sampling for beginners

[evileye]

i have tried to search on the net for good sampling tutorials but not found any yet.
i have never really got into sampling until now.
what im having trouble with is. I have sampled a synth note from a record and placed it in my sampler. I know if i play higher than an octave it sounds rubbish. Im wanting to play a melody with this note but want to go higher than a octave how do i do it? im using abletons "simpler" not the new sampler
thanks for any help on this

[musikmachine]

Multisampling?I think you need to sample a note from each octave.Is there a workaround with simpler?I've hardly used it..

[evileye]

how would it work if i used the other "sampler" would i just copy the note and put it on another key range?
i think i can use sampler in demo mode not sure though

[herodotus]

'The Lost Art of Sampling', a seven part series from SOS, is a great introduction and generally just a great resource.

There are many other useful articles linked to from that page as well.

[evileye]

thanks will get right on it

[musikmachine]

how would it work if i used the other "sampler" would i just copy the note and put it on another key range?
i think i can use sampler in demo mode not sure though

AFAIK the reason for multisampling is so the instrument can be played across all the octaves so you'd record C1,C2,C3..then you maintain the quality/length of the note..then place those notes on the relevant notes in your sampler..don't know about sampler but if not try directwave,it's easy to use..

[Krakatau]

This is a short tutorial i created a few years ago that in its way, could be of an obvious interest for beginners, especially if they'd like to work with natural soundscape

just copy/paste what follow, i don't have a link ( and apologise... )

Hope it could be helpful :



let me just highly recommand to the ones of you who have any few experiences with samplers, to try a quite easy experimentation like the following one :

-1) Using a DAT or a MD, just try to make a good take of a natural soundscape like noisy wind (trought some trees for example) or rain, or a fire burning...

if you don't have the appropriate equipement, you can make a sample by CD extraction of some commercial CD's of natural soundscape )

-2) Then sample an single portion of 3 to 10 seconds in stereo (you don't really need so much to use a digital interface, just do your work properly),

-3) Within the sampler make a long, crossfaded loop on sample edit (or by default you can choose a loop point on a short silence..., you will notice that a long sample is needed by playing the highest key of your master keyboard : the artifact created by the loop getting shorter and shorter would be sounding too intensively on a short loop

-4) At least choose on program edit a very simple enveloppe: long attack, no decay, highest sustain and long release that you can reproduce wathever is the choosen sample (the only exception would be for staccato-like or explosive sounds like thunder or a single raindrop but right now i would be getting a bit off-topic !)

You may also if you want hadd some velocity sensitivity on volume and/or filter cutoff (some low-pass with no resonnance or modulations , just keep in mind that before anything else the resulting sound must be a main contribution of the original sample itself !)

Notice also that you don't absolutely need a stereo sample in a way that you can easily recreate convincing pseudo-stereo soundscapes that way :

-Make a copy of your sample
-reverse it
-route one of them completely to the left, the other one completely to the right
-then do both loops(at once if they can be recognise as a single stereo sample by the
sampler, you'll remember that they still have exactly the same length )

Because of the fact that both sample have exactly the same timbral content but inverted notion of time it will result with a complex and unpredictable mixing of travelling sounds from one side to another of the stereo image, you will notice that if the sounding impacts and the reverberations/early reflections (when it is a very audible component of the original take) change in nature completely when reversed, the other timbral characteritics still remains the same

Forget yet about this very last piece of sample editing for a while !
Now you that you've finished your progrm edit, just lay a hand from one side of the keyboard to another and listen carefully,

you may have noticed that, just by using polyphonic transpositions of a lonely sample on all the keyboard, how all the timbral (and other psycho-acoustic) aspects may change deeply !

By experience i noticed many similarities listening to transposed soundscapes of, apparently, different nature

Examples you may easily experience by creating samples out on some commercial CD : Compare a children's diving into water played 2 octaves down with a thunder's sample...or a thunder's sample played 2 or 3 octaves up with the sound of a heavy footstep on a wet ground ,etc ,etc...)

