How to make a Piano Sample Library: The Programming Process in Logic Pro X Sampler

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Go behind the scenes with Carson Bruce as he breaks down the process of building a custom piano sample library inside Logic Pro. From organizing samples and velocity layers to programming release triggers, pedal sounds, and multi-mic setups, this episode is packed with practical tips for producers, worship musicians, and sound designers looking to create more realistic virtual instruments. If you want to improve your sampling workflow and learn how professional piano libraries come together, this episode is for you. Watch the full episode on YouTube and don’t miss out!

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Welcome to the Worship Keys podcast. My name is Carson Bruce. We talk all things music theory, gear, industry, and ministry for your worship keys playing. I'd like to thank Aerospace Audio for being a sponsor of this episode. They create unique incredible high quality atmospheric drone pads to be used for your worship services, productions, songwriting sessions, whatever it may be. They have an analog physical drone pedal that they call atmosphere. There's actually a version three out. They also have a MIDI end capability, so you can work in tandem with Ableton Live or any other dog that you have to be able con to control everything through that ecosystem. Or if not the physical analog pedal. They also have an iOS app that you can run the pad straight from your iPhone or iPad. It's called Aero Pads. Definitely check them out, aerospace audio.com and let's get into today's episode. In today's video, we're gonna be talking about exporting your samples and programming them into Logic Pro Sampler plugin. Alright, so in previous videos we went over the recording process of the piano samples and the editing and exporting process of your piano sample library. So I just wanna talk a little bit about organization within your computer after you have exported your files. When you go to export them, what you'll want to do is to create a folder, kinda like what I have right here. For my example, I'm gonna go to a folder that I titled Bauer Final Samples. And this piano was from the late 18 hundreds, and it's called the j Bauer and Company. So I just labeled it Bauer Final Samples. So within this whole folder, there are six different other folders, and they all contain my final piano samples. So. This folder that says CAD are the samples from the stereo CAD mics. If I click on CAD you brings you to either the felt samples or the regular piano samples under the felt you can see that it's labeled all correctly. Here I have the note name felt, the brand of the piano, which is BC for short and CAD, labeled as so for regular. I have soft, medium, loud velocities. Again, in each of these folders, they're labeled with the note name, the velocity layer, the brand of the piano. So within each of these, you actually have the note name. Regular stands for regular piano as opposed to felt, and then you have the brand of the piano, the velocity layer, and then the name of the microphone. So all right here, same thing for the close microphone, you have felt in regular and different dynamic layers under that, you have the rode stereo microphones that were above the piano and you have the Pro 30 sevens, which is audio technical. You have felt regular. And then I also have, two additional folders for this particular piano, and it's the pedal samples and the release trigger samples. All right here. And what's important about this particular piano is that I used seven microphones on this piano. And so that's why there are so many, uh, folders in this one. So really it was essentially three stereo pairs and an additional microphone. So I had a stereo pair at the front of the micro, uh, at the front of the pianos, a stereo microphone. Above the piano and a stereo mic on the backside of the upright piano kind of down below. And then I also had a clip on condenser microphone that I attached more to the action to get more of the attack of the hammer. So that's why, that's where all of these samples come from. And then also what really makes your piano library really realistic are your pedal samples and your release triggers. So let's talk about that for a moment. Pedal. Folder here. You see, I did multiple pedal down and pedal up samples. I would go hard and soft to gimme a little variation. And then for release triggers, I did basically 12 of these starting at c and worked my way up all the way to f up there in the circle of fifths. I basically pressed down the key, waited and then. Lift it up the key and, uh, get these release triggers that really makes your piano sample library very realistic. I didn't, um, have the opportunity to do quite this many samples on every piano in my piano sample library, but this one, I was able to do all of that. So anyway, just wanted, take a moment to tell you how I organize that in my folders. Alright, so let's talk about programming these samples within Logic Pro X. So basically I have this blank session