sample-pack-generator

ChucK script to sequentially play notes on a MIDI device, which can be used for sampling all sounds from a drum machine or any MIDI device.

Requirements

• ChucK available in PATH
• Audio recording device
• MIDI interface
• Prior knowledge of longest sample duration on your device

Usage

So far I've only created a script to record all samples from a Korg EMX, but this can be adapted for use with other devices. Check your device's MIDI implementation chart.

1. Run chuck --probe to find the ID of your MIDI output device
2. Configure your device's levels, settings, MIDI channels, etc
3. Start recording audio
4. To start sample playback, run chuck NrpnData.ck Nrpn.ck emx.ck:MIDI_DEVICE, where MIDI_DEVICE is the ID obtained in step 1
5. Wait until the script finishes
6. Split the recorded audio into samples (example on doing this automatically)

Longest sample duration

Before creating this, I had manually recorded all the samples once and exported them to individual files. I used the following script to sort the files by duration in order to find the longest one:

for i in *.wav; do
	echo -n `ffmpeg -i "$i" 2>&1 | grep Duration`; echo "$i"
done | sort

The longest file will be included in the last line of the output.

Improvements

This implementation is far from ideal but it suits my needs. If anyone is up to it, these would be some nice improvements to have:

• Detect when each sample has finished playing by measuring audio input level (add some extra duration as a buffer)
• Output individual sample files from ChucK directly

Any of these improvements would add the requirement to have an audio interface usable from ChucK.