Guide · 3 min read
Loops & beats
Build a drum kit or beat from novel hits you shape live — not sounds pulled from a pack.
Producers have always built kits from whatever sounds they can get their hands on. DreamSampler gives you a steady supply: feed it an input sound, and as you move the knobs you hear each candidate change in real time — audition a dozen directions in the time it'd take to preview one preset.
How to do it
- 1Add DreamSampler to an instrument track and click
Connect. - 2Feed a source and prompt toward the kind of hits you want (for example,
distorted 808,dusty vinyl snare). - 3Sweep Strength, Structure, and Timbre and listen — each candidate hit changes in real time.
- 4In Slice mode, set
Slice By: Transient(raise Sensitivity for more hits) so the buffer chops into playable pads. - 5Trigger pads from the grid, the computer keyboard, or a MIDI pad controller — slices map to consecutive keys from C1.
- 6Record the hits you like to audio, or drag pads into your DAW to assemble the kit.
Tips
- Shape hits live
- Hear each candidate shift instantly as you move the controls, not one preview at a time.
- Program the pattern
- Once the pads are set, drive them from a MIDI clip in your DAW to sequence the beat.
- Coherent by default
- Because the hits share a source, they sit together across the kit rather than clashing.
Nothing pulled from a pack — every hit is one you shaped.