open. I named it Sample demo. There's nothing here yet. So what you'll wanna do is here in Logic, you'll want to create a new software instrument instead of default patch or whatever you have. Um, you'll want to choose. Sampler multis sample. And for my sake, I'm choosing stereo. They also, they have the capabilities of just doing mono stereo, multi output, or 5.1. So let's do stereo create. We'll go ahead and delete this track. Okay? So go ahead and label that. Alright. So there's nothing, there's no samples here yet. Let's click over here in the channel strip. Alright, so let's click on mapping, and this is where we're gonna drop our audio files right on into here. So let's go to folder and go to your folder where all of your samples are. So the Bower final samples, for example, I'm going to use these. We can either build the felt piano or the regular piano. I'm gonna use the regular piano as my example. And this concept will apply to any piano sample library that you want to build. So I'm gonna do the p the regular piano, since it has three velocity layers. So I'm gonna first start with the CAD microphones regular. We're gonna start with the softer velocity. So basically highlight all of them. All you gotta do is drag them into your sampler. Make sure it stays on one group. It's gonna import those. Alright, now this is pretty important to do. Select all these. Double click it. Right, click it. Once those are all selected, go to zone and then auto map and then what you can do is select auto map using root note from audio file names. This is why it was so important to name all of the samples correctly when you exported them, because in logic it can actually map it to the root names. Now it also has pitch detection, so if you don't want to label it and you want logic to find the pitches and map them to that, you can also definitely do that. I've tried that a few times and it wasn't as accurate as the root note from the audio file name, but you can definitely do either option. So I'm gonna use this root note from audio file names and you'll see that it just switched it up. So then you need to come over here to the lowest one, chop it off at that A, the lowest A right there. And then you need to go to this top one. And chop it off with a c. Reason that's important is because some of these notes down here control your pedal and we'll get into that here, in just, just a little bit. So basically, these are all evenly spaced out, but before you drop in the next velocity layer, you need to grab all of these. And since there's gonna be three velocity layers, you want this to be a third. So leave it right there. Alright, so once that's done, go back to your folder, go to Medium Velocity layer. Same exact thing. Drag these in here. They're importing. Doesn't take long at all. Uh, they're not mapped yet. You gotta go to Zone Auto Map Auto Map using root note from audio file names. It's gonna do the same thing. Make sure to clean the lowest C up and the highest f. Then grab the medium velocity layer. There we go. Made the second, third. Go back to your folder, go to the loudest velocity. Select all of these samples, drag them in zone auto map. Using root name from the audio files. There we go. Now, if you had any complications and you did not label these right, it will not work correctly. So make sure to do that. And again, if you want to, you can just use the note detection if you trust that. And then you can glance and make sure everything looks the same. D one, D one, D one A, one E, E two. Everything's matched up like it should be matched up. Alright, so there we go. Um, I'm gonna label that group regular notes. Here we go. All right, so that is just your regular piano from the cad. Then the next thing you'll want to do is , play around with the envelope, amplification, the velocity layer, and you can play it on your MIDI keyboard and see how you like the sound and how it responds, to what you're doing. But, once you get all these samples in, you can save this into your sampler instruments. I'm just gonna save it as CAD sample. Demo. I am actually gonna label it BC because it's the name of the Bauer Company. CAD Sample Demo. All right, save that. So now this is saved as this. So I like it. I like it. The next thing to do, I'm just gonna go ahead and duplicate this. Go to sampler again. Go to mapping. So that was just the first little step here of creating your Bower sample. 'cause that was just the velocity layers just within your CAD microphones. Now we gotta do the same process again for the road microphones, the Pro 37 Audi from Audio Technica and the close mics, and then the final touches. We'll do release triggers and pedal. So yeah, let's keep going. Let's go to the road stereo microphone folder. Let's go to the regular. Uh, let's go to our soft velocity layer. Again, doing the same thing we just did with the CADs, dragging them in. Now, uh, this came up. I don't like how it made two separate groups, so see those extra two accidentally got over there. If that happens, I just start over again and to make sure it stays all within this one group. It's gonna be important later on that that happens. Highlight these all again. Zone auto map. Root note from audio file names. Boom. Drag that over The lowest A there highest C there. All right. And then I'm drag it down to be a third. So once you get the soft velocity of the roads, go to Medium. Highlight all of those. Drag those in zone Auto map, auto map, using root note from the audio files. It does it itself. All right, so if you notice on the far right here, the F six is, well before we do that, I'm gonna go ahead and take this down to that next third. Alright. Now if you notice there's two of these, because in our sample, I guess, I had two of those that were good. You can actually just use it as just split the medium velocities, just like that. We'll want to bring these in as well. Awesome. We're gonna go to the loudest velocity layer. I'm gonna drag these in again, zone auto map using root note from the audio files. All right. Now let's notice this here we have some complications. All right, so G Sharp should be right there. F three needs to be here. C sharp needs to, sometimes you have to double check these things. It doesn't always get it right. That C sharp is not correct right there. I am gonna bring in F Sharp and C3 again, and you'll probably have these errors too. Doesn't always get it right. C sharp, F sharp three. B two. Drag that out. Okay. C chart four. Again, going slowly is the key. C four. Okay. See, what I did was I ra labeled it wrong. I labeled it as C3. It's supposed to be CC four. Once I realized that, that's where it's supposed to go. So again, there's my mistake on that. So labeling them correctly, we'll help you in the long run. So that was my bad on that. So anyway, now this is done. So let's save this. As the road sampler demo. So there we go. That is saved. Now, let's label that here to road. Let's label this cad. Alright, we're moving right along. Let's duplicate that. And we're gonna do this for the Pro 37 stereo pairs. Go back to the sampler mapping. Let's delete those. Alright, so for the Pro 30 sevens, again, we're doing the same thing. Doing the same thing that we just did. Uh, pro 30 sevens regular soft. And even though some of this is repetitive, um. Like I said, again, it's still worth it to go slowly and make sure that it's all done correctly the first time before moving on to another step. So if you're still struggling on that first step, keep working with it to get it correct. Again, we're auto mapping this trimming off to that lowest A, the highest C, selecting all of this. Let's go to that lowest third velocity. Go into medium velocity. Highlighting all dragging in zone auto map using root note, the audio file. Again, I have, uh, multiple F six layers up top, so I'm just gonna split those between the medium. All right, go to loud. So the last velocity layer here on our regular samples zone auto map using root note. All right, so we are going to save ads and save this Pro 37 into our sampler instruments. That's where it's going so we can recall this later. Alright. So we got three, three of the stereo pair microphones into samplers. So far. Again, our piano sample for this, uh, Bower and company piano is not yet complete. We are just, uh, a few steps in. Alright, so on this, uh, fourth step here now just striking in all the soft layers of the close mic, importing those zone auto map. Using root note. Again, this will become muscle memory. Once you do a few of these, you'll go pretty fast. Trimming the edges off here, the lowest a highest C. All right, medium velocity. Get these layers going. Zone Auto map using root note name of the audio file. Trimming that up. I'm gonna give myself some more room here. There we go. Okay. That down to the next third, again, doesn't have to be exactly a third if you don't want it to be. you can play with around with these later, but for right now, we're just putting all of the samples in before we even play it. All right, loud velocity again. Highlighting all, bringing them all in auto map, using the root note names. There we go. So we're gonna save this as close microphone say close into our sampler instruments folder. Save that. Alright, relabel this close. Alright, so now we have four. We're fourth. So now all four of those are done. Our next step, again, duplicate these. Here we go. Go into sampler again. Go into mapping, delete that. Alright, so all we have left now are our pedal and release trigger folders. Those are the last things that will need to be mapped. So we're gonna map this as its own little instrument as well, so that we can control the volume on these samples. So your pedal samples can really just be whatever you want them to be. I have multiple layers, multiple different options, but you definitely want a pedal down and a pedal up. So anyway, I'm going to use the different layers that I have. I'm gonna just put them in and just bear with me. I'll explain these in a minute. Well, you wanna do your pedal down first? Pedal down, 2, 3, 4, 5. Okay. I have five of these. Just drop anywhere. Alright, so this one you won't be matching up with the root name, but you will be. Making