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4 samplers that changed musical history


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I had an Akai S2000 and sampled a ton. Mostly sound FX, vocals and drum loops. Recycle was a game changer for working with loops.

I also bought an Emulator III for stupid cheap and had a great time programming that. So much fun with that - especially the analog filters.

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Speaking of loops, and sampling, I had a program called Infinity by Antares System that had DSP features I believe no other sampling app had or has, even today. It ran on Mac system 9. My old Mac & all its drives are long gone but I found Infinity online and can run it in an OS9 emulator however, it's copy protected, with the required software to run it now digital dust. You could loop almost any sound with this app, it was really one-of-a-kind.
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So you must know my old best friend Danny Fabrizi Reezekeys... he is now head soundman at Carnegie Hall in NYC...!? Worked for years and years w/Liza. The only time I ever played a CS-80 was one he was repairing back in the 80's, before he worked with Liza and Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett. I had a 1st ver. Mirage myself once upon a time!

 

I bought the first Mirage that came into Scottsdale in 85. Already had a CS80 so to me the Mirage was cheap. It had a great Guitar w/ ModWheel Feedback, actually is still the sound to beat for Guitar Sampled Leads and its 8 bit audio had a powerful sound. Lost my crew/management back then do I dumped the CS80 for an OBX too. Strings were nice and warm.

You jogged my memory, yea that guitar was pretty cool for back then! I might have a box of floppies somewhere with some other sounds I've forgotten. I should probably get my Mirage out of mothballs and get it working, it might be in demand when the next wave of "lo-fi" comes around. :)

 

Liza? Damn, sounds like you and I did the big Schtick gigs. I did the Anne Murray, Raquel Welch and Dick Van Dykes 7 foot tall daughter gigs in the Swank resorts of Sedona and Scottsdale, AZ. Best bread around back then.

I was a struggling NYC jazzer making $50 - $75/gig before I got the call to go with Liza, so yea, it was a big deal for me. We toured the USA and spent a month in London at the Victoria theatre. Nothing like a month-long stand in a cool city with some bread in your pocket and your gig is done before 10PM. Those were the days. We played a theatre in Phoenix or Scottsdale too, probably the same one you did. I remember we were in Reno when Sinatra died. The band was on stage and it was 30 seconds to curtain when we got the word that the show was cancelled she was too messed up to perform. I think we all flew home the next day.

 

To get a little back on-topic I find it instructive that with all the latest & greatest we have at our fingertips these days, an 8-bit 128K ram sampler worked fine for some very "big" gigs. IMO - and especially in a live situation specs don't matter anywhere near the degree to which we discuss them here!

 CP-50, YC 73,  FP-80, PX5-S, NE-5d61, Kurzweil SP6, XK-3, CX-3, Hammond XK-3, Yamaha YUX Upright, '66 B3/Leslie 145/122

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Yes I remember that name he must have worked for Altel Sound then. They did Liza's sound, and I might be wrong but I think they trucked the PA system to every gig! Carnegie Hall huh? Danny did good! I'm pretty sure he wouldn't remember me. I worked with Liza in the early 1980s, and just a few gigs in the mid-late 90s. Too many brain cells ago.
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He did work for Altel, that sounds right. Danny did good yes...Fairly Dickson Univ. graduate with a BS in electronics...bass player when we were young teens but music was never his real game...started doing sound w/ Jesus Christ Superstar in it's 1st venue in Manhatten after college.. Close with Liza and her then husband., still I believe..then went on to work for Sinatra and Tony B. and others! Good guy, we were both hommies from Whitesone, NY. Same HS and all ...

 

Yes I remember that name he must have worked for Altel Sound then. They did Liza's sound, and I might be wrong but I think they trucked the PA system to every gig! Carnegie Hall huh? Danny did good! I'm pretty sure he wouldn't remember me. I worked with Liza in the early 1980s, and just a few gigs in the mid-late 90s. Too many brain cells ago.

