How do you use a sampler?

  • Thread starter Thread starter noisewreck
  • Start date Start date

Who does what with a Sampler?

  • I use samplers as substitude for other instruments I don't own or don't know how to play

    Votes: 9 56.3%
  • I use samplers as sound design tools to create unusual textures and sounds

    Votes: 6 37.5%
  • The only sampler I know is the appetizer platter at Yankee Doodle

    Votes: 1 6.3%

  • Total voters
    16
I use a sampler when I misplace my orchestra.....yesterday I left a string quartet on the bus...must be my age :)
 
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...
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
I have an Akai 1000 that I rarely use and when I do use it, I use it mainly for drums
 
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 :)
 
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 {:D} 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.
 
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 :)
 
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.
 
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