If you're looking for a way to lose an hour or two of your day to some good old-fashioned musical procrastination, look no further than YPC, a browser-based sampler that chops up any YouTube video and maps it across your computer keyboard.
Drop any YouTube link into YPC – it opens with Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek loaded by default, an admirable choice – and its 16 pads will be randomly assigned to timestamps in the video, letting you play the sample chops with your keyboard or mouse like a pad sampler.
You can then randomize or set your own timestamps for each pad, adjust each pad's sample length from 0.1s to 8 seconds and time-stretch each sample, too.
YPC accepts MIDI input through your browser, so you can perform with a MIDI pad controller or keyboard, and projects can be shared with other users or exported and imported as JSON files. If your finger-drumming skills aren't up to scratch, YPC also features a basic 64-step sequencer with adjustable swing and BPM that can be programmed via step input or live recording.
Developed by producer Halfpast, YPC takes inspiration from classic Akai samplers with its retro aesthetic and colour scheme. While it's admittedly fairly basic in terms of its functionality, it's free, it's fun, and it's eaten up half my afternoon already. (If you're looking for something a bit more sophisticated, there are plenty of browser-based DAWs that offer far more advanced capabilities.)
The most obvious omission in YPC is a way to export audio once you've recorded a sequence you're happy with – it's understandable, though, as most YouTube videos will contain copyrighted material. However, if you'd like to record YPC's output to use in a track or play with in your DAW, there are plenty of apps available that can do just that.
(This probably goes without saying, but if you're going to release a track with anything sampled from YouTube, make sure you clear that sample with the relevant rightsholders first.)
