keyboard button, and that button’s
sample will play. However, first you must
turn on this mode, as well as turn up
this sample’s volume. Starting with the
volume, the empty circle to the immediate right is actually a volume knob.
Clicking and dragging inside the circle
turns up the volume. However, unless
you’ve pressed the Play button, there
still will be no sound; you have to
enable Oneshot mode.
The next control to the right, with the
small circle inside the square, is the key
to operating Giada. Click the button,
and you’ll have a choice of looping
modes, or Oneshot “basic”, “press” and
“retrig”. Choose basic, press the key,
and at last, a sound plays!
With this basic mode, you press a key
and a sample plays until it’s finished—
pretty basic. But, you also can interrupt
the sample by pressing the key again.
With the “press” option, you have to
hold down the key to play the sample,
and as soon as you release it, the
sample stops. The “retrig” option (and
this is the functionality I’ve been chasing)
plays a sample upon pressing a key,
but pressing again restarts the sample
whether or not the sample has finished.
You even can keep thrashing away at
the key for instant response, which is
handy for playing hi-hat notes or ripping
up a waveform.
Loop mode: this is the second mode,
and perhaps the most conventional.
When Giada is actually playing, choosing
56 | SEPTEMBER 2011 WWW.LINUXJOURNAL.COM
either “Loop . basic” or “Loop . once”
plays a sample on the next bar along. In
order to use this, press the Play button
near the top-left corner, then press each
sample’s button to activate/deactivate
it on the next bar. The “basic” option
simply keeps the sample looping until
you turn it off manually; the “once”
option plays a sample until it’s finished,
and then starts it again at the beginning
of the next bar.
