by
Jason Hughes
The following is the method I used to set up the Go Fish Music Marching Samples with a GigaSampler for use with Finale. It is by no means perfect and I’m sure there may be a better way but this worked for me and that was enough. If you know of a better way then please email me at hughej3@auburn.edu or contact Go Fish Music and let me/us know.
A few things you should
know
· In order to get Finale to use the samples at playback time. Finale AND GigaSampler must both be running. This is because what you are doing is just diverting the midi notes that are activated by Finale into GigaSampler for playback. The GigaSampler is a software sampler.
· If your computer is slower or low on memory then you may experience some undesirable effects during playback. This is because as compared to just playing horns which may have a dozen or two notes a minute, Finale and GigaSampler are processing probably hundreds of notes minute when playing marching percussion music. All of those rolls and flams can add quickly! So slower/low memory machines may experience trouble keeping up. One thing that I’ve found to help quite a bit is using some sort of memory managing program. You can find some freeware and shareware versions online. Before playing back, get the memory manager to free up any memory that may be occupied where it is not needed. Also, try keeping any other program usage at this time to minimum.
· You will also need some sort of wave editor (such as cool edit 2000) or something that can rip sounds from the Go Fish Music CD and convert them to wav files. More on this in the next section.
Setting up
1. First off, you need to rip the samples from the CD since they come in .cda format and we need them in .wav format. Cool Edit 2000 will allow you to do this. A demo version of Cool Edit 2000 is available online (just do a search for it) and that will get the job done for you. Many other programs will work fine too. Most are easy to use in terms of ripping sounds so reading the help files included with them and toying with them a bit should do the trick.
2. I suggest putting all of your newly created .wav sounds into one folder (giving them their own folder is also suggested) so you know where to find them later on.
3. Open up GigaSampler. What we will be doing here is creating a new instrument file that you can later load when needed.
4. Click on the button titled “Patch Editor” and then select “New Instrument” from the pull-down menu that appears. A new program called the “Instrument Editor” will start. Begin a new file by either clicking on the generic ‘new file’ button or go to “File – New”.
5. First we have to load in the samples. You will notice two windows on the left side. Take a look at the bottom one on the left. In the window somewhere do a right click then select “Import Directory”. In the window that pops up, navigate to the folder where your samples are stored. Select that folder then click “ok”. Your folder along with all of your samples will appear in the window.
6. Now we create the instrument banks. I created four separate banks for the sections in the battery (Snares, Tenors, Bass Drums, Cymbals). Click on the button up top that looks like a little horn. A window will appear with numerous fields to fill in. In the “Name” field, type in a name for the first bank. Let’s start with the snare section first. Name it “Snares, “Hackers”, or (if you’re a tenor player like me) “Whiny bunch of……….”. You get the idea.
7. Now put a check in the box named “Drum”. This is important because it will allow you to place the drum sound anywhere on the keyboard and it will still play its original pitch.
8. In the “Bank” field type in a number one (1) since this is the first drum bank.
9. In the “Patch” field type in a number one (1) as well. You don’t need to bother with anything else so you can now select “ok” for this window.
10. Now you will see on the top left window a directory named “Drum Bank 1” with a subdirectory named “Snares”, “Hackers”, or whatever you named it. Make sure that instrument is highlighted then take a look at the window to the right that contains the keyboard.
11. Here is where the actual mapping to the notes occurs. PAY ATTENTION to where you map the samples. What I did was to just write down the sample name and the note it went to (Snare Section- C4, Snare Section Shot- D4, etc).
12. Another thing to remember is to make sure every sample has its own unique note that is not used by ANY other sample (even if its for another section).
13. Pick any note you want to begin at by right clicking on it and selecting “New Region”. I chose C4 but you can pick any note just as long as you know where everything is.
14. Now go into your samples list on the bottom left window, click and drag one of the snare samples in to the box the says “velocity map”. If there is another sample listed in there don’t worry, it will just be overwritten when you place this sample. It doesn’t matter what sample you choose as long as it’s in the section you are working on and you know what is going where. I suggest writing your selections down as you go along.
15. Do the same thing for the rest of the snare samples making sure they all have notes and you know where they are.
16. Go back to step 6 and repeat for the other sections. BUT this time, in the “Bank” field type in the number 2, 3, or 4 depending on which drum bank you are working on next. The “patch” field will always be 1 though.
17. After everything is mapped, save your work. I suggest saving it in the same folder as the samples. You may close the instrument editor.
18. Under the “Available Instruments” section the path containing your sample folder and .gig file should be listed. Click on the box next to that and then on the box next to the name of the instrument file. Your four sections should appear.
19. Click and drag each section up to its own channel keeping track of which section is in which channel.
Using Finale
I will only explain how to get Finale and GigaSampler to interact because there is already a tutorial available here on the Go Fish Music site on how to set the sounds up in Finale.
1. Start Finale.
2. Under the “MIDI” pull-down, select “MIDI Setup”.
3. In the “MIDI Out” drop-down, select “Endless Wave/GigaSampler”.
4. Make sure each instrument you create in Finale is the set to the same channel as it is in GigaSampler (Snares in Finale on channel 1 since Snares in GigaSampler are on channel 1).
5. Switch over to GigaSampler. You may see a little circular group of stars spinning atop a keyboard. If you see that then click on it to make it stop.
6. In GigaSampler, you can change the buffer size if you get broken audio. This is another method in addition to freeing up memory. The buffer control can be accessed by clicking on the “Config” button and the selecting the “Capture” tab.
I hope this has helped those of you who have been asking how to do this. If anything in this tutorial is found to be incorrect or such then hopefully I will correct it in a timely fashion. Have fun.