it skinny, it'll just be on one in particular, one note in particular. So I'm gonna organize mine according to the velocity layer that I recorded it at. So that's my smallest one. Then it's this one. And so basically make them skinny and see negative one is the midi. Note that logic sampler recognizes as the pedal that will trigger your pedal, uh, when you use it on your MIDI controller. So what you wanna do is stack these according to the velocity layer that you want. Awesome. So those pedal downs are there on C negative one, pedal up. Bring those in. Again, you don't have to have five velocity layers. I do. You can just have one if you want to and it'll still work. This mini note needs to be I right here at D Sharp negative one. I don't know why it's these mini, mini values, but these are the mini values that it will work. Width. Again, I'm just layering them according to my velocity layers that I've made. Making it skinny, just dragging it over. Probably make that a little smaller. All right, so then those are on there. Put this to pedal Save as BC pedal sample demo. That's an actual instrument. We've made it into a sampler instrument. Label that as pedal. Duplicate that now the last little sampler we're gonna make. It has to do with our release triggers, which I'm just gonna call rt, go to sample mapping. We're gonna erase these release triggers and I have one through 10. I have 10 of these. These really don't matter, uh, exactly where you put them, except you don't want them to be where your pedal was so. I would put them. There we go. Spread them out like that. You might wanna spread this out a little more. Alright, so it covers the whole thing. There we go. Alright, so over here on the far right it has a section that says release trigger and it's currently off, but you want to turn that on and you wanna turn your decay on and put the time up pretty high. And you want to make sure again, that the release trigger is on for the release triggers you want them to be on. So instead of triggering when you press down the note, it will be triggered every time you release the MIDI note. So as long as that's on and it's mapped to all of the keyboard, there we go. Then that's good. That is good. Like it. Okay. And then we're gonna save that as. RT for release triggers. So that is a sampler instrument now. So now we have CADs Roads Pro Three Seven, close Pedal and rt. So those are all representative of the folders that we have in our sample folder here. CADs, clothes Pedal Pro 37, release Sugars and Road. You want them all to be. Sampler instruments. Now we have made them into individual instruments. What we want to do now is to create a, track stack. We don't wanna make a folder stack. We wanna make a summing stack so that it's gonna be one instrument altogether. So that you can just press on this and all these will be triggered and you can control which ones you want. So if you don't like the pedal noises or you don't like the release trigger noises, you can adjust the volume, but it's still just controlled by this one. MIDI capability here. So yeah, you can see these are all being triggered. You can just kind of naturally hear it from the computer speakers. So if I was to solo all up this, uh, release trigger and you listen really carefully. There we go. You can hear the release triggers, and it looks like we're missing some content from up top, so you can go back into your sampler, stretch the release trigger even farther so that when you hit those high notes, there we go. It's still getting them. Very nice. Very, very nice. Is your piano. So of course it'll be better if you have a midi controller can test it out in the playability. But yeah, that is it. And then I will name this BC for Bauer Company. There we go. Awesome. So now this is. Our, new piano, and it is working. So if everything sounds correct, then you have done the right job. If something is not sounding right, you just need to go into each individual sampler instrument and adjust your samples. And, sometimes if different notes are clashing, maybe you label something wrong and you need to go back and double check that. So that's basically how you make your own piano sample within Logic Pro Sampler. And then because of this, you can actually save this exact instrument if you press save to the left. On the instrument, it immediately goes to your instrument folder. If it's not already, you need to go to Logic Pro, you know, music Logic Pro, go to your patches folder instrument and I'm gonna name it BC Sample Demo. I can save that so that if I were to let's say I wanted to pull it up in a different session. I am gonna create this new channel here that doesn't have anything loaded up. Go to, uh, user patches saved it in under BC sample demo. Here we go. There they are saved. So thanks so much for watching, guys. I hope this was beneficial. If you have any questions, comment and let me know. This is my way of doing it. If there's a better way, please let me know. Always down to learning, uh, new methods and new ways from other people as well. So thanks so much and see you guys in the next video.