Discovering Samples with XO Drum Sampler for Free

Tutorial | Mar 29, 2022

In this video, I showed how to use XO to Drum Sampler by XLN-Audio. I showed how to increase the scale of the GUI, the two main tabs, Edit and Space, the sample layers, the sample editor, the global settings, the mastering section, the space tab, and the search function. I also showed how to create a groove by using the step sequencer, how to use the sample combine and randomize button, how to use the preset browser, and how to export the groove. XO is a great drum sampler and it is currently available for free if you upgrade your plan of Bitwig Studio.

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Questions & Answers #

Maybe you dont watch the video, here are some important takeaways:

What is XO? #

XO is a drum sampler created by XLN-Audio and is available for free if you get Bitwig Studio or upgrade your plan. It has two main tabs, which are the Edit and Space tabs. The Edit tab has sample layers, transient shape, panning, pitch change, tone, a low-card and high-card filter, and step sequencers. The Space tab is where the magic happens, as it analyzes all your samples from your hard drive and categorizes them into little clouds of colors.

What features does XO offer? #

XO offers a variety of features, including sample layers, transient shape, panning, pitch change, tone, a low-card and high-card filter, step sequencers, a global effects send, a mastering section with multiple algorithms, a similarity line, sample combine, randomize buttons, a preset browser, and user playlists.

How can I use XO to create a groove? #

To create a groove in XO, you can use the step sequencer to click and drag to create a rhythm. You can also use the accentuate feature to change the volume

Transcription #

This is what im talking about in this video. The text is transcribed by AI, so it might not be perfect. If you find any mistakes, please let me know.
You can also click on the timestamps to jump to the right part of the video, which should be helpful.

