Taking control of SloTone Ultralite

     Taking advantage of the opportunity of the KVR DC Challenge 2018, Midi Mobiles launches for this event SloTone Ultralite in September, 3rd declension of the SloTone bundle dedicated to the soundbank creation and use of these and then completes the Organizer and Player versions available in free download on Midi Mobiles website since early 2018. 
http://www.midimobiles.blogspot.fr)

     These soundbanks were created with SloTone Organizer or were made compatible for SloTone thanks to the "multisound" compilation of digitized musical instruments or existing sound recycling bundled into encapsulated 'Slugs' of sounds to be either played with embedded midi files or midi notes from your sequencer.

     As the name suggests, the software is very light and is free of technical constraints dedicated to the creation of soundbanks to just focus on the performance aspect of SloTone and serve as a rompler adapting to the possibilities of your sequencer to the way of soundfonts with glitch functions still unusual in the world of the MAO.

     This 3rd version consumes less CPU and is compatible for the majority of STAN accepting 32 bit VST plugins. If on the one hand, SloTone Organizer can create a soundbank from A to Z, and display, just like the SloTone Player version, precisely with possibilities of zooming on the waveform, placements of segments ( which will also be called slice) as well as a piano keyboard, SloTone Ultralite will be unloaded and just keep the essentials to be able to create music thanks to the sounds prepared in advance and the templates incorporated in Add-on (will then require SloTone Organizer's Root.bat installation because it only incorporates midi files).

     On the site of Midi Mobiles already exist several banks of sounds compatible SloTone in free download. Take a look …

A. Sliced sound in instrument mode

     SloTone Ultralite has been specifically designed to integrate into a DAW as a 32-bit VSTi instrument. The goal is to compose with the palette of sounds loaded in the plugin. Once the 'slug' loaded, it will be locked and the plugin settings will be saved and reloaded in your project in the state where you left it…

     In this configuration, you chose the sound Bells_plastic_ff.wav of Midi Mobiles Orchestra – Percussion but the slice settings are not loaded yet. At this point, you can only play the sound compiled from beginning to end by pressing the play in the empty capsule to the left of « No Backup Files »

Now press the button Ready to Play !, 

     The capsule then fills with a green liquid and the sound is now ready to be played with your midi keyboard... The play of the capsule will only play the part of the sound corresponding to the F6 note. Thanks to the midi data of your sequencer possibly connected to a keyboard, you will be able to reproduce the sounds polyphonically.

B. Sliced sound in Loop mode

     One of the major assets of SloTone is to be able to use the embedded midi loops (midi templates) encapsulated in sounds (thanks to a .txt hypertext reference appended to the .wav file)

Here now we have loaded the sound BLANKA_1.4_LO.wav included in the Street Fighter II Remix Midi Mobiles soundpack

[…]Street_Fighter_II_Remix_MidiMobiles_soundpack\Street_Fighter_II_Loop\Loop\Blanka_1.4_LO.wav

Although ready to play ! Enabled, the .backup capsule is not filled since there was no Copy Backup performed on SloTone_Organizer (useless with Loop files)

     Now press Play midi file and you will see that the sound starts jerky. Indeed, the sound was segmented into 64 slices. You must play the sound at a tempo of 150 as indicated on the sample tempo. So right-click on 'SloTone Tempo' and choose 'Sample Tempo'. The tempo will immediately be set to 150.

Then start reading the midi file again and notice the difference...

Avoid changing the sound file when a midi file is played although the last update 0.6 uses a system of delays to avoid the crashes that can result, the effect is not very pleasant to hear ...

To import these midi files into your sequencer, load the midi file indicated in the midi templates / ADSR panel

In the image above, we will locate the midi file in the templates directory of SloTone Organizer :

[...]\SloTone_Organizer\templates\midifiles\4m64.mid

On SloTone_Ultralite, the only thing you can edit in this midi file is the index. For example, try a Randomize ID between 49 (C2) and 112 (or other values). Activate the Loop mode and play with the release of the ADSR, change the tempo and the pitch offset. You now have a new original sound recycled from the old stripped in a rather psychedelic way...

In Cubase, for example, it will be necessary to do [File] - [Import midi file] - and select this file to incorporate it into your current project...

You will take good care afterwards to put the lunch item on the right track and to connect the midi out of the midi track to SloTone_Ultralite ...

I let you now discover the other functions by yourself hoping to stir in you curiosity pending the next events. If you want more documentation on SloTone and fill up soundbanks, I invite you to take a quick look at the Midi Mobiles website (http://www.midimobiles.blogspot.fr)

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