Tune Up: Software Sampling

posted in: Features • Reviews & Playlists

The term sampling is tossed around in the hip hop world quite frequently. The use of samples in pop, hip hop and R&B music is, in fact, the thing most people associate with the term sampling. Unfortunately, the term is often construed negatively due to the long history of copyright infringement lawsuits.  However, when you get back to what the term actually means, it is simply taking a small sample of audio and utilizing it for either an instrument or as a small building block in a song or musical work. For this article, we’re going to try to get down to what sampling is best used for”creating collections of sounds or instrument tones to be used for your own melodies.

Everyone is familiar with electronic pianos or keyboards. What you may not be familiar with is how the sound sets actually get into these products. You probably also didn’t know that you can actually create these sets yourself. If you recall our post about the Hollywood Edge Sound Effects library, those collections of effects are often referred to as sample libraries. So it seems natural to want to create a set of musical samples. For this post, we’ll describe the best ways to record your own set of instrument tones so that you can map them to a software sampler and play them using a MIDI controller anywhere you want.

Recording

The first step is to create a library of sounds (much like a library of sound effects). Let’s say, for the sake of simplicity, that you’d like to create your own sampled piano using the acoustic piano in your living room. This sounds great, but what if you’d like to bring it to another place (or even another room) for your projects? Our first step is to capture the piano’s full spectrum of possible sounds. First we’ll need the piano’s notes. There are 88 keys, so that means there are 88 possible notes. However, 88 high-quality wave samples takes up quite a lot of space. So, a good rule to follow is to simply record every third note (we’ll explain why later). It’s best to use a high quality set of stereo microphones and record a good room sound (it’s simple and realistic). There’s an added degree of complication here, though. If you notice when you play a note at different volumes, it has a different timbre as well as intensity. Therefore, we will probably need a few different variations on each pitch (loud, normal, soft). In short, you want to make sure you have all the sounds your piano might make.

Mapping

Now that you’ve got your library of piano notes, it’s time to set them up with your sampler so they can be performed on your MIDI keyboard. As mentioned before, this is something that is often done at the factory before an electric piano gets shipped, or in the development stage of a piano plugin. However, mapping your own samplers gives them a unique sound and allows you flexibility to make the piano sound the way you want it. There are many different software samplers and plugins to use, so we’ll just show you what it looks like for one. In order to understand how a software sampler works and how the audio files actually live in the sampler, check out the screenshot below.

You’ll notice there is a keyboard below a grid of zones to place your audio samples. This sampler actually contains a set of already existing sampled instruments (in this case, a Yamaha Grand Piano). You will see that you can place upwards of 6 or 7 samples for each note. The vertical axis in this case represents the volume of the note (and the variety of samples you recorded associated with the gradients of volume). So, if you recall our recorded samples, you can then place your samples on their given notes vertically in order of their volumes. Seems easy enough, right? For the sake of data storage, we recorded only every third note. You can place each sample three different times (it’s the actual note and then the next two notes moving up). Most samplers are set to default and transpose the pitch of your sample to match that of the position on the keyboard. Therefore, if you placed middle C on it’s appropriate position and also on the ascending D and E, the system will transpose that note to match that D and E accordingly. It won’t alter the C at all. You may be wondering why we didn’t just record one pitch and map it throughout the whole keyboard. Well, the further you transpose a note beyond its actual pitch, the less realistic it sounds. So, recording every third pitch minimizes your storage needs but also maintains the integrity of the sample.

Keep in mind that you can customize the different functions of the sampler. You can set it up so that the harder you strike your keyboard, it activates different types of samples (say perhaps even combining multiple samples to add intensity). You can also map non-musical recordings (a musically-pitched car motor for example) to your sampler to play them musically. The value here lies in the versatility you have by creating your own sampler. Something that sounds complicated and unattainable at first is actually quite easy with a sampler plugin. What’s more is that they come with DAW’s as a standard plugin included with the package. So, next time you go to record a new track or tackle a new project, we encourage you to try your hand and making your own playable instrument.