[00:00.000] Hey folks, welcome back to another video. Today it's about XO to drum sampler by XLN-Audio,
[00:04.880] and it's currently available for free if you get Bitwig Studio or if you upgrade your plan of Bitwig
[00:09.920] Studio, you get it for free. Now, use it a lot. I think it's the best drum sampler on the market
[00:15.360] right now. It's also a nice sample browser actually with the space view, but you can see this
[00:21.520] in the tutorials to have fun watching. When you start up XO, it looks probably like this here.
[00:27.440] And for the tutorial, I want to increase the scale of the GUI. And you can do this by clicking
[00:36.160] this button here, going to UI scaling settings and maybe crank it up to 175. So it's probably a lot
[00:43.760] better for the tutorial. So in this mode, you can see we have two main tabs which is edit and space.
[00:51.360] And on the edit tab, you can find of course all the sample layers where you can one-shot your
[01:01.200] samples. We have eight of them. Each lane has of course a transient shape up, panning, a sample
[01:08.560] editor. It's a small sample editor. We have pitch change here, tone which is more like a tilt EQ,
[01:16.640] where you can amp up the high frequencies and the low frequencies. So you can tilt basically the
[01:23.120] EQ spectrum. We have here a low-card, a high-card or more or less like a band pass filter,
[01:30.480] but lots of these sensitivity playback mode have accents where you can send each lane to
[01:35.120] your these return effects channel. We have step sequencers for each lane. Each step sequencer
[01:43.760] has here a swing setting and a nudge setting where you can offset the trigger point.
[01:48.320] And we have some global settings here for the level pitch, also a global FX send.
[01:54.080] The mastering section here has a crunch which is more like distortion,
[01:59.920] effect with multiple algorithms. We have also here low-card, high-card,
[02:06.240] soft-clip at the end. And below the sequencer here, we have also accentuate our way,
[02:12.240] can change the volume of each step, kind of an algorithmic way here.
[02:19.440] These sliders we can dial in on 61, 80, volume changes and so on. You can also use here to
[02:26.320] randomize button pretty easy. And we have also a global swing, of course, with multiple
[02:31.280] swing algorithms. So pretty nice. And on the space tab here, which where the magic happens
[02:39.360] basically, which kind of features all your samples on your hard drive. You can change the
[02:44.240] directories here by clicking this folder button on the top right. And can add here all your sample
[02:52.320] locations. And then it always sends all these directories, analyzes all the content,
[02:58.960] and puts on a hashtag or label on it on each of these samples. Basically categorizes all
[03:08.080] these samples into these small little clouds here of colors. So the red ones are kick drums,
[03:15.040] all samples that sound kind the same, or have the same energy, the same length, the same frequency
[03:21.120] content are close together. So you find in a small area basically, kind of similar samples.
[03:29.680] You can zoom in, zoom out here with a mouse wheel, of course. You hold the right mouse button
[03:35.280] down. You can move around in this thing. And how this is layout is basically that you have short
[03:42.800] samples, a pretty short samples at top and long samples at the bottom.
[03:53.760] So if you want to have short samples, you probably go up here with your scrubbing. And if you
[04:00.000] want to have long samples, then you go down here. Left to right is frequency content. So
[04:08.560] you're basically only low content, then it gets more high end.
[04:12.160] Until you end up on the right with only, you know, high frequency content. So high head samples.
[04:31.600] So you have here on this edge, the short list, which is more like a bar where you can hold
[04:38.400] some of the samples you like. So for instance, you scrim through the samples and kind of like the
[04:43.280] sound, you can put it on a short list. Put this one here. Until you end up with a lot of samples
[04:51.600] you would like. And then you can switch back to them. And then you can find here with a similarity
[04:58.720] line at the bottom. You can find similar samples to that sample. You just select it.
[05:11.920] So easy, easy sample digging, basically. If you like actually one of these sounds, you want to
[05:19.920] use these sounds, you couldn't put them into these slots here by using these, you have buttons.
[05:25.760] Once on this one, you put it here in the kick drum lane. Maybe a snare sample in here.
[05:38.480] Maybe a higher sample in here. This one in here. Maybe some percussion sounds in here.
[05:48.240] And maybe a clap. Maybe like this in here. Maybe a short kick drum in here. Okay.
[05:58.480] So now we have here kind of samples in there. If you don't like these samples or you want to exchange
[06:05.120] it for something similarly, you can always use here these left right buttons where you can
[06:10.400] switch to similar samples easily. It's also available here on this edit view, of course. And
[06:19.360] then you can exchange all these samples for something similar by using this globe down below.
[06:24.480] So it exchanges all samples at once. So you can see here, switches to the next. Next.
[06:31.360] Basically. I think that's all for that. You can also search here for file names. So if you
[06:40.800] search for clap files, then you can find all the files with the with the word clap in it or
[06:47.600] also directories with the word clap in it. Then you can only skim or scrub through these samples
[06:54.000] that are selected. You can't select here. Anything that's grayed out. So it's more like an art core filter.
[07:04.560] Okay. That's that. So we switch here to the edit button or edit tab. And then we can create
[07:11.200] just some kind of groove. And how the sequence of works is basically you click once. You create a
[07:16.560] dot. If you click twice, you remove the dot. So we create your small little rhythm.
[07:37.360] And if you click and drag, you can change the velocity. As you can see at the top, the number changes.
[07:45.120] And then if you click another empty spot here, you create basically the same dot with the same
[07:52.320] velocity again. So it's pretty easy to do. So maybe we create here something with less velocity here.
[08:03.600] And fill up the empty space. So maybe we die in your global roof. Maybe we put here this
[08:19.520] the clap a bit early is with a notch. Nice. And also you can use something like this
[08:36.560] reach record here or rolls. It's called rolls inside the exo. We have like these double dots here.
[08:45.520] If you click and drag, you can create up to four rolls. So it sounds like this.
[09:01.440] So it's also possible. Then also you can click and drag. So for instance, if you have this empty
[09:23.280] line, you want to fill up the line, you just click and then drag. You can fill up all the space
[09:29.520] or you can go back and remove it again. So it's all click and drag, right? You click and drag.
[09:36.400] So it's nice. Nice to use basically a nice to use a sequencer. Maybe use also the second kick drum.
