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Fabla

Fabla is an open-source LV2 drum sampler plugin instrument. It is ideal for loading up your favorite sampled sounds and bashing away on a MIDI controller. Or if it’s crafty beat programming your after that’s cool too! The ADSR envelope allows the shaping of hi-hats and kicks while the compressor beefs up the sound for thumping kicks!

Note

The source code is available from the Fabla page on Github but your package manager probably has a pre-compiled version!


Sampling

Fabla is a simple sampler, which loads an audio file (.wav or similar) and can play it back when MIDI notes are sent to it. Fabla does not have fancy features like layers, per-pad FX, or advanced routing. OpenAV is working on Fabla2, which will include those features, however it is not ready for use by musicians yet.

For creating electronic drums or heavily sampled music genres like hip-hop, reggae and dnb, Fabla’s features are enough to create music. If you want to simulate acoustic drums, DrumGizmo is the plugin to use, or Hydrogen for a stand-alone app.

Pads

Fabla uses the concept of pads to load audio samples. There are 16 pads in the main view of Fabla, each of which can load a single .wav sample. To load a sample, right click on the pad, and browse to the sample you want to have loaded. Fabla will load the file from disk, and clicking the pad will now result in the sample being played back. The waveform display at the top will show the waveform of the sample that was just played.

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ADSR

The ADSR available in the top right of the GUI allows shaping of each pads envelope. When a pad is clicked on, the ADSR shows the currently highlighted pad in orange (see GIF animation to right). As new pads are clicked, the ADSR updates to control that sample.

Presets

Fabla supports presets through the LV2 State extension, which most LV2 hosts support. If you have a preset (with shareable, royalty-free samples) and you’d like to contribute it to OpenAV, please get in contact!

Currently Fabla comes bundled with four presets:
  • fablaHardElectro
  • fablaSavageDrums
  • fablaEasternHop
  • fabla808

Conclusion

Fabla is a capable sample-playback tool, and allows making of electronic beats as well as sampling existing content and arranging it into new songs. If you like Fabla, and you’re techie and interested in Fabla2, it is possible to compile the Fabla2 source and test it yourself! Any questions, do get in contact OpenAV and we’ll try help you as much as we can!