Use the colour selector next to the waveform viewer to choose a colour for pads/groups. We can now adjust the play modes, Pitch Envelope, Filter Envelope, and Amp Envelope. Now, clicking a pad will show parameters for that pad only. And you can assign each pad to a mono or stereo output for further processing and mixing.ħ.

This makes it much easier to visually tell what’s going on in your percussive masterpiece. For example, we could colour all loops red, single-shot percussion green, layered sounds yellow and so on. We can also assign different colours to each pad in order to group like instruments or like types of samples. We can adjust the sample start and end points, reverse a sample, normalise the sample, adjust the sample’s pitch, filter settings, and amp settings – including gain, panning and velocity. Starting with a completely produced track we could, for example, mute all the elements and then bring them in one at a time – just like some of those hardware drum machines we’ve all seen.Īnd each sample can be edited right from the waveform display above the pads. This is a good way to build a track live. There’s also solo and mute on each pad, so we can mute or even isolate a pad during playback. We can also choose to have Impact automatically time-stretch a sample to fit the tempo of the song. We can decide how the samples are triggered, how sample layers are handled, whether or not a sample chokes when another pad is played or when the pad is re-triggered, and when you can trigger a sample during the playback of your track (using Quantise). Now, instead of just throwing that Amen Break loop into our production, we can use the same sounds from the loop and play them the way we want.Įach pad displays useful information and provides options for editing and playing the samples. This can certainly be a great way to use that loop we might have been storing for years on our hard drive. Impact XT also gives us the ability to take a drum loop and chop it up across several pads. Creativity and your imagination are key here. This could lead to some very interesting results.

The not-so-obvious use option would be to layer different types of samples onto the same pad. The obvious reason we would do this is to layer, say, several snare drums – all at different velocities – so the snare sounds more realistic and natural. Impact XT even allows us to layer multiple percussion elements onto the same pad. From there, the pad options allow you flexibility in the sound of the samples and how the pads react to your performance. Samples can be dragged and dropped from within the browser straight onto a pad. There are actually 8 banks of 16 pads and, yes, we can load samples on every one of them, if we need to.Īdding or modifying samples in a kit is also very straightforward. The interface features 16 MPC-style pads that correspond to MIDI notes C1 through D#2, but there’s much more to it than that.

Studio one 4 separate patterns