Definitions - E-Mu ESI-32 Operation Manual

Definitions

How the ESI-32 Organizes Sounds
Sure, you're anxious to start coaxing wonderful sounds from the instru-
ment—but the following is a necessary part of learning how to play the
ESI-32. It is important to understand how the ESI-32 organizes sounds
in order to make best use of the instrument in the shortest possible time.
Many terms will be introduced now that show up later in the manual.
You can think of the ESI-32 as resembling a collection of sound-organiz-
ing modules, all contained within an the ESI-32 bank. Pathways indicate
how information flows within the ESI-32. Let' s take a closer look at what
makes up this information, and how it is transferred from one section of
the instrument to another. We'll start with individual samples, then work
our way through the system.
The Sample
Loading in any sound in mono or stereo creates a sample, the raw
material with which the ESI-32 works. The total available sampling time
can be divided up any way you like—one long sample, lots of short
samples, a few medium samples, or any combination thereof.
The term sample commonly means two different things:
1. A digital recording of a complete sound, or
2. Each snapshot of the sound that makes up the complete sample.
Confusing? You bet! In this manual, we'll assume sample means the
complete recorded sound unless indicated otherwise.
You can modify a raw sample in several ways:
• Transposition: A sample can be transposed up or down in pitch to
cover a particular range of the keyboard. By doing this, it is not
necessary to record a sample for every key.
• Digital Processing: In the ESI-32, Digital Processing might consist of
Looping a sample (allowing even short samples to play indefinitely),
Truncating (cutting off unneeded parts of a sample, thus saving
memory), or any of a number of digital processes that actually
change the raw sample data.
• Dynamic Processing: Just as synthesizers include signal processors
(filter, voltage-controlled amplifier, envelope generators, LFO, and
so on) to modify the sounds produced by the synth' s oscillators, the
ESI-32 includes similar modules for modifying the sound of samples
or combinations of samples.
The Preset
As mentioned above, a sample can be assigned to a single note on the
keyboard, or transposed polyphonically to cover a wider keyboard
range. A preset is one entire keyboard setup. The process of assigning,
and optionally transposing, samples to specific ranges of the keyboard is
called making a preset. Making a preset is a three-step process:
11
Intro/Basic Setup