Chris (aka Carbinax) is an electronic music imagineer from Belfast, formerly known as 2ndMOUSE until 2016. Modern electronic music is oddly shy about upfront melodies and this is what makes Carbinax stand apart as evocative, imaginative melodies are a key element of the Carbinax sound, along with all manner of unusual and experimental beats. Chris writes about Atlas, by Algonaut—”A drum sampler powered with AI that is the fastest way to find great samples and make creative beats.”
Atlas—part of the musical process
Atlas wasn’t an obvious choice for me. I can’t remember when it sneaked in under my radar, but it has proved to be indispensable ever since I made the decision to try out the demo. If you’re anything like me, you have folders full of one-shot drum samples, and probably have hundreds of thousands of snares, kicks, hi-hats, claps etc—and when it comes to choosing one of these, it’s a laborious task of endless clicking to preview them in the hope that you’ll eventually find the right one. When you’re in the zone, in full flow, this can really slam the brakes on that sense of urgency when you’re trying to get the music from A (your mind) to B (your screen) as efficiently as possible. This is where Atlas can make a huge difference, and become as much a part of the musical process as any other instrument.
Atlas is, essentially, a very slick sample mapper, and when you open it for the first time, you will see a welcome pack, courtesy of Sample Magic, with a fine selection of various drum samples, but you will have also have an option to “Create New Map” by adding a folder where your drum samples live on your drive. Atlas will then scan the contents of the folder and you will have your first map—hence the name “Atlas.” Scanning folders is a quick process as drum samples are so short, so in no time at all, you can have maps of anything you like, from a map of a folder containing nothing but bongos, or a folder containing whole kits from other Drum Machines, and all nicely categorized. Besides the satisfaction of seeing all those samples displayed graphically as a colour gradient map, there are many new options that become available at this point.
You can drag individual samples from the main screen onto custom resizable kit slots. The kit can be anything from a simple 1×8 (Beatstep ) a 4×4 (Maschine), or an 8×8 (Launchpad). It’s worth pointing out that these layouts don’t require any particular hardware controller. Each sound then has basic controls for Gain, Shape, Filter, Pitch and Pan. These are lockable, and won’t change if you load in a different kit.There are some sub-options such as filter shape too. As well as this , there are further controls hidden when you click “advanced”—You can then tweak the attack and release times, gate it, flip the phase, or set up a choke group.
Happy accidents
The real fun for me happens when you build a rhythm from various samples, and then hit “New Kit” which will load in a random selection from the folder. You could end up with a mixture of things you wouldn’t have consciously chosen, and if you like, say, 3 out of 16 of those samples, you can lock those three in place, hit “New Kit” again, and the other 13 slots will have new sounds, but the three you locked will have been preserved.
I personally have maps of all my drum libraries from Maschine, Battery, Spark etc—and I can load a kit from any combination of these maps, so the potential for rhythmic “happy accidents” makes it really exciting to use. This, for me, is one of the major selling points. You can then easily save any of these combinations as custom kits for work in different genres.
Atlas feels very smooth to work with, and it’s obvious it’s been coded very well. The only thing that’s missing is the “ssssh-a-ka” sound from Star Trek’s Enterprise, as windows slide effortlessly from one to another. I was super-impressed with it straightaway, and it finds its way into many of my projects now.
So, to sum up, if the thought of clicking through endless folders takes the wind out of your sails, Atlas can make the process of locating sounds fun again, and you’ll make the most of your sample library, and find drum samples you didn’t even realise you had, or had forgotten about.
Atlas is available from Algonaut.
Imagineer, the latest release by Carbinax, is also out now.
