Tags: posts polarity-music Bitwig Tutorial VST-Plugin Drums

Visco Spectral Sound Design Drum Sampler

Tutorial | Mar 25, 2024

In this video, I discuss Visco, a new drum sampler that was released five days ago. It is a unique drum sampler that divides the samples into the spectral domain and allows for morphing and twisting using modifiers. This tool is perfect for sound design and specifically designed for percussive sounds.

You can watch the Video on Youtube - support me on Patreon

I explored Visco, a novel drum sampler that uniquely processes samples in the spectral domain. Here's a summary of its key features and functionalities:

Overall, Visco presents an innovative approach to drum sampling and sound design, offering both individual and global control over spectral manipulation, with a particular emphasis on visual interaction and performance dynamics.

Questions & Answers

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

How does Visco differ from other drum samplers?

Visco stands out from other drum samplers because it splits samples into the spectral domain, allowing for unique manipulation through various modifiers. This makes it an excellent tool for sound design, especially for percussive sounds.

What are the key features of Visco?

Visco has eight pads for holding drum samples, each with its own canvas and modifiers. Users can morph and twist samples spectrally, adjust timing and frequency domains, and even drag in additional samples for blending. Other features include velocity-based sound variation and global modifiers for simultaneous changes.

What are the pros and cons of Visco?

The pros of Visco include its small size, fast processing, and visual approach to sample manipulation. It offers a unique and creative way to modify and design percussive sounds. However, some users may find the lack of resizing options and additional features like the sequencer and modulation matrix as cons.

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.

