyard sounds you've collected. Anything goes.

 

Once your wav files are ready, take them into the Keyzone Editor for quick mapping of keyzones, samples, sample layers and velocity values, using drag n drop and automapping. You can see here a custom four way mapped drum kit, with high velocity hits for extra expression.

This approach works equally on, say, guitars. Last week I spruced up an existing acoustic guitar preset by importing a top layer of twangy hitting Taylor guitar to make a more expressive instrument. When I hit it loud it twangs, like when I play a real one.

Once you've mapped out your instrument it's ready to play. As you'd expect, there are a lot more advanced features which we'll come to shortly.

But for now, the choices for sample material are:

Hopefully you can see that owning a sampler is in many ways far more interesting than owning a synth.
Sure, synths are good, but most of them you can exhaust easily. With a sampler, material for new sounds or new ideas almost never runs out. Halion 2 can sound as different as you want, whenever you want. All it takes is a little imagination.

Using Existing Samples to Create New or Better Instruments

This is where Halion 2 can get really interesting. Why be satisfied with your existing samples and presets the way they are when there's so much else that you can do with them? Your existing samples are a treasure trove for you to do more with.

Here's some ideas:

Halion 2 uses a system of folders to achieve this. Folders let you adjust different sets of samples and parameters en masse. This does a lot of the work in bulk for you, and helps minimise fiddly editing.

There are three Halion Advanced Tutorials that come with this article if you want to learn more. (Back on the review page)The key is that there is virtually no limit to how creatively or complex you can reassemble your own patches, and have them all modulated by any set of controller information you want.

You can see the Controller Page let's you do anything from set a simple custom mod wheel vibrato to triggering extraordinary lfo or filter effects from a hardware controller pad.

On another Halion 2 page is Megatrig which let's you take things even further, by triggering more complex events from the keyboard, or controller. You can take any combinations of wavs or presets and arrange them so that any sound can be triggered in precisely the way that you specify.

Halion 2 has the equivalent of a powerful outboard synth built-in. Filters galore including Waldorf filters, overdrive, fatness, lfo sync to filter and amp envelopes, a variety of curves, in fact what you'd expect from a fairly high spec synth.

Looking above, you can see how complex filter or amp curves can be built up using the mouse to drag the envelopes, and all synced to the beat. Talking of syncing to the beat, then you can also use the Step Envelope, which gives you even more sync options.

Now here's the good bit.

Unlike a synth, which is dependent on the sound that comes out of the oscillators (usually saw, square and the usual suspects), the sound source for your Halion synth is your samples, which can be anything you like, anything you can legally get your hands on.

This is as close to freedom as the computer musician's going to get. And you can have a separate outboard synth for every key on the keyboard if you want. It's like somebody suddenly removed the ceiling from your imagination.

And ... all this information and creativity is saved with your song, or saved as a Halion .fxp file. It couldn't be simpler!

Think it, then design it.

Playing Live

Obviously, sample instruments can be played live on stage. Everything can be preloaded and triggered the way you want. You can safely map your gig out in advance. But there's so much more to playing live than simply playing a high quality instrument.

What about taking a bunch of loops and mapping them across the keyboard using the Keyboard Editor (this takes maybe 5 minutes). Then start hitting keys, and recording while you jam. Or maybe jam with a friend.

Imagine: Kick off with a good drum loop then fly in some lead guitar or mutated synth loops, then bring in more loops. You've got ten fingers and 88 keys to play with. You can get a lot of song ideas out of this live jamming technique.

Or you could create a live playing set. Say you have a lead instrument split over the top half of the keyboard, and a set of custom keymapped loops on the other half, all loaded as one preset. Very cool.

You could go to wild extremes, say:

A 5 way velocity preset, with a different instrument on each velocity level, all with smooth crossfades between the levels, with the keyboard split to play loops on one of the lower octaves. And all could be triggered from the keyboard to instantly switch to another completely different sample set.

Or:

Imagine playing a loop with one hand, and playing a lead instrument with the other. And at the touch of a hot key or mod wheel, a second lead instrument comes in, together with a fresh loop. Playing live like this is so much more than any synth could ever do.

You Still Haven't Got a Sampler?

Let's look again at the reasons why you will soon need one.

The beauty of Halion 2 is that it lets you do all these things. And it's from Steinberg. So the support forums, upgrades and all the things you'll need in the future will always be there.

Why wait. It's time to buy a sampler.

For a full spec listing go to Steinberg.net.

Review brought to you by:
Member: Kevin Rossiter.
www: TraXmusic.Org & rossiterandco.com.

 

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