ReCycle Operation Manual
DAW | Rack Plugin | Reason+ Rack Extensions
Example Applications
All. Although ReCycle does a very intelligent analysis of the sample to find the individual “hits” or “sounds” in it, the sample has to meet some basic criteria to enable the automatic algorithm to find all the individual sounds:
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Each sound in the sample must have some kind of perceivable attack. You will for example run into problems with legato playing on a flute.
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The sample must be adequately recorded. Weak sounds recorded at very low volumes might not get all the slices they should.
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The program might have problems with sounds drowned in smearing effects, like extremely thick chorus or short repeating delays.
Please remember that you always have the possibility to add slices “manually”.
#Using Normalize and Re-Analyze to increase “readability”
If you have a loop that was very poorly recorded, you might be able to get a better recognition by normalizing it and then applying Re-Analyze (see “Re-Analyze”).
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You should first check if the file contains DC offset (see “Remove DC”) and if so, remove it. The presence of DC offset can negatively affect both the Normalize function and Re-Analyze.
1.
Select “Normalize” from the Process menu.
A dialog appears asking if you would like to process the whole file or each slice (see “Normalize”).
2.
Select “Whole File”
The file is now normalized.
3.
Select Re-Analyze from the Process menu.
4.
Raise Sensitivity to check if the recognition got better.
1.
Open the sample in ReCycle.
2.
Raise the Sensitivity Slider until a lot of slices appear.
3.
Activate playback and move the loop points until you find a good loop.
4.
Work on the slices with the Mute and Lock tools until you have one slice per sound in the loop.
It is important that no slice plays two consecutive sounds, so audition them one at a time to check.
5.
Set the Time Signature and length (Bars/Beats) to whatever the length of the loop.
The Tempo is calculated.
6.
Click the Preview Toggle button to enter Preview mode.
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The Stretch factor is by default set to 40%.
Use the Tempo knob to check how the loop plays back at different tempi and change the Stretch setting according to how much you want to lower the tempo.
From here you have two ways to go, depending on what you would like to do with the loop:
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You could export the file in another format using the Export dialog.
See next page.
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You could save the file as a REX2 file.
See “Saving ReCycle Documents”.
In case of it being exported as a SoundFont Bank file, you proceed as follows:
7.
Use a SoundFont editor or bank manager program to load the SoundFont file into the RAM of your audio card.
See the documentation of the program for details.
8.
Open the generated MIDI file in a sequencer, and set it to play back to the MIDI synthesizer on the card, using your generated SoundFont Bank as sound source.
Try vary­ing the tempo.
In the previous example, the result was a number of slices - in a sampler keymap or contained in a REX2 file. However, if you plan to use the file in an application that only reads regular Wave and AIFF files, you want to export your loop as one file, in any specific tempo or pitch that you decide. Proceed as follows:
1.
Follow steps 1 to 6 in the previous example.
2.
Enter the tempo, and/or the pitch that you wish the file to play back in (you can also add additional processing if you like).
If you have lowered the tempo by a large amount, check (listen for “gaps” between the slices) if you have to raise the stretch amount.
3.
Activate “Export as One Sample” on the Process menu.
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Export the file in the format of your choice using the Export File dialog - see “Exporting Files”.
The result is a single file that plays in the tempo and pitch specified by the Preview settings.
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Since samples exported from Reason always contain embedded tempo data that Reason can understand, Reason will automatically stretch the samples to the current sequencer tempo.
If your main goal is to edit the loop, rather than changing its tempo, you may take a slightly different approach compared with slicing for tempo changes:
1.
Set things up as in the previous example.
If you activate “Show Grid” on the View menu, finding exact positions becomes much easier.
2.
Work on the slices with the Mute and Lock tools until you have approximately one slice per eighth note, sixteenth note or whatever you need, depending on how detailed an edit you want to do.
If a slice plays more than one sound, please remember that you won’t be able to edit these two sounds independently. There are occasions when this will be perfectly OK though, for example when you just want to shift the order of the beats around in the loop.
3.
Proceed as from step 5 in the “Slicing for Tempo Changes” section.
4.
In the MIDI Sequencer, open the MIDI File for editing.
When you move slices around, make sure they keep their relative position to the beats, eighth notes etc., to maintain the integrity of the timing in the groove.
Even if you don’t want to cut up a loop in slices, you can still use ReCycle to send different sounds in the loop to different channels in the application that will reproduce the file outputs on your sampler to apply processing to only one drum in a loop for example. The example below assumes you only want to pick out one sound, but the same technique can of course be applied to separate as many sounds as you need.