[00:00:00] In this video I want to talk about Visco, a new drum sampler that just came out five
[00:00:04] days ago.
[00:00:05] And it's not just some random drum sampler, it's a special drum sampler because it splits
[00:00:11] up the samples into the spectral domain.
[00:00:14] And then it lets you, using these modifiers here on the left side, morph and twist everything
[00:00:20] in all kinds of directions.
[00:00:21] And it's a great tool for sound design.
[00:00:24] And it's specifically made for percussive sounds.
[00:00:28] And I want to show you how it works.
[00:00:30] So on the left side here we have all the pads.
[00:00:33] We have eight pads that hold some kind of drum samples in there.
[00:00:37] So kick drum here, rim shot snare, right.
[00:00:40] You can switch between these pads.
[00:00:43] And each pad has basically one of these canvases here with some modifiers here, also some global
[00:00:49] modifiers for the whole pad here on the right side.
[00:00:53] And we have this kind of transform thing here where we have two samples.
[00:00:57] So each pad can hold two samples and you can morph between these samples.
[00:01:01] So here we have a simple kick on the left side and a huge kick on the right side.
[00:01:09] You can also put your maybe a clap on there.
[00:01:18] So you can spectrally blend between one sample and the other sample on each of these pads,
[00:01:28] right.
[00:01:29] Then we have some modifiers on the left side where we can use this to kind of modify this
[00:01:36] blob here in the middle.
[00:01:38] So we use the hand to drag out here everything in the timing domain.
[00:01:43] So bottom to top is basically timing.
[00:01:46] Here's the start of the sample.
[00:01:47] Here's the end of the sample.
[00:01:49] So we can make this sound longer just by clicking and dragging here.
[00:01:57] And this is the frequency domain here.
[00:01:59] So left side is lower frequencies.
[00:02:02] These are upper frequencies.
[00:02:03] We can create basically some overtones or more overtones or emphasize the overtones
[00:02:23] until it sounds completely different.
[00:02:26] We can also drag samples in.
[00:02:28] So on the right side you have some maybe use a kick sound here.
[00:02:36] This sound.
[00:02:37] Sounds a bit different but be kind of spectrally re-synthesized sound.
[00:02:51] And then on the right side here I put maybe a clap.
[00:02:58] So we have this clap sample on the right side.
[00:03:02] The kick on the left.
[00:03:07] So it's very quick with analyzing or splitting up the sound into different partials or overtones.
[00:03:13] It's basically in no time.
[00:03:17] Also the plug in itself is very small.
[00:03:19] So on Windows it's just 3 megabytes.
[00:03:22] It's very small.
[00:03:26] Then we can modify also the samples we just dragged in.
[00:03:30] So here I used this drag tool.
[00:03:33] We can also use here the attractor.
[00:03:35] So you put this on some kind of space and then you attract everything that's around it.
[00:03:45] Kind of funny to use this.
[00:04:00] Then we can also use something like a mirror.
[00:04:04] We can put all the lower frequencies and you know inverted to higher frequencies.
[00:04:14] Very interesting to create some hi-hats from kick samples.
[00:04:18] I don't know.
[00:04:19] Then also here reverse it in a kind of spectral way.
[00:04:29] Then we have here something on the right side.
[00:04:32] For instance the time scale.
[00:04:34] We can squeeze the whole grid with the plop on it.
[00:04:39] We can make everything longer or shorter.
[00:04:48] Then we have here frequency.
[00:04:54] So it's a spectral pitch more or less.
[00:04:58] Contrast is interesting.
[00:05:00] It's kind of a spectral filter.
[00:05:12] Density.
[00:05:13] This kind of I think reduces or increases the resolution.
[00:05:20] Use probably more or less overtones.
[00:05:22] I don't know exactly what it does.
[00:05:25] And as variation I think this kind of you can change the seat how some of the overtones
[00:05:31] are represented in the spectral domain here with some with the partials and changes that
[00:05:37] from triggering to triggering.
[00:05:39] I don't know.
[00:05:41] Just to give you the sense of the sound sounds a bit different from each trigger.
[00:05:47] Polyphony.
[00:05:48] Release time.
[00:05:49] Damping.
[00:05:50] Then there's velocity.
[00:05:54] This kind of interesting.
[00:05:56] So the harder you press basically on the keyboard the louder usually the sound gets in drum
[00:06:02] samplers.
[00:06:03] And this is here the model none.
[00:06:05] But you can also say the harder you press the more you go into the different the second
[00:06:10] sound you would transform.
[00:06:13] So when I just softly press the key you're using basically the first sample here.
[00:06:19] The harder I press the more I go into the second sample or change the time scaling.
[00:06:32] Can kind of see this here on this graph.
[00:06:36] Contrast we can increase the contrast with the velocity.
[00:06:40] So it gives you kind of a different sound each time you press the key on the keyboard
[00:06:47] which makes it really nice to work with static samples where you have just one sample and
[00:06:56] this sample sounds every time exactly the same.
[00:07:00] And with this you can kind of modify it can make more out of just one sample.
[00:07:06] So I think this is a very nice feature.
[00:07:11] So like I said we have this on each pad right.
[00:07:14] So we can change all these things on each pad individually but we can also use the global
[00:07:20] knobs for that.
[00:07:22] We can transform which is here this slider basically but on all pads at the same time.
[00:07:28] So when you have here maybe a sequence running something like this you can slowly fade into
[00:07:42] the second sample on each pad at the same time.
[00:07:46] Also time scaling on each pad.
[00:07:56] And it's very fast it's very responsive.
[00:08:08] Yeah, so yeah like you saw here there's also a sequencer in here but I probably will never
[00:08:20] use it.
[00:08:21] I don't know maybe there are some features in here but usually I want to use Bitwig
[00:08:26] also modulation matrix I don't need I just use modulators of Bitwig.
[00:08:31] There's a mixing page here with the clip arm filters amplitude panning width and there
[00:08:36] are some FX here chorus diffuser plate reverb the usual stuff right.
[00:08:42] But normally I just use what I have inside of the top but it's maybe nice to have this
[00:08:46] in here maybe you can change some of these things with the velocity I don't know.
[00:08:53] So but the main feature is basically here this plop it gives you some very nice abilities
[00:08:58] to change the sound in a visual way.
[00:09:01] A visual there's also here light theme so you can also create some themes here there's
[00:09:07] a theme folder I haven't played around with this but there's a light and dark skin already.
[00:09:16] There's no resizing you can't resize the window which is a bit bad I hope they fix
[00:09:22] this in a future update just so you know so you can resize it it's a bit small on my
[00:09:29] screen.
[00:09:32] But yeah I think it's a neat plug in it's actually like I said it's very small just
[00:09:37] website I give you the link in the description below that's not affiliated or anything like
[00:09:41] that I just downloaded this and I think it's a kind of a fun plug in there's also demo
[00:09:47] version here that you can download yeah three megabytes it's very small and it's 99 bucks
[00:09:57] there's no I look as far as far as I can see and some examples here I think it's also a
[00:10:03] new company and I'm very impressed with the with the quality of everything so it's it's
[00:10:09] very snappy very small very optimized everything and it's also an interesting way of approaching
[00:10:18] samples or manipulating manning samples in a kind of a visual way so yeah pretty nice
[00:10:26] plug in that's it for this video leave a like if you like the video leave me some comments
[00:10:30] down below if you already tried this out and you have some tips and tricks or how you would
[00:10:35] use it or maybe maybe I can show you another thing here I already made some tests with
[00:10:43] some piano samples let's put this here in there so this is a piano sample this is D
[00:10:53] and here I'm using F and maybe F sharp on this one here so in the piano you can hear
[00:11:09] it's not really made for a tonal sound it's more optimized for yeah percussive sound and
[00:11:16] this is also kind of short right this area here so it's made for short percussive sounds
[00:11:22] but you can kind of put in some tonal sounds and try to mangle them up but you quickly
[00:11:32] get them out of tune here with the time scaling so you can make the piano sounds longer or
[00:11:49] pretty percussive maybe this piano sounds more like some kind of percussive element
[00:12:10] you can also more from piano sound to percussive sound let's try and use a tom sound
[00:12:33] there are no tools actually to get this into you know in tune or in scale so you pretty
[00:12:40] much are out of tune pretty fast with this just by using here some smudging
[00:12:57] there's no way to get this back into you know without using undo so just so you know you
[00:13:05] can drag in some tonal sounds it works but it's not optimized for that but it's maybe
[00:13:11] interesting to get some some new samples out of it or maybe multiple samples when you use
[00:13:17] here maybe to contrast let's try this out let's try here transform time scale so you
[00:13:36] can maybe drag in some total sounds and you have just one sample and then you use the
[00:13:41] velocity here to get some different sounds for each velocity layer out of it and then
[00:13:46] you can create maybe a sampler patch out of this so it's maybe an interesting tool to
[00:13:52] get you know more out of just one sample just an idea that's it for this video leave a like
[00:14:00] if you like the video leave me some comments down below like I said if you have some ideas
[00:14:04] or let me know how you actually use this tool already and subscribe to the channel thanks
[00:14:10] for watching and see you in the next video bye
[00:14:12] [BLANK_AUDIO]