[10:06.400] That's better.
[10:13.840] So then we can use it as accentuate. I am basically reset this and maybe use your one eight.
[10:30.240] So to bring in a kind of volume change here to all these steps. And then we have here AB,
[10:44.640] which is kind of two patterns. So we just filled out here the A pattern. And if you switch
[10:50.640] the B, you can see all these lanes here are sequences. Have now this cloned outline on it,
[11:00.080] which means they play the same pattern as A. And if you want to change something,
[11:05.600] you just start to paint something in here and make changes to it.
[11:21.520] And then you can say let's play this only once here with the AAAB, which means play the A pattern
[11:39.840] three times and then at the end you play B only once. That's perfect for having a nice move
[11:46.080] with a break at the end. Or you can alternate between AB if you want to. So play A, then B, then A,
[11:54.960] and so on. So of course we bring in here the soft clip. We increase the loudness of everything.
[12:04.880] And see we are clipping here a bit. And we can use the punch, the knock.
[12:16.400] We can use the transient shape of the kick drum.
[12:23.440] Remove the low end here of the second kick.
[12:25.360] Maybe on the clip we want to have a reverb.
[12:47.280] Maybe we'll show the room, dark room, bright room, up there.
[12:50.240] And there are also delays on here.
[13:14.320] Now that we have the basic roof, we can experiment with exchanging the samples.
[13:18.640] For instance you can just click down here like before and exchange all these samples at once.
[13:39.760] Or you can use these lock buttons so you can say I really like this, this kick drum and also
[13:45.760] like this now. So please don't change this.
[13:56.000] Or you can use the sample combine on which basically does the same.
[13:59.760] You can use the randomize button here.
[14:07.360] You can also lock this here or unlock this if you want to.
[14:10.560] And if you are good then just apply the settings.
[14:15.680] There's also a bit combine here which changes the sequencer on the left or on the right or the sample
[14:21.920] bit combine on the left and the sequencer on the right.
[14:24.800] You have our original add-ons which we just painted in here but you can exchange
[14:30.400] just for basic patterns here. For instance I really like to have this this clap pattern.
[14:46.160] Or exchange it at random.
[14:49.600] Go back to your original loop or just use your these small little hand symbols to
[14:56.480] you know use the whole column.
[15:10.800] If you're good then click okay.
[15:16.800] If you like your groove and you want to export it to your don then you can also just use here like
[15:23.360] I do play synchronization your host sync as you can see and this is on and you hit play on your
[15:31.360] door then xo also starts playing. You can also use this export button here where you can drag
[15:42.480] us the whole add-on as a media file. You get this and you have to disable of course the playback
[15:49.760] of the internal sequencer. You have the same effect basically.
[15:58.800] You can also render out the waves here. You can drag out the wave files itself and also the
[16:04.080] processed samples. But I think you have to
[16:11.600] you have to push here the rendered wave button first to get the processed samples and then you
[16:21.760] can drag this out. And processed means basically all the effects you have put on here or the
[16:29.200] transient shaping you've done and eq and fx and so on and then get also the processed output
[16:35.680] basically. But that's also an easier way to get these raw samples here which is just going to the
[16:42.000] space here selecting something and then on windows you can hold control and then drag it out where you
[16:51.760] can drag it here to the lane where you get the sampler for it. On Mac I think it's all you have
[17:01.200] to hold out and then drag it out. So that's also something you can do. Then there's your rocket
[17:10.080] which you can drag out. You can only not only drag out your individual samples. You can also
[17:16.000] drag out multiple samples. So for instance if you are enabled live or in Bitwig and you have a drum
[17:21.120] machine you can drag out your multiple samples at once and fill up your multiple sample slots at once
[17:28.080] which is also nice instead of you know using only one sample at once. So this is nice to know
[17:38.640] and also nice to use which makes basically it's all like a additional sample browser for your
[17:45.200] DAW. If you're actually not happy with the browser that you get with your DAW then you can use
[17:51.600] just xolio with this nice cloud sample based browser. Another thing I want to show you is
[18:03.120] actually the preset browser. Usually I don't use presets that much but here it's pretty helpful
[18:09.200] actually. You get the preset browser by just clicking at the top at this empty init space here
[18:16.000] and you can find all the presets in here. You can search for the presets and also xol comes with
[18:23.280] a samples. So you get a lot of samples with xol and presets which means you can select the preset
[18:29.440] here and you can hear the pattern playing and also the samples that come with the preset and now
[18:36.880] you can exchange all your samples or all the samples for the preset for samples that you have on
[18:42.640] your hard drive. That's like it's the same rhythm but the different samples you can also see
[19:01.840] this here on the right side. You can select the multiple samples. It's really nice when you want to start
[19:12.480] some, yeah, some dials or genres. You're not really familiar in. So it would be so nice.
[19:37.760] So the more samples you have on your hard drive, the better it is and the more combinations you
[19:42.640] can get out of these presets and sometimes I use this and you can also use of course user playlists
[19:48.880] where you can create your own grooves. Basically save patterns with samples that are
[19:55.440] working nice and then you recall it later on and it exchange the samples and get a completely different groove.
[20:13.200] So the big thing about xol for me is basically that I discover samples I didn't know I have.
[20:21.200] I have a lot of samples on my hard drive that I probably never used in my whole career
[20:28.880] but it's all basically gets these samples out of these hidden directories and brings it back
[20:37.440] to the front shows me that some samples work in certain contexts very well by just you know
[20:44.640] clicking here randomizing or scrubbing through the space and discovering it for myself. So it makes
[20:54.320] yeah it basically makes my whole sample folder more useful than ever just by bringing everything to
[21:02.720] the front. So that's it. xol is available for free if you actually buy Bitwig Studio now or if you
[21:12.400] upgrade your current plan until April the 4th I think so you get xol for free it's actually a nice
[21:21.600] combination Bitwig Studio and xol I really use it a lot as you probably saw already on my streams
[21:29.120] and YouTube videos so make sure you get it. Thanks for watching and see you on the next video bye.