MPC Stems Review - Sampling YouTubers

welcome back to the channel today we're talking NPC stems which are finally available except it's only in the software mode I've got an NPC ke37 in front of me and it is currently in controller mode controlling the software on my Mac Mini M2 so I want to give some thoughts in general review on the stem separation process and also it's coming from the perspective of someone that doesn't really sample vinyl records anymore I used to in the past like 15 years ago but the whole copyright thing kind of stung me so I ended up focusing on just playing the sounds that I generally want uh more so than sampling so you might think the stem separation is not useful for someone like me but it has some interesting possibilities so we're going to explore some of those and again I'll talk about my thoughts on it afterwards so like I said NPC ke37 it's in controller mode controlling the software on the computer so if I go to the sampler I have access to basically all of my inputs for my audio interface which is a Motu 828 es I did hook up a cable for my headphone jack outputs and inputed them into one of my stereo pairs for the audio interface so I can play anything off YouTube and Sample it and then we're going to stem separate it before we do that though I need to quickly explain so if you do want access to the Sim separation it does cost money it's 10 bucks and aai did give me a license to do this so FYI and upfront I did get an activation for free from aai it is the same type of stuff with the plugins here so you'll activate it and you also only have three activations per license so if you have a computer and an NPC that's two activations and you have one more activ ation left after that so if you have like say three NPCs in a computer then you're going to have to buy an additional license to be able to activate all of them at the same time a kais activation system can also be a bit shoddy being perfectly upfront with you guys in fact when I first got the NPC ke37 which was sent to me from aai by the way I did not purchase the ke37 they sent it to me for review for the channel but when I first got it it basically wouldn't activate any plugins for almost a day and it seems like whenever you get a new NPC and attach it to your in music account it seems to take like 24 hours for it to even register that you can activate plugins on there so it's a little weird honestly okay with that out of the way let's sample some stuff from YouTube so to start out I figured I'd sample my wife and I with a track that we did uh about a month ago on our music channel I'd capture a bit of this and stem separate it and see the results okay the I hear you Calling My Name call my I'm going to call Tey memes for now we're just going to keep it and then if we go sample's hit play okay so we have this little selection right here we have a stems option now I'm going to hit stems and it says use trim sample which what is what we want I'm not going to assign to any pads right now we have vocals bass drums and other it's pretty straightforward but in case you don't know vocals is vocals bass is is obviously whatever Basse instruments in there drums percussion elements and other will be everything else so piano keys uh guitars anything that's in there that would be like horns strings they all fall in there now this is an electronic track obviously so what's interesting is basically everything's synthesizers except for the voice and drums and I'm curious how that's going to sound in the stem separation so let's do that create stems do it there we go we got our stems right here let's hear the bass first [Music] so what's interesting is you definitely hear the AI trying to simulate an actual bass guitar when it's not a bass guitar it's a bass synth synth Bas it's a Model D essentially a bearinger Model D so it's funny how it's like trying to create something that doesn't exist I mean that's obviously what it's doing with stem separation but it's trying to make a synth base into an actual stringed base that someone's playing so kind of interesting you know it's different for sure let's hear the drums interesting let's hear the [Music] vocals I hear you call call okay I mean you can definitely hear elements of the track in there this is everything else [Music] e who it's actually pretty cool even if you don't sample vinyl records you could use something like this to process your own tracks and get some interesting different textures that are gritty if you want to take something that's very clean to begin with and get some strange digital grit this actually does a pretty good job let's chop some of this up [Music] it's actually a pretty cool sample right there by itself I probably should have normalized the original sample but I didn't okay convert I'm going to make that into a new thing so we got the other let's hear drums again I'm going have it threshold chop this and then we have the vocals as well I'm gonna also just like do threshold shop [Music] initially I hear you I he you I hear you call my Call my that's pretty cool convert okay so we got some of those uh I want to sample some other stuff too and I was thinking about sampling Ricky tinz so we're going to go over to YouTube again and do that so we go [Music] sampler call it Ricky start right here we're going to do stems yeah everything on here use the trim sample do it cool [Music] drums I'm also going to grab a sample from John makes Beats go sampler and [Music] record say John makes Beats I think we'll just take this chunk right here and process the stems so there's no vocals I'm going to take those out uh bass drums and Ne we want that so let's do it base what does it sound like we're going to normalize this normalize there we [Music] go interesting noise in there normalize the drums [Music] unless interesting all right I normalized some of the other stuff on here so funny how it tries to make a bass guitar so interesting how there's this like hum in the recording from that I don't think that's in my system but maybe it [Music] is [Music] convert there we go all right I have no idea if I'm going to be able to actually make anything out of this we're just going to see see what happens and kind of go from there mine has a bit of that high-end pitch hum too I wonder if I'm getting some sort of feedback from chaining the the headphone amp in back into the system it could be it could be causing some issues it's actually a pretty cool snare we're going to go like 145 BPM just feel things out maybe go eight bars to work with definitely want that to be my snare also going to edit everything here we're going to say all samples one thing I like to do is go over to the filter change regular filter over to one of these models like model one or model 3 is more darker okay one thing we're going to do is throw air tube drive on here throw the flavor [Music] Pro grab some hats from Ricky's [Music] kit see about dropping the pitch of this [Music] kick do the same thing on the snare as [Music] [Music] well iar [Music] you let's once again throw some seasoning on there next up air vintage filter I've actually been really enjoying this one we're going to use the band pass on here going to get rid of the [Music] movements put air thr in [Music] there I hear you I hear you [Music] I [Music] I it's not quite in time with this but it kind of works I hear you call my name [Music] I'm do it like [Music] this here about [Music] itself bit too much of those drums are bleeding through but kind of adding to the vibe you know so I think what I'm going to do throw a granulator on there I kind of want to like blur it [Music] up now air flavor Pro scoop out some lowend bring some of that high end back rid of this gain almost always get rid of the clicks and pums here [Music] it in G minor let's see what the vocals say can't remember what the vocals are it says D Minor hm interesting I'm going to bring this all the way [Music] down see what happens if I pitch it [Music] up that's actually pretty tight [Music] what is this in D Minor [Music] yeah you hear this I he you I [Music] you now we could use a base from the samples could like take a sample and stretch it or we could load up mini D which is probably what I'm going to prefer let's give mini thumbs [Music] one of my [Music] faves iar you iar [Music] you [Music] so I need to decide on some sort of Harmony here there's the implied D Minor to G minor that's going back and forth right now I'm definitely feeling that I typically like to have things go A bit further than just like kind of two bar repeats you know because that's kind of how it feels so I'll I'll usually do like four chords essentially or try to have something that would feel like a four chord phrase that would kind of jump back and forth uh but before we do that I'm going to do do a little more processing in this Basse sound I'm going to take off timing correction as well because I want to retain as much Vibe as possible and then if anything is obviously incorrect I'll go in time corrected individually [Music] let's try it [Music] again feeling it but I need to I need to do some mother Ducker on the kick one me I hear you I hear [Music] you [Music] a [Music] iar [Music] you [Music] okay I need to wrap up this video so interesting being able to take samples from not only your own stuff obviously sampling off YouTube there is some legalities involved in that in that if you sample something off YouTube technically you don't own the copyright to be able to do that if you make something that's banging and then you sell it you're technically breaking the copyright law unless you go and actually contact the people that you sampled from so I just want to throw that out there for transparency sake so you understand uh but it is a cool way of grabbing stuff off the internet should you pick up stems are you sampling off a vinyl already to begin with then I see no reason not to pick it up if you're using a modern NPC and you want to sample and process things so it's kind of a no-brainer and 10 bucks is honestly not that much money thankfully it's not like 60 bucks or something like that the quality of the stem separation is questionable it's probably going to get better over time as well but you know if you're thinking you're going to get like these pristine samples from separating something off of a vinyl record chances are it's going to have a lot of artifacts chances are it's going to sound pretty dirty a lot of bleed through you know but it's definitely better than like eqing stuff out so technically it's your best bet at that point and obviously you could process stuff on the computer with other services I haven't personally looked at those cuz again my workflow doesn't involve that much like stem separation sampling type of stuff from like vinyls or other sampling record or other records but if you are curious about the stem Separation on the NPC I would definitely investigate the other options out there first because you still have to use the software mode on the computer to be able to even access this at the moment now that is going to change down the road in however many months uh so will be available for the hardware Standalone at some point but I'd imagine that the quality is going to to be on the same level of what you're hearing right now but again if you use this type of stuff I see no reason not to just plop down the 10 bucks and activate it for your account and have access to it right away yeah that's it thanks for watching really appreciate it if you enjoy the content and want to support the channel Beyond a like And subscribe then if you're planning on picking up any gear like an NPC ke37 or a synth or anything like that using the affiliate links below helps out the channel so thank you if you do do that let me know if you're going to pick up the stem separation capabilities and yeah I'll see you next time for another one [Music] peace

Channel: Tefty Music Tech

Views: 14,612

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Id: 6D2dC2vQp60

Length: 21min 45sec (1305 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 26 2024