Chop a drum break into one-shots

How to chop a break#

1. Drop the break on the box above, or open seance and press Load audio.
2. Open Slice and press Find the hits. seance marks every onset on the waveform and lists the slices.
3. Too many slices? Move Sensitivity up and only the stronger hits stay. Too few? Move it down.
4. Play any slice on its own, then save the ones you want. Each is a 24-bit WAV.

Why the slices do not click#

A cut in the middle of a waveform makes a click. seance moves every cut forward to the next point where the wave crosses zero, so each slice starts from silence.

How well it finds hits#

seance finds onsets with SuperFlux, an onset detector that ignores the wobble of vibrato. On the eight-second test groove the audio suite plays on every build, it finds 32 hits at the default sensitivity, and every one is within 25 ms of where the groove really hits. It also reads the tempo there as 119.8 BPM for a 120 BPM groove.

Setting the sensitivity#

The default threshold of 1.50 suits most breaks. Move it down towards 0.80 to catch ghost notes and soft hi-hats; on the test groove that turns 32 slices into 44. Move it up towards 4.00 when you only want the kicks and snares. The count next to Slices says how many you have.

seance also shows the tempo it read. Set your sampler or your project to it and the slices line up with the grid again when you play them back.

Take it further#

• Split the break into kick, snare and cymbals first with drum stem separation, then chop the snare stem on its own.
• Play the slices from seance's pattern machine: its sample track triggers the slices of the audio that is open.
• Slow the break down or speed it up with varispeed before you chop it, like on a turntable.