This is a technique I've been experimenting with to get some nice "human" loose feel claps, but will work on any sample that you want to have slightly imperfect timing. It requires a specially prepped sample and 2 or 3 tracks.
My goal was to create the sound of several people clapping in unison; overlapping claps that were offset a tiny bit by a random amount.
For this experiment, I wanted one clap to be spot on, another with a chance to be a tiny bit later than the first, and a third to have a chance to be a tiny bit early. By tiny bit, I'm talking about 30ms (0.03 seconds) max. Any more than that and you'll get a "white people clapping" situation, which is embarrassing...not funky.
To prep the samples:
1. Make a copy of a clap sample and open it in an audio editor. Add silence at the beginning of the clap. This is usually a standard feature of an audio editor. Add about 0.03 seconds (30ms) of silence to the beginning.
2. Save the sample and send it to your MD UW using C6.
3. Send a normal clap sample to the MD UW as well (one without the silence added).
To make the late claps:
1. After sequencing a normal clap on one track, load up your silenced clap sample on a new track and sequence the exact same pattern as the normal clap track. Playing the two tracks together will trigger two separate claps exactly 30ms apart. This is OK, but we can make it more dynamic...
2. Apply a LFO to the start time of the silenced clap. Adjust the depth to be shallow enough that the start will vary between the beginning of the sample (at the start of the silence) and the start of the actual clap. Make the rate be such that you are getting a random start each time. The effect of this LFO will make the claps either overlap very closely, or be looser...by a max of 30ms.
To make the early claps.
1. Load up the silenced clap on yet another track (you should have 3 clap tracks by now).
2. Sequence the same pattern, but a step early from the other 2 tracks. So instead of 5 and 13, make this one 4 and 12.
3. Add a LOT of swing to this track...the idea is to make it fire off close to the next step.
4. Finally apply LFO to the start position as described above.
5. An alternate method to this, if you don't want to waste the swing on just this track, is to prep another sample with a much longer silence, such that triggering it on a step will actually fire off the sound close to the next step.
Possibilities to add more claps without extra tracks:
1. Add a retrig to one or more the claps with a medium to high value. Keep the number of retrigs to 1 or 2.
2. Use a tight delay at max volume with a very low regen (basically just a slapback delay)
Ideas to add more dynamics to the claps:
1. Use LFO modulation on the filter frequencies, filt resonance, volume, distortion, etc. so the claps sound a bit different every time.
2. Use LFO modulation on the delay send and/or retrig to add a chance of extra claps as described above.
Enjoy!
