Tutorial 11: Playing Custom Samples

You can use your own samples by simply dropping audio files into the existing FoxDot sample directories. These are found in the 'snd' directory in the root of the FoxDot installation (e.g., 'C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\FoxDot\snd').

You saw earlier how to work with samples using play(). You can also play samples with loop().

s1 >> loop('foxdot')

You may notice that this is just playing the first part of the sample over and over again. You can tweak the behavior with many of the arguments we've seen thus far for controlling other synths. dur is a good place to start.

s1 >> loop('foxdot', dur=4)

If you have a folder full of samples that you would like to use in FoxDot, you can call loop() with the full path to the sample.

s1 >> loop('/path/to/samples/quack.wav')

If you give loop the path to a folder, it will play the first sample it finds. You can change which sample it plays with the sample= arg.

Play the first sample in my collection

s1 >> loop('/path/to/samples')

Play the second sample in my collection

s1 >> loop('/path/to/samples', sample=1)

If you're going to be using a lot of samples from a folder, you can add it to the sample search path. FoxDot will look under all its search paths for a matching sample when you give it a name.

Samples.addPath('/path/to/samples')
s1 >> loop('quack')

Once you have a search path, you can use pattern matching to search for samples.

Play the 3rd sample under the 'snare' dir

s1 >> loop('snare/*', sample=2)

You can use * in directory names too

s1 >> loop('*_120bpm/drum*/kick*')

** means "all recursive subdirectories". This will play the first sample nested under 'percussion' (e.g. 'percussion/kicks/classic/808.wav')

s1 >> loop('percussion/**/*')