Triggering Samples 101

[Vanilla Thrilla]

Greetings,

Ive seen a few prior posts concerning this, but they seemed antiquated. I hope this is alright, and in the right place.

I am in an avant-rock band, and we're experimenting with adding sounds to the tunes we play. My goal is to be able to trigger an .mp3/.wav/.whatever of water, or wind, or a speech, or something similar with my foot or hand. (Preferably, itd be accomplished with my foot, as the tunes are pretty demanding)

Id also love to be able to use the controller to produce a sustained tone in the vein of the moog taurus or a thick synth noise, or even a big hammond organ cluster. Ive got Native Instruments Komplete, and a decent computer (PC).

What sort of controller could i get to accomplish this? And, more importantly, how do i accomplish this after i get that controller? How would i assign a sound, like wind, to a note on a MIDI keyboard?

And if i were to use a footpedal, could i just run, for example, NI's B4 organ simulator and step on some notes?

Thanks

[TobyBrodel]

bump

[Sven Olaffson]

The solution I chose is to use a Roland PK-5 foot controller.




I plug it into my PC via a midi interface, and it works exactly like a midi keyboard: you can play keyboard sounds (moog, hammond, whatever ... I still suck at playing piano with my feet thought )

There is a "hold" mode that I absolutley love: you hit a note and it stays on as long as you won't hit another note. Perfect for layering thick sub-bass synth notes for 8 bars without having to keep your foot on the pedal ...

And it can trigger sounds from a sampler too: most of software sampler have a "midi learn" mode, you can choose which note on which midi channel will trigger each sound.

As far as configuration goes, it's Roland style hardware: its roadworthy (the thing is heavy and built like a tank), the manual absolutly not funky at all , but precise and comprehensive, and I learn to use any function of the pedal in less than half an hour.

Learning to play with it while still playing bass is way more difficult, of course.

[dannybuoy]

You could also use a Digitech Jamman - it has an SD card slot so you can load it up with wavs. By plugging in an external footswitch you can scroll through patches, and start/stop/record with the built in pedals.