Bashery Studio

START FROM STYLE KEY CHORDS BPM BARS GRID

YOU HEAR SOUND SYNTH

How to draw

Tap to place a note. Tap it again to take it away. Drag it sideways to make it longer, up and down to move it. The strip along the bottom is how hard each note is played.

Or use the keys, on whichever note is ringed. ↑ ↓ move it, ← → shift it in time, shift with those changes its length, A accents, S slides, delete removes.

The rows are not fixed pitches, they are degrees of whichever chord the song is on. Draw on 3 and you get the third of that chord, minor where the chord is minor, so one line follows the whole progression and changing key moves it for you.

A pack has to carry its own sound. A phone cannot run your plugins, but it can play recordings - so this plays an instrument one note at a time up the keyboard, records each one, and writes them into a single file with a map saying which recording covers which key and what pitch it was played at.

That file is a SoundFont, and it is why a pack made here sounds like your instrument on somebody else’s kit. The map is the part that matters. A folder of WAVs is a pile of files; a SoundFont is the pile plus the instructions, so a note you never recorded still plays, shifted from its nearest neighbour.

It points at each control in turn and moves on when you have done it.

1 Where the sound comes from
2 Which part plays it
3 Record it up the keyboard
4 Take it

SOUND FROM ONTO SYNTH

How much to sample

LOW HIGH EVERY semis HOLD s TAIL s RELEASE s

RELEASE is how long a note takes to fade once you let go, and it is the instrument’s, not the recording’s - a long one on a plucked sound smears it, a short one on a pad cuts it off.

EVERY is the one that matters. A note every few semitones is what a sampled instrument has always been - the map fills in the rest by shifting the nearest recording, and a couple of semitones of shift is inaudible on almost anything.

Every 12 — small and quick. Fine for pads and anything soft.
Every 6 — the default. Right for most things.
Every 3 — for a plucked or struck sound, where a big shift stretches the attack and starts sounding like a different instrument.

HOLD is how long the note is held down and TAIL is how much of the ring to keep after letting go. A sound that sustains needs less hold than you think - a pack is not a recording of a performance.

or no instrument yet Pick where the sound comes from, then sample it.

THE SAMPLES

Sample	Plays at	Covers	Velocity	Level	Length	Holds

Plays at is the note each recording was made at, and everything else follows from it - get one wrong and that stretch of the keyboard plays at the wrong pitch. A name that says its note is believed; otherwise the pitch is heard from the audio, and the column tells you which happened.

Two samples set to the SAME note become velocity layers of it - the quieter recording answers soft hits and the louder one answers hard ones, so the instrument changes tone with how hard it is played rather than only volume.

Use a VST you already own

No browser can run a VST. So this page plays yours over MIDI, listens to what comes back, and cuts the recording into an instrument.

this page → MIDI → your DAW → your VST → audio → loopback → back here

Make a MIDI port for this page to send to.
Make a loopback so this page can hear your computer.
In your DAW, put the plugin on a track. Track input is the MIDI port, DAW output is the loopback.
Back here, press ALLOW AUDIO IN, pick both, press SAMPLE.

	1. MIDI port	2. Loopback
macOS	IAC Driver, in Audio MIDI Setup. Tick Device is online.	BlackHole
Windows	loopMIDI, add one port	VB-Cable
Linux	Any ALSA virtual port	Already there. Pick the monitor source.

Your DAW’s latency does not matter and nothing needs measuring. Every note is recorded with room around it, then trimmed to where the sound really starts.

Every note silent — the MIDI is not arriving, or the input picked is not the loopback.
Gated or pumping — that is a real microphone, not the loopback.
Gaps in the notes — keep this tab in front. Browsers slow down pages in the background.

Free plugins worth sampling

Anything that runs in your DAW can go in a pack. These are free, from the people who made them, and they cover the ground a pack usually needs.

The thing to know before you pick one. A sample is one frozen instant of a sound. Whatever a patch does over eight seconds - the slow filter, the drifting detune, the sequenced arp - is recorded once and then repeats identically on every note. So the patches that sample well are the ones that hold still. Pick the plainest version of the sound you want and let Bashery’s own treatments move it.

Plugin	Good for	How it samples
Podolski	Warm analogue leads and basses	Very well. Small, plain, one oscillator - turn the arp off first.
Triple Cheese	Comb-filtered oddities, hollow keys	Well. Nothing in it drifts.
Zebralette	Rich single-oscillator pads	Well, on a held patch. Its slow morphs do not survive sampling.
Surge XT	Almost anything, and a huge factory library	Well if you avoid the evolving presets. Open source.
Vital	Modern wavetable basses and leads	Well on a static patch. Its whole appeal is movement, so choose carefully.
TAL-NoiseMaker	Classic virtual-analogue, chunky basses	Very well. Plain by design.
Full Bucket	Faithful Korg PS, Poly-800 and DW models	Very well. Old synths hold still, which is the point of them.
Dexed	DX7 bells, e-pianos, basses	Very well - and Bashery has its own DX7 engine if you would rather not sample.
sforzando	Playing SFZ libraries you already own	Perfectly. This is the one for turning a sample library into a pack.
OB-Xd	Oberheim brass and strings	Very well. Free for non-commercial use, so mind that for a pack you sell.

Every one of these is linked to the people who made it. Plenty of good plugins are passed around on file lockers instead, and some of those are commercial software that somebody re-uploaded - worth knowing whose work you are putting in a pack, especially one you intend to sell. And check it is 64-bit, or your DAW will not load it at all.

Load a plugin into this page

Web Audio Modules are plugins built for the browser, so unlike a VST one runs right here, editor and all. Nothing is bundled with this site, so it is your copy under whatever licence it came with.

PLUGIN URL

It has to be served over https with CORS allowed, which is a rule of the browser and not of this page. One running in here needs no MIDI cable and no loopback, and it samples faster than it plays.

THE SYNTHS

NOVA-6

THE SAMPLES