Unlocking the Sound Design Potential of Chromatic Samplers | Featuring Chase Bliss Chompi

video upload by Sonic Cartography

"This video shows you 10+ ways to push a chromatic sampler and take the sound design of your samples to the next level. It uses the Chase Bliss Chompi sampler for demonstration purposes, but the sound design techniques can be applied to just about any other chromatic sampler or DAW. Table of contents and notes below. You can support me on Patreon, where you’ll also find a bonus video that complements this one and shows you 5 more tricks (link in pinned comment).

Table of Contents:

1:35 - horizontal layering
1:50 - intervalic
2:09 - octave + 5th
2:52 - upgrade
3:20 - the deluxe
4:17 - variations
4:44 - other intervals
5:57 - multitimbral
6:05 - smooth
7:34 - chaotic
8:44 - multidirectional

10:21 - vertical layering
10:41 - intervalic
11:00 - octave + 5th
11:21 - chords & other intervals
12:27 - multitimbral
13:07 - multidirectional
13:45 - detuning


13:45 - transformational layering
14:33 - with effects
14:45 - reverb
15:13 - tape saturation
15:31 - tape warble
15:58 - filter sweep
16:30 - with “LFO”
16:50 - DIY tremolo
17:33 - DIY vibrato

18:06 - combinatorial / iterative layering
18:26 - combinatorial example
19:29 - iterative example

20:44 - bonus video

21:39 - final tip


Note 1: The reason why I’m using Chompi’s built-in looper as a recording space rather than directly recording to resample is mainly that this leaves the buffer memory alone while recording, which means you can use whatever is there and record it in the looper without having to save it in a memory slot beforehand. The looper is essentially another buffer memory, so everything remains temporary unless and until you choose to save it, so you can experiment and mess up and go through lots of iterations without having to deal with saving. An added bonus is the looper has cued recording, which is a feature absent in direct recording on Chompi, unfortunately. This means the samples you create by transferring the loops to the buffer memory (or saving them to a memory slot) automatically begin with the initiation of sound, whereas you usually have to trim off the silence at the beginning of samples (or re-samples) you record directly.

Note 2: There’s not enough space to go into much music theory here, but basically, because everything is relative to the root pitch of C, you can think of most of the intervals relative to c major, which means that you mostly ignore the black keys and just focus on the white keys. Locate your root C. Count that as the first note. Call next white key to the right the second note or interval relative to C. Call the next one the third, and so forth and so on. That’s all that’s meant here by the 4th, 5th, and the n-th major intervals (with an octave being an 8th). As for the minor intervals (e.g., minor 7th), just locate the corresponding major interval (e.g., major 7th) and play the adjacent black key to the left. That’s your minor version of the interval. Finally, as for the tritone, which do the same thing with the 5th interval."