From Loop to Instrument: Sample Slice & Auto Instrument in Buhr Looper

Most loopers let you replay what you recorded. Buhr Looper lets you re-play it — as in, pick it back up and perform it as a brand-new instrument. Two features make that happen: Sample Slice turns a loop into drum pads, and Auto Instrument turns it into a melodic, pitched instrument. Record once; play it forever, differently.

Sample Slice: your loop becomes a pad bank

Lay down a beat, a vocal phrase, a guitar riff — anything with rhythm. Hit Sample Slice and Buhr Looper analyzes the loop, finds its transients (the hits), and maps each slice to a pad you can trigger by MIDI note. Now you're finger-drumming your own recording.

What makes it feel good to play:

• Smart onset detection. Choose between detection algorithms tuned for different material — a default snap, a transient peak grid, and a snappy transient-phrase mode — so it carves beats and even speech cleanly.
• Cached analysis. The slice boundaries are computed once and cached, so the pads respond instantly instead of re-scanning the loop on every hit. That's what keeps fast rolls tight.
• Sensible minimum slice length. Retriggers stay clean — no smeared attacks when you're playing sixteenths.
• Full voice control per slice. Dial in ADSR (attack/decay/sustain/release), velocity sensitivity so your dynamics come through, and a volume control to set the level of the rendered slices.

Suddenly that two-bar loop isn't a loop anymore — it's a kit. Re-sequence the groove with your fingers, build a fill, chop a vocal into a hook. The recording is raw material; you're the sampler.

Auto Instrument: play your loop across the keyboard

Sample Slice is rhythmic. Auto Instrument is melodic. Point it at a finished loop and Buhr Looper detects the loop's pitch on a background worker thread, finds its fundamental, and remaps the recorded sound across your MIDI keyboard — so you can play that captured tone as a pitched, playable instrument, in tune, up and down the keys.

Record a single sung note, a bowed string, a synth pad, a guitar harmonic — then play chords and melodies with it. It comes with its own performance controls: ADSR, velocity, a filter, and a selectable MIDI channel, so it sits in your rig like any soft-synth.

One detail that matters live: Auto Instrument only captures a fully settled loop. It waits for the take to be complete and stable before sampling, so it can never grab a half-recorded loop and hand you a glitchy instrument. Arm it for the next loop, or hit Set to capture the latest finished loop right now.

Why this is a big deal on stage

Think about the workflow these two unlock:

1. Loop a phrase (audio + synced video — this is Buhr Looper, after all).
2. Sample Slice it and finger-drum a variation while the original keeps cycling.
3. Auto Instrument a different loop and play a counter-melody over the top.

You've gone from "play to a backing loop" to "the loop is now three instruments I'm performing simultaneously." No exporting, no dragging audio into a sampler, no leaving the plugin. It happens in the flow of the set.

It plays nicely with everything else

Both features are first-class citizens in Buhr Looper. They're MIDI-mappable, so you can arm Sample Slice or Auto Instrument from a pad or footswitch. They're available as block types in the Automation Lab, so a sequenced performance can flip a loop into pads or an instrument at exactly the right bar. And because they live inside the same plugin, the video clip tied to that loop is still right there on the visual stage while you reinvent the sound.

The mindset shift

The best loopers don't think in "tracks." They think in material — sounds they can re-cut, re-pitch, and re-perform. Sample Slice and Auto Instrument turn every loop you record into exactly that: raw material that's one button away from being a whole new instrument.

Record it once. Play it ten different ways.

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