Sampling for the modwave

How I sampled the drumkits in my microSTATION

This post is more of a log of the steps I followed than an explanatory description of the steps to sample the Korg microSTATION drumkits.

The Korg modwave ships with three factory drumkits brought over from the original Korg Wavestation, which pre-dated the now-standard GM-midi mapping of drums to the standard keyboard. I think keyboard drums played by a practised player are the next best thing to a real drummer [1-3]. I love the GM-drumkits in my Korg microSTATION, so they seemed like the perfect subject for learning to create multisamples for the modwave.
[1] Aleksey Boyarintcev masterfully playing microSTATION drums
[2] "Uncle" Taekyung playing through a number of microSTATION kits
[3] Dom Sigalas's great keyboard fingerdrumming tutorial

Software used

Windows 10 Home 21H2
Akai MPC Beats 2.10.0
Reaper DAW v6.46
Endless WAV 1.7.8b15
Korg Sample Builder 1.0.2

Steps

The steps are as follows

1. Use the free Akai MPC Beats software Auto Sampler as a sample robot
2. Rename the .wav files for later ingestion
3. Process the .wavs in an audio editor (I use Reaper DAW)
4. Set crossfade loops of long samples using the free Endless WAV software
5. Render out all tracks from Reaper
6. Build the multisample in the Korg Sample Builder software

Step 1. Use the free Akai MPC Beats software Auto Sampler as a sample robot

I learned about using MPC Beats from Loopop's Wavestate sampling video

Akai MPC Beats settings

Set up the channels. After watching Loopop's video, the extra trick here is to set the Midi Bank to 10 (the standard channel for drumkits), but set the Midi channel to 0 to avoid accidental program changes from the sample robot. This isn't necessary for sampling any other type of instrument.

Run the Auto Sampler

with these settings:

• Note-stride is changed from the default (6) to 1 to capture every key's sample.
• C0 to C8 covers all the notes in all the drumkits on the microSTATION.
• Don't set the Tail to 0.
• I found 4 s note lengths to work well for most drumkits, but increased to 5 s for some.
• Although some microSTATION drumkits have significantly different samples on a few keys for low velocity values, I didn't bother trying to capture those by adding additional layers.

Turn all the looping off; I do all that later myself.

Hit [Do it] and go out for a walk, or read a book.

When done, Save Project:

This writes all the .wav files.

Copy the .wav files to a new directory

D:\Sound Design\modwave\samples\microSTATION drums\Drm_MW1 Dance Kit MPC Beats Samples

Step 2. Renaming the .wav files for later ingestion

Now we need to rename the copied .wav files written by MPC Beats' Auto Sampler to ones recognised by the Korg Sample Builder. The Auto Sampler names files associated with black keys with the flatted-note name, whereas Sample Builder expects sharped-note names. I wrote a tiny Python script to do this:

flat_to_sharp.py: https://gist.github.com/gazzar/c2710fa9ec35735a03da38de6567db16

Copy this file to where the samples are and run it there.

Step 3. Processing the .wavs in an audio editor

Now drag and drop all the .wavs into Reaper as separate tracks.

• Check for stereo vs mono sources
• Optionally render everything to mono tracks
• Set track volumes to LUFS-M -14 LU
• Set fade-ins to 0 and fade-outs to 0 on tracks that will be looped
• File|Render…

To render everything to mono, select all track contents, then right-click select "Item Properties…" I rendered all the drum samples as mono, except for one of the kits where the stereo delay effect is an intrinsic part of the kit's sound.

Now play with the waves. For example, I move the start points, crops the ends, set fades at the ends, except for waves that need loops to be set on them.

Change Channel mode from "Normal" to "Mono (Mix L + R)" then click "Apply"

With the same dialog open, click "Normalize" and set following (LUFS-M -14 LU). This is applied instantaneously without having to click "Apply"

Step 4. Set crossfade loops of long samples

Now I identify any looped samples and set crossfades and start and end loop points (or maybe wait until everything is rendered as a mono sample. Endless WAV [English translation] is a great free app written by Björn Bojahr for creating crossfade loops in samples. I have it set up as an external editor in Reaper so that it's quick to send a track from Reaper to it, set the loop, and reingest the looped wave back into Reaper. To send the track to Endless WAV, I found it best to right-click on the track, select
Open items in editor | Open item copies in 'Endless WAV.exe'

After setting the loops in Endless WAV, click [SAVE]

The sample shows up as a new take

Right-click and choose Crop to active take

Because the wave has changed, the LUFS-M Normalize operation should be rerun after ingesting the looped waveform back into Reaper.

Step 5. Render out all tracks from Reaper

First, multiselect all* tracks in Reaper to select them for rendering.
* Tracks with loops don't need to be rendered in this step. They need to be rerendered separately so the loops are set correctly.
Note that with the following settings I chose 44100 Hz sample rate. I originally sampled and processed everything at 48 kHz, so I could have rendered at 48 kHz here instead. I could also have originally sampled at 44.1 kHz. Resampling doesn't cause any issues though.

File|Render…

Hit [Render 86 files]

Now, things get clunky because Reaper doesn't respect the internal loop points on looped samples. Therefore, I have to mark looped regions for each sample in turn:

then render that track with the following settings, then clear that region and set it for the next track, repeating for each looped sample:

If not resampling to a different sample rate during rerendering, I could have noted down the loop point sample numbers and typed them in directly in the Korg Sample Builder. Alternatively, one could save each file directly out of Endless WAV if it's OK to skip the Normalize step in Reaper.

Step 6. Building the multisample in the Korg Sample Builder software

Finally we should have all our samples ready to build into a multisample. Drag and drop all the samples from File Explorer into the keyboard region in the Korg Sample Builder. Verify that looped samples are not set as one-shots. Here's a one-shot sample:

Here's a looped sample: