Ninjas 2

a 'Clearly Broken :tm:' Sample Slicer

Rewrite of Ninjas, a sample slicer audio plugin. This plugin uses the DPF for the creation of audio plugins in lv2 and vst2 formats. A stand alone jack app is also compiled

Goal:

Easy to use sample slicer, quick slicing of sample and auto-mapping slices to midi note numbers.

Intended usage:

Primarily targeted at chopping up loops or short ( ≈ 10 - 20 seconds) samples. Think drum loops, vocal chops etc. Currently there's no limit on imported sample length. User can play the slices using midi notes and change the pitch with midi pitchbend.

Downloads:

Linux, Windows and Mac binaries for several architectures are available here. There are no installers, just unzip and copy the plugin to an appropiate location.

New Features

• redesigned interface
  • controls are grouped in Global, Slicing and Slice
  • the Slice box shows the currently selected slice number
• keyboard
  • click on key to play slice
  • red dot on key indicates which slice is currently selected in the waveform display
  • keys that don't have a slice mapped to them are greyed out

Known Bugs and limitations

• some host don't work very well with the lv2 version
  • zrythm and qtractor had trouble with the lv2 version but worked fine with the vst
  • ardour, carla and muse3 worked well with the lv2
• care should be taken when automating the playmodes and adsr
  • the automation is sent to the currently played note (slice), when multiple slices are played this leads to "undefinied behaviour"

Features:

• Implemented:

  • load samples in audio formats as provided by libsndfile
  • load mp3
  • Ninjas2 is 128 voice polyphonic
  • highlight slice when midi note is received
  • maximum of 128 slices
    • slices 0 to 67 are mapped to midi note 60 to 127
    • slices 68 to 127 are mapped to midi note 0 to 58
  • slices can me snapped to onsets as detected by aubio
  • each slice has ADSR
  • each slice has 4 playmodes :
    • one shot forward
    • one shot reverse
    • loop forward
    • loop reverse
  • pitching of samples (+/- 12 semitones) via midi pitchbend
  • user editable slice start and end points
  • note: slices can not overlap
  • dragging the top marker edits both start and end point, keeping the slices continuous
  • dragging the bottom markers edits the start or end point of a slice.
  • programs : store and retrieve up to 16 configurations of slices
  • normal click restores state
  • shift click copies current state to new location
  • play marker in waveform display
  • add/remove slices in waveform display : double click within 10 px of slice start/end to add or remove slice

• To be implemented:

  • exponential curves in ADSR
  • adding a bar:beat:ticks ruler for easier lining up slice points
  • control for setting per slice pitch offset

• Possibly implemented

  • timestretch and pitch samples using rubberband

Build instructions

Dependencies

• libgl1-mesa-dev
• libx11-dev
• libsndfile1-dev
• libsamplerate0-dev

If you want a standalone jack binary install either libjack-dev or libjack-jackd2-dev

git clone --recursive https://github.com/rghvdberg/ninjas2.git
cd ninjas2
make
make install (optional)

If you choose not to use the make install, you can copy the binaries from /path/to/ninjas2/bin/ to an appropiate location, typically ~/.vst or /usr/lib/vst on linux.