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Making the Most of Your SamplerBy: Alex ScheibeAlex is an electronica reviewer and the audio tech article guy at raw42 music. He has a degree in Audio Engineering and plays around making his own music on his spare tire. |
| A sampler is, without a doubt, the coolest weapon in the arsenal of the electronic musician. with a synthesizer, you are limited to creating new sounds by combining and editing the selection of waveforms included by the manufacturer. with a sampler, you can take anything you can think of and use it as a waveform for creating sounds, as long as it is audible. from short fragments of microphone noise to a newscaster talking about the latest star wars episode, if you hear something interesting, sample it, it could just be the waveform you'll need for your next great pad or bass sound. I like to sample to the computer and edit in a graphical sample editor (like sound forge or cool edit) and then transfer the sounds to the sampler when they are done. with software available now, you can use your computer in much the same way as a stand alone sampler. however you choose to sample and use sounds, the process will be similar. Recording Always sample at the best quality. if at some later stage you need to make the file size smaller, you can lower the sample rate, but you can never get back the lost frequencies in a sound by raising the sample rate after it's recorded. effects like noise reduction or reverb will always sound better on a 44khz sample than on a 22khz one. use the shortest route possible to the sampler or soundcard, to preserve audio quality. if you plan to sample a live source, either connect the microphone directly to the input or record it first onto a good quality medium, such as a portable dat or minidisc. the recording volume should be consistently close to the 0db mark, without crossing it. this will ensure the biggest difference between the level of the sound and that of the background noise. low recording levels are the most common cause of background noise, so it's best to keep them optimal from the start. Trimming, Tuning and Looping Trimming the sample, or deleting leading and trailing silent parts, is important. the start especially, because you want your samples to play as soon as you trigger them and not a millisecond later. this is easiest to do in computer software, since you have a graphical representation of the waveform on the screen and can see where it starts and finishes. if the sample is to be an instrument, now would be a good time to figure out what key it is. software like sound forge has a frequency analysis option which will give you a good approximation of the tone. use the pitch shifter to correct the tuning. if the sample is to be looped, listen to the it a few times to get to know the point at which it repeats itself. the difference between a good loop and a glitchy one can be a few sample points, so patience is in order to find the exact loop point. most software will allow you to loop the selected part of a sample and also find zero crossing points in your sample. zero crossings are the points in the waveform where the level of the sound (height of the wave) is 0. when a sample loops, it is important that the level at the end is the same as the level at the start, in order to avoid clicks that are audible when there is a sudden change in level. if a sample starts and ends on a zero cross point, you can be sure it won't click when it loops. Editing This will be largely dependent on what your software provides in its editing tools. make sure you listen to the sample before and after applying effects, because some of the more exotic effects available can drastically lower the quality of a sample. if you want your music to sound professional, clear and crisp samples are a must. unless you are going for a specific sound effect, watch out for boomy low end, resonant clicks in the high end, and flatness in the sound. by flatness i mean sounds that have a very limited frequency range, as if they were coming from a casio home keyboard. Transferring When you are satisfied with the sample, it's time to put it to use. if you were editing on a computer, you will want to transfer the file to the sampler. some samplers read computer disks, so they will be able to load the file saved by the computer straight from floppy or zip. others support scsi transfers, a fast way to send samples if you have a scsi port on the computer and sampler. and then there is midi transfer, which most sample software and samplers support. this is an extremely slow way of sending files, but it's perfectly viable nonetheless. In the sampler You will have to assign a keyboard range to the sample, the keys that will play it when pressed. choose whether you want the sample to play at pitches defined by the keys, pitch half a note or so for every key, or not at all. you will probably want to keep instruments at full pitch-key tracking and drums at none. you can place different samples along the keyboard to create drum kits or a bass and lead combo. one of the cooler subtle effects i've used is to place a slightly different version of the same sample at various note velocities. you can set this up so that a dry sample plays when you press a key softly and an effected version of the same sample plays when you hit the key harder. a variation on this is layering samples on top of each other and only having certain layers play at certain velocities or note ranges. Sample Cutoffs If your sample is fairly short and especially if you're playing it higher than its original pitch, you may find it stops before the next note plays. in this case, you may want to add a sustain part to the sound, a short loop that continues to play while the note is being held. this is pretty difficult to do well, but can be very effective. set the start of a loop near the end of the sample and the end of the loop right after it. now press a key and wait for the loop. keep moving the loop end towards the end of the sample until the sustain you hear matches the pitch of the note you pressed. after a bit of trial and error, you should be able to get a sustain that is nice and even. it will sound flat, but better than having the note cut off. A Few Tips Cut a drum loop into 16th note segments and spread the segments across the keyboard as different samples. then you can play around with the order of the drum hits without affecting the timing of the loop. Add a layer of attack from one sample over the beginning of another and let the volume of the attack swell with the note velocity. this will give you a sound that gets progressively harsher. Separate a stereo sample into left and right, play them together and modulate the panning of both samples with the modulation wheel or aftertouch. by having the two parts of the stereo sample crossed through the middle, you produce a moving and interesting stereo field. In a looping sample, modulate the loop point of either the start, end or the entire loop with one of the controllers. as you move through the controllers length, some very strange sounds emerge. this doesn't always work, but when it does it's cool. whatever you do with your samples, remember that you can use anything you'd like as a source, not just a drumloop or bass sound from a sample cd. the light-sabre sounds in the original star wars were created by waving a microphone around the back of a monitor. Article first appeared at raw42 music. Reprinted with permission. |