Play a MIDI, except use a WAV on a single channel

Question

I used Cubase on the Atari ST in the 90s, and now a little bit of GarageBand on the Mac and Maschine/Kontakt, so I do have some understanding about computer DAWs and such but still I cannot find an easy way to do this.

For fun, I wanted to play a song (of which I have the MIDI) but, instead of playing the melody (on channel 4, just to be specific), I want to play a WAV file according to the notes on channel 4.

Suppose the WAV file contains just a "uh", I want to play that "uh" like if the standard WAV corresponds to the central C on the keyboard, and played accordingly depending on the note on channel 4, so that it can "sing".

Basically, instead of sending out a "note on" command on the MIDI port, I want to play my WAV "tuned" to the note on channel 4.

Hope it's clear :)

Thank you

Answer 1

Actually, you still want to use MIDI notes, but you need to send or route them to a software sampler or a hardware MIDI expander (some plugins may even be found named software expanders).

You will first have to load your PCM file into your sampler or expander and configure it so that it sound as you wish.

You then can go further by adding more sounds to get a more interesting result:

• one dedicated sound for every pitch
• multiple sounds per pitch to address different velocities

On this French Wikipedia page, you can have a look at some hardware expanders: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expandeur (be carefull though, the term expander has multiple meanings in music and audio vocabulary)

In an Garage Band environment, you should try the instrument called AUSampler. Ableton Live provides Simpler and Sampler. There are also many free (Zampler RX, Serato Sample, Halion Sonic SE, ...) and non-free (Halion, Kontakt, ...) VSTs available on the internet.