Supposing you've got on your sample some overall, echoïng or reverberating sounds ...(it would be the case with any takes of distant sound's sources like ambient rain or thunder, in there you'll obviously hear some early reflections)... you will have the feeling of different "room size" by transposing the original sample up (smaller size ) or down (bigger size)

But the most amazing experience i had by comparing different sounding sources at the present time was this one :

-on one side : the territorial drumming noise on the trees of the woodpecker (Scientific name : "Dendrocopos major")

-on the other side : the noise of the stick before the curtain's opening and the beginning of the actor's performance of a comedy (...you know, right before the 3 hits at the very beginning !)....Both in one-shot mode

If you have a chance to compare them by transposing down the first or transposing up the other you will make a marvellous experience : nearly impossible to distinguish them , except maybe that at the same apparent speed, the woodpecker's sample would appear as using some more stength ! ..of course by reflecting a bit you easily notice that they both are bio-acoustic wooden and, repetitive noises
That general experimentation, on bio-acoustic sound especially, as left me with a strong feeling of relativity of time...

Again an example : if you transpose down, of about one octave or more, some bird's warbling, they will sound quite like tropical one's, wich are much bigger, that means with lower pitch and slower warbling's articulation; A similar observation that you can make with the preceeding example of both living forms of life, ( thought it compares a bird with a human beeing )
...as if it was reflecting of a time and space correlation

But this means in practive that it is a too easy way to do impressive and very versatile stuffs but much more difficult to optimise their use in a program flexible and versatile enough for a musical use in situation

Let see, except for a use as "new-age additionnal arrangement" that seems to me the most obvious, you would need some sound that can perhaps be quantised
(single raindrops or a thunder's impacts or any sounds that can be edited in one-shot mode )
...or maybe tuned
(some types of wind, i have in mind some takes of snowstorm in the ice barrier, can be described as having a well defined and quite stable fondamental frequency, also some natural reverbaration as described, like water trought a tube that has some raisonnant frequencies and therefore you can expect a tuned use in polyphony)

My experience in arrangement make me trust of a use of tuned samples of natural soundscape by looking for some common timbral aspects with instrumental samples or synth's patches in one hand and natural or synthetic sounscapes with no harmonical correlation in the other hand

(notice for example the similitude between the sound of a motor car, especially at constant speed that means with a stable, and therefore tunable fundamental frenquency and a "heavy metal" distorted guitar, their both easily blends together in a way that it would many times impossible to distinguish them in an good orchestration and at the meantime without loosing their own timbral characteristics !)

What i can say about experiences of quantised samples of natural sounscapes:
...that most of the time it is highly uncompatible with common actual musical beats .

For example i appreciate a lot to work in reason with REX files because it is a dead easy job to make some "techno-electro-trance-etc" types of beat but except if you expect tu use an industrial sample-based rex files like some automatic functioning machines or civil engieneering sounscapes, that can blend with those squary types of rythm,... i guess that you would be many times dissapointed with the result

You would need some swinging or groovy thing (can't tell...) that can would make an easier bridge between "rythmical" and "arythmiqual" music or soundscape,

I am sometimes working with African traditionnal musician and music..., and to my ears, those type of groovy rythms seems more adapted, but comparing to both african scales and rythms am a perfect stanger to their own musical ears
(I may define them as ternary types of rythms that have temporary tentancy to reach binary rythms, by opposition of a swing that, in an opposite way, are binary rythms that try to reach ternary rythm, as easy example 4/4 in pure binary 6/8 or 9/8 sounds more ternary)

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[evileye]

thats awsome thanks

[Krakatau]

you're welcome, my friend

[thecontrolcentre]

how would it work if i used the other "sampler" would i just copy the note and put it on another key range?
i think i can use sampler in demo mode not sure though

It would work EXACTLY the same way in any sampler ... If you want to accurately sample an instrument you'll need to MULTI-sample it. That means sample many notes and then map them to the correct keys in the sampler.

[evileye]

its hard for me to sample the second note because its comng from a record and it has things under it

[musikmachine]

its hard for me to sample the second note because its comng from a record and it has things under it

Could you use the chord plugin to create chords or change the pitch?

[koolkeys]

Go to

http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm

There are many tutorials there that will help, and not just on sampling. It links to hundreds of other tutorials around the net.

I'll also be doing some in the future for The Audio Garden, but other stuff is coming first.

Brent

[Krakatau]

http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm

thanks !

[musikmachine]

http://www.theprojectstudiohandbook.com/directory.htm

thanks !

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