 CP-50, YC 73,  FP-80, PX5-S, NE-5d61, Kurzweil SP6, XK-3, CX-3, Hammond XK-3, Yamaha YUX Upright, '66 B3/Leslie 145/122

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Back in 1984 I was considering getting an Emulator II which I had seen demoed at the NAMM show. Don't remember why I didn't get one but a couple of years later I made a connection at Roland where I could get gear at employee cost so my first sampler was an S50. Sounded pretty good for the time and was very easy to use. A couple years later I got one of the first S770's which at employee cost was still over $5K. Then you needed a couple of thousand dollars worth of accessories to fully use it. So I never used it for much more than playing back sounds. It did sound great and I still have it. About 15 years ago I bought four S760's off eBay. They are much smaller than the S770, have twice the memory fully-loaded, and can read Akai samples. As great as they were Roland samplers were always overshadowed by Akai and Emu which were early in the game and became industry standards.
C3/122, M102A, Vox V301H, Farfisa Compact, Gibson G101, GEM P, RMI 300A, Piano Bass, Pianet , Prophet 5 rev. 2, Pro-One, Matrix 12, OB8, Korg MS20, Jupiter 6, Juno 60, PX-5S, Nord Stage 3 Compact
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I was a Mirage adherent who held on until the Weiss domains effect ate all of my floppies. Sampling on it was pointlessly hellish, but as a playback synth with a not-half-bad filter and a prehistoric yet fun little sequencer, it was a winner. It was my first serious pipe organ, piano and string kit. The percussion kits were a fun challenge, too. You got a lot of Musical and Smart for the buck.

 

I was selling Roland gear when the S-50 and S-10 came out, so I became familiar with the sound sets (which definitely have that great Persing touch) and the S-50 editor. It was a clumsy b*tch that crashed all too easily, but it DID work properly overall. Darned nice KEYBED as well. This was 1987, so I also had a D-50 on the floor. That's why I groan at modern cheapo keys. :rolleyes::D

 

I love the nostalgia, but I love being able to sit at my DAW and edit waveforms with impunity even more.

 

 "I want to be an intellectual, but I don't have the brainpower.
  The absent-mindedness, I've got that licked."
        ~ John Cleese

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The first keyboard I ever purchased was an Ensoniq Mirage. I loved it. I might have still been in High School - or maybe just into college. I think around 1986-87. I'd have to check when they came out.

 

I had a disk of samples that I loved. There were these Led Zeppelin "Whole Lotta Love" stabs.

 

I still have a couple of 3.5" diskettes of music I wrote and recorded. Good luck with me ever hearing those again!

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Ah yes, the Roland 7xx series samplers. A lot of those libraries are Persings work, some libraries ended up in SR-JV and/or SRX cards I imagine. Ever think of grabbing a Roland Integra-7?

 

Have you experimented with doing your own sampling on the 760? I hear there are lots of modifications for getting USB thumb drives to work as memory expansion.

 

Yes, the Roland Sample Archives CDs are still very valid albeit a bit old school; I have most of them, and yes, some did appear as expansion boards - although the CDs are uncompressed. Like, the famous Keyboards Of The 60s & 70s set was originally a 2CD set.

 

I havent tried sampling yet. The biggest limitation is the memory, which is only 32MB. My S-760 came with the optional video output board (and the rare DA400 converter box!) so you can hook it up to a color S-Video monitor! This makes working and editing much more convenient, you can even add a mouse.

 

A more sophisticated solution to USB is something called SCSI2SD. Its a circuit board that usually replaces the floppy drive, and connects to the internal SCSI connector, making it possible to use large SD cards as hard drives.

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No mention of the Ensoniq Mirage, the first keyboard that brought sampling to the masses?

 

was my first thought before reading your post, Rob. I could go on and on about this, but here is a tid bit. Jam and Lewis producing Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation 1814", Ensoniq Mirage at the helm. :cool:

 

Among numerous others. Their (Jam & Lewis) Keyboard magazine cover story from May 1987 (I think) has a lot of info on their gear of choice at the time.

