AppleScript
These AppleScripts were originally written for use with the AKAI M.E.S.A. II software for Macintosh OS 9 and and the AKAI S3000XL family of samplers. Since the AKAI samplers now use the .WAV format, instead of a proprietary sample format, and they have a USB connector, rather than SCSI, sampler programming tasks are much simpler. M.E.S.A. (Modular Editing System by AKAI). MESA is a free, cross-platform program AKAI gives away for use with their S-series samplers (i.e., the S2000, S3000XL, S3200XL, CD3000XL samplers, and the DPS12i and DPS16 Digital Personal Studios).
MESA gives you near full control of any of the above samplers, and on the Macintosh platform, MESA supports AppleScript. This makes it possible to automate many sampler programming tasks, and greatly speeds up the creative production process. I dabbled with MESA and AppleScript a number of years ago and made several utilities that I’ve found useful for my work. Below are some of the scripts that emerged as part of that effort. I hope these scripts are useful for anyone using older AKAI samplers with a Macintosh OS 9 computer.
I have found no other web site that posts collections of AppleScripts specifically for MESA. Although S-series AKAI samplers are “old” by modern standards, they sound great, and are extremely reliable and versatile. If you have other MESA AppleScripts please send them my way and I’ll add them to this site, so those of us with MESA S-series “tinkering” tendencies can share our work.
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Add Samples No Loop 3 KB
This script is a modified version of one of the M.E.S.A. bundled scripts. It assumes M.E.S.A. is running and that an existing program and a list of samples are selected within the M.E.S.A. “Memory” window. It uses a program selected in the “Memory” window to define a series of chromatically mapped keygroups, each of which plays a sample without looping them in playback. |
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Make Stereo Chromatic Program 2 KB
This script creates a chromatic series of keygroups from stereo samples. In M.E.S.A., select a program and stereo samples to use, then run this script. |
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Sampler Report v1 7 KB
This script reports general information about an AKAI sampler through M.E.S.A. and saves the results as a “SimpleText” document to the desktop. Since this script uses M.E.S.A. to determine the various information about the sampler, make sure M.E.S.A. knows about the latest changes to any data in the sampler. The easiest way to do this is to hit COMMAND + F while in M.E.S.A. This forces the sampler to be “found” again, which also updates any changes to programs or samples indicated in M.E.S.A. |