How do you use a sampler?

[noisewreck]

Who does what with a sampler?

 

[kcearl]

I use a sampler when I misplace my orchestra.....yesterday I left a string quartet on the bus...must be my age

 

[JRSIV]

I like to use sampling sparingly as a sound creation tool and sometimes as a drum track supplement (additional hits, etc...). Anytime a sampler is used creatively to make new sounds I dig it; when it's used just to lift beats and sounds from existing recordings I feel it's cheap. Just an opinion...

 

[Barry B]

Being as my background is rap music I use a sampler to create a whole song. I agree with JRSIV though that lifting whole loops or sections is pretty boring not to say I haven't done that but I try not to.

 

[tlennon1]

I use Kontakt and Structure often to chop and dice regions from Protools to retrigger the samples in a different order than recorded. Modify different sample starts time and automating effects in real time. Especially vox.

 

[Manslick]

Mainly I use drum samples from Reason 4 but I will use anything if it fits.

One night I used a synth as a bass bed then piled on sampled drums, piano, sax, flute, B3, cellos, vibes, and strings. It was a self challenge to play a different instrument on each pass and fill a different spot in the tune; it turned out pretty well.

I’ve also written orchestral music with Garritan Personal Orchestra – some fine samples in that program.

They’re just sounds to be used at my whim.

I’d use auto tune too if I had it.

To me it’s the same as love and war – all’s fair. I let the ideologues yell about it.

 

[kcearl]

amen.........

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

I have never used a sampler - i.e. I have never sampled sounds myself for anything other than just a little f-ing around once.

However, I have used plenty of sounds that have been sampled or are based upon samples, from keyboard, synth and orchestra modelers to electric keyboards with built-in sampled sounds. I'm not going to go out and buy or rent some kettle drums just to use them for one song .

G.

 

[miroslav]

While I do have my trusty old AKAI S1000HD sampler, along with a couple of synth modules and a synth keyboard, plus an S1000 library of samples on about 60 floppies, and I have several sound cards for my keyboard....
...about the only time I use those things these days are for some string samples or maybe the occasional sax/horn sample.

But then...most of the music I'm doing is your classic/basic Pop/Rock, so there is little call for "sound design" as it's mostly your typical guitar, organ, piano, bass and drums kind of stuff.

Back in my MIDI days during the early '90s...I was much more into the sample/synth kind of stuff, and I even cut my own samples on a few occasions. The only reason I still hang on to that stuff is because it wouldn't sell for very much, and I never know when I might want something different AFA "ear candy".
I am hoping to do some "head music" once again at some point in time...so if/when I do, I'm sure the sampler and synth sounds will get used at that point a bit more extensively.

 

[KillahKane860]

I have an Akai 1000 that I rarely use and when I do use it, I use it mainly for drums

 

[tuttlem]

Primarily only being a guitarist and wanting to record more complex compositions, you learn to hit the samples rather than learn violin, cello and french horn

 

[grimtraveller]

VSTis, samples, hits....it's all moroccan roll to me. Samples are my fallback if I want the sound of a sitar or a cor anglais or whatever and I either don't know someone that plays one or we've fallen out {} or they can't make it for a while or I can't wait as I'm hot to trot. Good tweaking yields a realistic result, something I wish I'd known at the start. As all my samples are mapped to a keyboard, I have to approach each instrument, um, uniquely.

 

[kcearl]

wow how things move on...I use a smapler all the time...I have a bunch of old floppies for my S-50...shes a big old beast but I can still get some sounds out of her

also Im using abletons sampler a lot...I needed some breaks for a D&B tune im working on so I just did a couple of amen style breaks on abbey road drums then loaded the loops into sampler...bit of vinyl distortion and bingo...sounds like they came straight off a record and I can control the pitch and tempo with sampler

 

[Terra]

my music is built mainly from samples from records, then cleaned up, arranged, then complemented with recorded guitar. I use the sampler to chop up the sample and arrange it.