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If you are planning to use your loops in Dr. Octo Rex in Reason you can silence individual slices there instead!
1.
Open the sample.
2.
Raise the Sensitivity until a lot of slices appear.
3.
Activate playback and move the loop points until you find a good loop.
4.
Set the Time Signature and length (Bars/Beats) to whatever the length of the loop.
The Tempo gets calculated.
5.
Click the Preview toggle button to enter Preview mode.
6.
Make sure “Silence Selected” and “Export as One Sample” are activated (ticked) on the Process menu.
7.
Work on the slices until they play one sound each when you click on them.
8.
Select all slice markers which play the same sound, for example the snare drum.
Play it back to check that all snares are silent.
9.
Either export the file in the format of your choice using the Export dialog or save the file.
The MIDI File you get will contain one event which plays the entire loop at the calculated tempo.
10.
With the selection still set up as before, select “Invert Selection” from the Edit menu.
Now all sounds that are not snares are selected.
11.
Save or Export the file again, but under another name.
12.
Set up the sequencer so that the two samples are played back at the same time, but over different channels.
They will together recreate the loop as it was, but the snare will be separated to its own output, which means that you have independent control over its volume, that you can process it separately etc.
If you think about it, you will realize that all ReCycle MIDI Files are actually timing maps of how the drums were played in the loop. Many sequencer programs have the ability to load MIDI Files and apply their timing to the sequenced parts. The terminology used is “Match Quantize” or “Groove”.
If you use a ReCycle MIDI File as a “groove template”, you can make your sequenced parts play back with the timing of the drum loop. For this, you could of course use the MIDI File you get when exporting. But, you can also create a timing file only, by exporting the file as a Standard MIDI File. Proceed as follows:
1.
Open the sample.
2.
Raise the Sensitivity Slider until a lot of slices appear.
3.
Activate “Show Grid” on the View menu and work on the slices with the Mute and Lock tools until you have one slice per eighth note or sixteenth note.
In many situations there will be no sound on a certain eighth or sixteenth note. There’s not much you can do about this. You can copy another MIDI note in the sequencer later, or insert a new one “by hand”. You can also add a slice manually, at any position.
4.
Set the Time Signature and length (Bars/Beats) to whatever the length of the loop.
The Tempo gets calculated.
5.
Make sure “Silence Selected” and “Export as One Sample” are not activated on the Process menu.
These items should not be ticked.
6.
Select Export from the File menu and save as a Standard MIDI File.
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If you use Reason Studios’ Reason, applying a groove to existing music is a piece of cake. Just Import the MIDI File (or open a REX2 file - you can simply use the “To Track” function to create MIDI data from the REX2 file) in Reason and select “Get User Groove” from the Edit menu.
This can be used to extract single sounds (snares, hi-hats etc.) from a loop or other recording. It can also be very useful if you have recorded more than one drum loop into a file and want to save each one as a separate file.
1.
Open the sample.
2.
Raise the Sensitivity Slider until the desired number of slices appears.
3.
Set “Bars” to any value but zero.
4.
Click the Preview Toggle button to enter Preview mode.
5.
Work on the slices with the Mute and Lock tools until you get the sounds you want when you audition.
In the case of the “multi-loop” file outlined above, this would mean one slice per loop.
6.
Set the Loop point to enclose the first and last sound you want from the audio file.
You can use “Silence Selected” to prevent certain slices from being exported if you wish.
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Also in the case of the multiple loop or Silence Selected scenario, you could use the Gate Sensitivity parameter to prevent silent passages from being exported as part of the file.
See “Gate Sensitivity”.
7.
Use Export Sound to save each slice as a file in a format of your choice.
Sometimes you don’t have a full bar of a loop. Set up the loop and the Bars and Beats fields for as much as you have. Then slice the loop. Finally, use your sequencer’s editing capabilities, on the MIDI notes, to recreate the missing parts.
You will also encounter situations where the best loop doesn’t really start on a downbeat. It might for example happen that you get the best loop when you position the Left and Right Locator on the last quarter note of two consecutive measures.
If this happens, you can fix it in your sequencer, by cutting the last quarter note of the MIDI Part and pasting it in at the beginning, to position the downbeat correctly. If you don’t want to slice the loop completely, at least allow a slice at the downbeat (the Lock tool is ideal for this). Then, repositioning that last quarter note to the beginning of the loop will be very easy.