Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.sampler.meiji.industries/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

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Chopping samples

One of life’s great pleasures is taking existing audio and cleverly rearranging and recontextualizing it into brand new music. Chopping turns one long source into many playable moments. We hope chopping samples in Meiji Sampler brings you great joy, truly.

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When to use it

• breakbeats
• melodic phrases
• vocal snippets
• resampled textures

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Why it matters

Chops let you keep the character of a source recording while rearranging it like an instrument. You can also use chops to adjust audio to fit your needs, for example extending a section you like, or adjusting timing to fit your song.

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Core idea

The original file stays intact. Meiji Sampler stores chop and trim behavior as session metadata rather than destructively rewriting the source file.

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Basic flow

1. assign a longer sample to a pad
2. enter chop mode
3. place or adjust markers
4. trigger the segments from pad keys
5. record the result into a loop

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Lazy chopping

Meiji Sampler encourages a “lazy chop” workflow. Lazy chopping is when audio is playing, and markers are entered as the audio is playing based on the location of the playhead when the key is pressed. This is in contrast to other ways to chop, for example entering a numerical offset when the sample begins, or starting with a fixed number of chops across the whole audio file and adjusting the markers. Lazy chopping is an intuitive and musical way to make quick work of any slicing task.

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Intelligent Transient Snap

Intelligent Transient Snap helps you trim and chop at the sounds you can actually hear: kicks, snares, hats, vocal syllables, bass notes, and phrase edges. Instead of nudging the playhead by hand until a hit looks right, you can jump between likely cut points, preview them visually, and then set the trim or chop marker. Use it when you want a slice to start on the first usable hit, when a trim point clicks, or when a long sample has too many possible cut points to scan manually. The navigation feel is inspired by Cool Edit Pro’s fast bracket-key playhead snapping: keep your hand near [ and ], move quickly between hits, and make edit decisions by ear. The marker workflow is inspired by ReCycle’s sensitivity-based transient detection. Raise sensitivity to reveal softer hits, lower it to focus on stronger slice candidates, then use the visible markers as your navigation map.

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Quick controls

Higher sensitivity shows more possible snap points. Lower sensitivity keeps the list stricter. Start at the default, then tap > if Meiji Sampler is skipping quiet ghost notes or soft syllables. Tap < if it is stopping on too many small details.

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Reading ghost markers

Ghost markers are subtle vertical lines behind the waveform. They show where the current snap settings can land before you press Shift+[ or Shift+].

• red markers are low-frequency hits, useful for kicks, bass notes, and low drums
• yellow markers are midrange hits, useful for snares, claps, keys, guitars, and vocal body
• blue markers are high-frequency hits, useful for hats, shakers, consonants, and bright attacks

Press b when the sample is busy and you only care about one part of the sound. For example, choose Lows to move between kick hits in a full drum break, or Highs to find hat and sibilant edges without stopping on every low drum.

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Autochop from markers

When the ghost markers already match the slices you want, press a to place chop markers automatically. Meiji Sampler assigns the first ten accepted transient markers to 1-9,0 in timeline order. Use autochop as a starting point, not a final obligation. If the sensitivity is too low, you may miss useful quiet hits. If it is too high, you may get extra slices. Adjust with < and >, cycle the band with b if needed, then press a again.

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A practical trim workflow

1. Open the trim view for the sample.
2. Zoom until the waveform shows the musical region you want to edit.
3. Press Shift+] to jump to the next useful hit, or Shift+[ to go backward.
4. If the markers feel too sparse or too busy, adjust with Alt+[ or Alt+].
5. Press b if you want to isolate lows, mids, or highs.
6. Press a to autochop the first ten useful markers, or place individual chop markers with 0 through 9.
7. Set the trim start with s and set the trim end with e if you want to narrow the playable region.

If no transient marker is available near the playhead, Meiji Sampler falls back to zero-crossing seek. If there is still no useful target nearby, the status line reports that none was found and leaves the playhead in place. Some terminals report shifted brackets as { and }. Meiji Sampler accepts those keys as the same snap commands.

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Good chopping habits

• place as many markers as you need, but remember you only have 10.
• favour musically meaningful cuts over evenly spaced cuts
• audition chops in rhythm before recording them
• if a chop isn’t perfectly placed on a transient, don’t worry, it might give you a creative swing or groove anyway
• since chops are non-destructive, you can always come back and replace a chop marker later if it’s slightly early or late

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Per-channel chop overrides

When the same file is assigned to multiple channels, each channel can have its own chop markers. Edits made in chop mode or the trim view from a pad context write to that channel’s overrides, not to the shared file defaults. See Per-Channel Playback for details.

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Related pages

• Assign
• Per-Channel Playback
• Chop A Break Into Playable Pads