The True Art Of Sampling

Sampling.

Even today, some 30 or more years after digital sampling came to the world of music making, the word sampling, when used in a musical context, is viewed with equal amounts of cynicism and joy. Peter Gabriel once famously said that songs like Paul Hardcastle’s “19” had set the art of sampling back by about 20 years. And you know what? He wasn’t far wrong.

Sampling is one of a number of electronic sound creation methods but sampling straddles the lines between other methods too. It can be a tone generator in it’s own right, but combined with other methods, can accentuate and aid them in achieving unique tones and timbres.

“19” ushered in a desire for the novelty aspect of sampling. The ability to make silly, novel little sounds or phrases through stuttering and repetition. For a point of reference, consider the current trend of Auto-Tuning every R&B song to death. The perpetrators think it’s cool, but the listener soon tires of it and moves on.

The other thing about sampling is that during it’s early years, groups like the Musicians Union here in the UK expressed hysterical levels of concern that sampling heralded the end of real musicians and that computers would take over the world, killing or enslaving their former human overlords and rendering them obsolete.

Quite.

Anyway, back to Peter. Peter was right. The true art of sampling got set back by about 20 years or so. As soon as everybody decided they wanted to tr-tr-tr-tr-try sampling, the technique was considered too much of a novelty and no-one took it seriously. Then people started to use sampling for the sole aim of trying to accurately replicate instruments that already occurred in real life. It was seen as an easy and affordable way of having real instruments in a box, without the associated costs and logistics. Hence the Musicians Union’s stance. But nothing could replace real instruments played by real people. And to this day, nothing can. And whilst I’m sure that a time may come when machines may do an amazing job, I believe that the very thing that makes these instruments unique, the human element of free will and expression, will never be fully surpassed.

Peter, however, was a true pioneer in the field of sampling. Do a search on this blog for Peter Gabriel and Fairlight and you will turn up a number of YouTube videos showing Peter recording, and then using musically, found sounds and making great music with them too. Creating new, unheard of sounds from previously non musical sources. This was, and still is, the real art of sampling. Using the technology as a new source of sound, not one to replicate pre-existing ones.

Or is it?

As technology has advanced, samplers have become increasingly more powerful and capable of doing amazing things with sound. The advent of software samplers like Kontakt, EmulatorX, HALion, etc have ushered in a number of new and innovative ways of dealing with samples. I use the term “software samplers” very lightly here as, of all the applications that claim to be “samplers”, virtually all of them are actually better described as sample playback devices, EmulatorX from E-MU being a notable exception.

This advance in sample manipulation technology has allowed many new and wonderful things to be done but it has brought with it one awful, terrible side effect.

Bloatware.

In the “good old days”, samplists who beavered away creating libraries for the increasing amount of devices available, came up against one big problem. Size. The memory and storage capacity in those days was tiny by comparison to what we enjoy today. Today, one can purchase a 1.5 Terrabyte hard drive for £70 GBP. That’s 1500GB for the price of a Depeche Mode box set. That’s 1,500,000MB for the price of a tank of fuel in an SUV. That’s 1,073,741,824 kilobytes. Back in the day, you were lucky if you had 640kb to play with. So the samplists of the day used clever tricks and methods to shoe-horn as much in as they could, using Bonsai* sampling techniques. There was no waste, no fat, no bloat.

(* The term Bonsai Sampling courtesy of Steve Howell! ;o) )

Nowadays though, with space not being an issue, samplists have become shockingly lazy. It seems that people judge the quality of sample libraries simply by their size. a 50GB orchestra is considered to be far superior to one that fits into 100MB.

Oh that it were so.

Today’s libraries, in the main, are incredibly lazy. Vast amounts of silence at the end of each sample. No sustain loops, the master tool of the Bonsai samplist, in sight. Just fill up the space with rubbish because there’s enough room. And even then, the quality of the samples and the quality of the programming leaves much to be desired. It really is a sorry state of affairs.

Thankfully, it’s not all that bad. There are still true “old school” samplists out there who lovingly craft libraries that sound as good as or better than their bloated counterparts, but in a fraction of the space and, more importantly, a fraction of the cost. Two such examples are Hollow Sun and Indiginus.

Hollow Sun is, to all intents and purposes, the vehicle of one man, Steve Howell. Steve has been in the business since the early 70’s when he fell in love with Tony Banks’ Mellotron, amongst others. From doing roadie duties for Genesis, he swiftly moved on to synthesizers, building his own studio and hiring out his services until he started dabbling with samples and Akai samplers. Akai saw his talents and commissioned some material for their fledgling line of devices. The samples where a massive success and a long partnership ensued. Steve ended up being responsible for most of Akai’s library, also going on to design a number of the user interfaces for many of their MPC, S-Series & Z-Series product lines, as well as some of their digital recording workstations.

Hollow Sun came about as a sideline, initially to provide free or affordable samples for Akai devices and also to satisfy Steve’s love of not only the instruments but their history. His free Vintage Library is the stuff of legend. Sadly, leeching of the sounds and the actions of a few ignorant people saw that library illegally shared and with spiralling costs, Steve was forced to withdraw it. It would surface later in such things as his Nostalgia VSTi or in parts within the libraries for other instruments, such as the Alesis Fusion.

Since then, Steve has developed a modest but impeccable library, supporting not only Akai formats (S5/6000/MPC4000/5000/Alesis Fusion) but also Kontakt, Steve’s first proper departure into software sampler territory. Check out the following piece…

Steve has now added a whole new range of small, yet perfectly formed libraries to his shop, as well as making them all available for immediate download.

And Steve hasn’t forgotten how to treat his fans, so there is a wealth of free content too, including a raft of samples in various formats (just click on your preferred flavour and you will be taken to a page full of goodies) and a bunch of awesome Reaktor Ensembles.

And now Indiginus.

Like Hollow Sun, Indiginus is a one man show, that man being Tracy Collins. Tracy is a highly skilled session musician as well as a fantastic and very clever samplist. I first met Tracy a few years back when he was launching his sample libraries for the first time on Akai S5/6000 format. Back then it was just the Acoustic Guitar Collection and the then new Solid State Symphony. When I loaded the AGC into my S6000 I was blown away not only by the quality of the samples themselves but the intricate and extremely clever use of programming.

Tracy fully utilizes velocity switching in his work, which means that depending on the velocity at which the key is struck, a different sample, or blend of samples is played. How this manifests itself in his Acoustic Guitar Collection is that a very gentle touch plays a muted string, a normal touch plays a simple pluck and a very hard whack will get you a bent string. Now, this does require a bit of practice to get it sounding authentic, but once mastered, the results are nothing short of mind blowing. Just watch these videos….

As you can see in the 3rd video, Tracy has also included a Strum Maker program which makes authentic strumming an absolute breeze.

These guitar programs are so inspiring. You feel compelled to play them and tinker with the beautiful and incredibly realistic articulations.

And it’s not just guitars that Tracy has used his incredible programming techniques on. Check out this demo of his awesome Solid State Symphony package…

Solid State Symphony is also available in a smaller LE version.

As well as these two major libraries, Tracy also sells small $5 packages which include this glorious Lap Harp…

… and other electric guitars, electric pianos and session acoustic drums.

Tracy also offers some free sounds too.

So with guys like Steve & Tracy still creating original, imaginative and brilliantly constructed libraries, the true art of sampling lives on and you don’t HAVE to subscribe to investing massive amounts of $$$/£££/€€€ in big, bloated libraries which have you wading through them just to find the few hidden gems.

Every patch in a Hollow Sun or Indiginus library is a winner.