Hi there,

I recently started to use my sampler for recording my own samples. I want to make a (drum) voice which contains about 10 short audio samples (recorded from a cd player).

The samples contain short pieces of radio interviews, so 1 or 2 spoken words.

To me it’s not clear whether to use a user voice or a user drum voice. It seems to be possible to record more than 1 keybank in a normal user voice, so I’m confused here - as the manual doesn’t explain why a micropone recording is used for creating a user voice and an audio recording is used to create a user drum voice.

What should I do best: use a user voice or use a user drum voice??

Thanks for some light in the dark ...

Michiel

I’m not exactly sure which of the Motif -series keyboards you are speaking about, but they all work pretty much the same when it comes to working with USER SAMPLE data.

User sample data must be placed in a VOICE of some kind before you can play them with the Motif. There are the following choices:

VOICES come in two types: Normal and Drum
USER VOICES additionally are housed either in a USER VOICE - Bank location or they are housed in a USER SAMPLE VOICE - specially integrated location within SONG/PATTERN sequencer.

The main difference between a Normal Voice and a Drum Voice is in how the components that make up that Voice work and behave. A Normal Voice is optimized for use in creating a playable musical instrument. For example there are 8 components (Elements) that make up a Normal Voice. Each Element is a “multi-sample” and represents 1 component in building a particular Voice. Each of the 8 elements may contribute some portion of the sound that makes up the one VOICE.

While Elements are used to typically construct one VOICE when it is a Normal Voice, There are 73 Elements in a Drum Voice - each occupies one KEY C0-C6. A Drum VOICE is after all, a combination of 73 individual drum or percussion instruments. Well, each KEY can represent a different instrument or different gesture in playing a particular drum/percussion instrument sound.

Beyond that very important difference, is the way the envelopes ‘behave’. Envelope is the control over how the sound is shaped… that is, how it starts, continues and disappears. When an envelope concerns loudness we call it the Amplitude Envelope.

On most Normal instruments you start the sound by pressing a key and you bring the process of ending the sound by releasing the key. And to some greater or lesser degree you have control over how long a sound lasts by how long (or short) you hold down the key.

On Drum and Percussion instruments sounds, you press a key to start the sound, but the sound completes whether or not you hold the key down. Drum envelopes can be set so that a Note-on (key press) will trigger the sound, but the sound will ignore Note-Off commands - The envelope can be set to complete even if the key is only touched briefly.

Okay all that as background to this: You can place your audio into a Normal VOICE or a Drum VOICE.
In a DRUM VOICE you will find that you have individual control over each sample - as to volume, pan position, effect sends, routing to an output, etc., etc. While you could place them in a Normal Voice where they would be treated similarly by many of the parameters.

SInce you have a more flexible envelope and can setup different controls, many opt to use the DRUM KIT VOICE as a place for samples they need to trigger that are audio clips.

When you are going to place the audio clips into the Motif-series keyboard you would want to have one sample per WAVEFORM. So you can either sample them or load them into the Motif - assigning each to its own WAVEFORM number.

If you import or load them all to their own Waveform, target the default note C3 (middle C) - the reason: You can tune the recording up or down from that central point, if that is necessary. This KEY locations simply means the original pitch will be set a the middle of the keyboard - so it will be easy to figure how to transpose it up or down.

Even though in a Drum Kit you are going to perhaps place that sound on some other key - still its original KEY should be C3. Doing so will allow the original pitch to sound when you assign this Waveform within a DRUM VOICE.

Which Motif-series are you asking this question about?

Thanks for your quick and informative answer, starts to get clear.
I own a motif ES7…

Bad mister said it all....I prefer a drum voice for stuff like that..the drum voice has 76 different voices contained within the one drum..When we use a drum voice we rarely use every voice within that drum so I feel that’s your best bet...Let us know how things work out and keep making music..Good day..