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Wow, all I could afford was the Roland MKS-100 that I got half price on a close-out deal at Chuck Levin's in November of 1987.

 

I was thrilled though and used that sucker for all kinds of stuff for a music library and for creating sound effects for computer games.

 

Still have it and the entire library on my hard drive as the Quick Disk drive is wonky.

"The devil take the poets who dare to sing the pleasures of an artist's life." - Gottschalk

 

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Aethellis

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Any of these lists without the K250 and the Synclavier are suspect. No, not many musicians had them, but they definitely changed recording studio workflow way before ProDeck and ProEdit (which became ProTools).

"For instance" is not proof.

 

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Anyone still doing their own sampling as part of their music making? Still using hardware, or have you found software with a workflow you like? Please share!

 

I have an Octatrack. Not sure I'd rank it above the Synclavier as a changer of music history, but it is what it is. Here's a quick little video of me using it to loop my viola, with a Korg Volca Keys playing along.

 

[video:youtube]

 

The Octatrack, as the name implies, is an 8-Track machine. Each Track has a Machine assigned to it, 3 LFOs, and 2 FX slots. For this recording, I used Pickup Machines on Tracks 1 and 2 to loop my acoustic viola. After building up loops, I turned on the internal sequencer, which activated Flex Machines on Tracks 3 and 4 to play slices of audio taken from the Track 1 and 2 recorder buffers. I let the Octatrack guess the BPM of the loop recorded in Track 1, which in turn was the BPM of the sequencer. I then started tweaking LFO settings on Tracks 3 and 4, with LFOs set to modulate filter width, filter Q, etc.Then I started messing with playback parameters to try to generate bass notes or something.

 

 

A more "normal" usage of the Octatrack would be to play backing tracks, repetitive parts (eg. drum samples), and/or MIDI sequence external gear such as synths. It has an Arranger function which is the equivalent of "song mode" - my plan is to explore that more.

 

 

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To get a little back on-topic � I find it instructive that with all the latest & greatest we have at our fingertips these days, an 8-bit 128K ram sampler worked fine for some very "big" gigs. IMO - and especially in a live situation � specs don't matter anywhere near the degree to which we discuss them here!

So, so true.

 

I"ve never used the sampler section of my Alesis Fusion, and have no idea if it"s any good at all. Has anyone here sampled on it?

The fact there's a Highway To Hell and only a Stairway To Heaven says a lot about anticipated traffic numbers

 

People only say "It's a free country" when they're doing something shitty-Demetri Martin

 

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Definitely a puff piece aimed to move Octatrack units. Own a piece of music history ... by buying something tangentially related!

 

My first sampler was the original Emax, which was enough for a taste but starved for polyphony and timbrality. I was hooked but couldnt really afford to complement it properly to round out my early exploration, so I traded in for an EPS that was better suited to my needs at the time. I still miss the poly aftertouch from that one. These days all of my sample editing does happen on a laptop, but I still like dedicated hardware for exploration and performance.

 

My Kurzweil Forte is a great sample mangler and classic workstation with stupidly deep capabilities. Where most modern gear turned left toward immediacy and simplification, Kurzweil stays committed to offering up unfathomable depth and flexibility. I love it for what it excels at (and of course theres also the thin veneer of approachability in its stage piano persona, but everything else still lurks beneath.) The Prophet X is something else altogether. The immediacy and intuitive design of a subtractive synth with the ability to bring in sampled content to complement the classic oscillators. Of course I have a wishlist of features Id like to see, but what Sequential has done theyve gotten right for the most part. Dave Rossums updated take on his own filter designs lend it a vibe that calls back to early sampler designs, complemented by bucketloads of fast storage courtesy of modern digital technology.

Acoustic: Shigeru Kawai SK-7 ~ Breedlove C2/R

MIDI: Kurzweil Forte ~ Sequential Prophet X ~ Yamaha CP88 ~ Expressive E Osmose

Electric: Schecter Solo Custom Exotic ~ Chapman MLB1 Signature Bass

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Any of these lists without the K250 and the Synclavier are suspect. No, not many musicians had them, but they definitely changed recording studio workflow

 

:thu:

 

 

 

When an eel hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a Moray.
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Any of these lists without the K250 and the Synclavier are suspect. No, not many musicians had them, but they definitely changed recording studio workflow

 

:thu:

 

 

Not to split too many hairs, but the K250 was technically a rompler, not a sampler. It was certainly innovative in that it was the first (that I know of) and offered some very impressive editing capabilities. I worked as a synth programmer for a producer in NYC that had one of the first K250s. He had it shipped to my loft so I could spend time with it. I think the pedal unit weighed 10x what my current keyboard controller does (or was it the power supply? I forgot.)

 

And as I believe I noted elsewhere in this thread, the Synclav was not originally a sampler that capability was added later in its production.

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The sampling option for the Synclavier was insanely expensive. While the Synclavier isn't what I consider a groundbreaking sampler, it did pioneer direct-to-hard-disk recording.

 

The K250 could sample but you needed a Mac II to make that happen.

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..and before all this was the EMS MUSYS system, that ran on a PDP-8. That was basically a sampling workstation with access to analogue voices as well. When EMS went broke it ended up getting stored in a basement of a theater that ended up getting flooded, they tried giving it away but sadly no one wanted it

despite it being at the bleeding edge.

Annoyingly EMS are often left out of synthesizer history despite being ahead of a lot of their contemporaries.

Stuff: Roland:SH-201/U-110/S-330/TR-626/M-48 Akai: miniAK/S6000 Yamaha:DX9/HS8/xs7 Korg:05R/W/AX10G Alesis: Vortex MK1 CME: UF70 classic V2/WIDI Behringer: DSP2024Px2/UMC204HD/101/340/D/03/8 ESI:1010e
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The first sampler I ever fooled around with was a Mirage in a little music store in LA. The sales guys had sampled the soundtrack from a Marilyn Chambers movie. We were having a ball putting Marilyn through her paces over multiple octaves until a woman customer came over and very pointedly turned it off :(

Go figure.

 

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

-Mark Twain

 

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I remember walking into Long and McQuades only US store in Parsippany, NJ planning on buying a Mirage. John the manager told me to look at a new arrival: The Korg DSS-1. 12 bit sampling instead of 8, and more memory. Bought it on the spot, took out my old sound fx records and sampled the applause tracks. Then went through 40 or so toilet flushes to get the proper resonance on the float drop, and gigged with that thing for 10 years. I even had the memory update installed and had every disk made. The most fun I ever had with a keyboard instrument.

 

Loved that thing.

 

Jake

1967 B-3 w/(2) 122's, Nord C1w/Leslie 2101 top, Nord PedalKeys 27, Nord Electro 4D, IK B3X, QSC K12.2, Yamaha reface YC+CS+CP

 

"It needs a Hammond"

 

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I"ve never used the sampler section of my Alesis Fusion, and have no idea if it"s any good at all. Has anyone here sampled on it?

 

I used it quite a bit back in my days with That 80s Band. I mostly used it for single shot sound effects, stuff lifted off CDs, or sounds I could only nail with the random piece of gear at home that I didn't make gig with. Never really did an entire multisample across the keyboard with loops or crossfades. Not sure if velocity crossfades were even possible. But I'll say this, compared to the Kronos, it was extremely easy and worked well. Sample, save, done. No need to create sample, then multisample, then program, then save program, save samples, add samples to preload, cycle power, cross your fingers for 2 minutes to see if it worked.

 

Dan

 

Acoustic/Electric stringed instruments ranging from 4 to 230 strings, hammered, picked, fingered, slapped, and plucked. Analog and Digital Electronic instruments, reeds, and throat/mouth.

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