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Who uses sampling for gigs?


eric

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Hey folks,

 

I've never been much of a sampling kind of guy and I'm curious to know how many folks use it for live gigging and also what kinds of samples do you use? With today's Romplers and virtual models of so many great sounds, I scratch my head at what instruments would really need to be loaded as samples and suspect that sampling is primarily used for special purposes.

 

Back in the late '80s, I used an Ensoniq Mirage rack and also had an Akai S612 (I think that was the model #) rack that I borrowed from my electronic music teacher for awhile. I rarely took these to gigs and when I did, the samples that I loaded were stuff like shakuhachis, orch hits, silly noises and maybe a piano because it was better than the one in my JX8P and DX7IIFD. I had another keyboard player friend that had all these clever samples from The Simpsons mapped to his keys, so he could go "Doh" and "Marge, beer me" and so forth.

 

So getting back to my question, what kinds of things are you guys using your Motifs, Fantoms, Kurzweils, etc. for samples that you specially load (not ROM samples inherent to the instruments). The main reason I ask is that I am considering something like the Motif XS and was wondering how much use I could potentially get from loading in my own samples or would I still be going with 99% Rompler-based sounds?

 

Thanks!

 

Eric

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I want to.

 

I'm in the process of selling off some redundant gear to pick up either a Roland Fantom X6, a Korg M3, or the Yamaha Motif XS6.

Haven't make up my mind yet.

 

The only thing that crosses my mind though, is will the audience get that....Milli-Vanilli...syndrome.

 

I mean, it will be obvious that there is some more stuff going on than there are musicians providing the sound.

 

But in my opinion...why not use what you have at your disposal and you have spent your hard earned money on, not to mention the time you took to learn your gear and put it together.

 

 

"Just play!"
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I formerly used an E-Max HD rack for acoustic stuff like brass, pianos, orchestral strings, etc., because these types of sounds were generally superior to those found on the majority of synths at the time (within a reasonable price range). I've often thought about obtaining a sampler to sample sounds that I use from several rack modules to reduce the size of my rig. However, given the learning curve involved, and my limited time to do this stuff, this has been nothing more than a fleeting cognition. I do miss some of the goofy things I had in my E-Max, especially a collection of Three Stooges sound effects!

"We don't stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing."

- George Bernard Shaw

 

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I use a lot of stuff I've done myself. I've sampled my upright piano, my rhodes and wurly , all of which are much more "characterful" than stock samples. I find them more authentic and vibey than the polished stuff you get out the box. I get a lot of good feedback from the sound engineers and folk in the audience too. Well worth trying in my opinion...
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I've used it for quite a few gigs in my Fantom S, basically to make up for sounds that its not good in. Like sitar, ethnic percs, tabla, etc.

 

Now eric, some good news for you. The Motif XS is reportedly an amazingly fast sample-loader as well. It loaded 100 Mb something in 45 seconds. Thats phenomenal. my fantom S takes 5 mins to load 100 MB, and so does the motif ES, just for comparision sakes. This info is taken from HC forums, where one compared the actual loading times of the Motif XS vs the Motif ES. :D

Dont follow me....i'm lost too....
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Samplers are cool for sound design, that is if you have the time and patience to build your own library of customized sounds.

 

Otherwise, ROMplers have the market cornered in terms of instant gratification i.e. playable, realistic sounds.

 

Nowadays, a sampler has been reduced to loops or sound effects which ironically, are the sounds that showcased its features in the first place. YMMV. :cool:

PD

 

"The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is just to love and be loved in return."--E. Ahbez "Nature Boy"

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Eric:

 

I use .WAV samples for sound effects on my Motif ES8. There are a number of great sound effects in the factory programs, but I like the ability to get WAV files from the Internet, load them up in the sampler, and incorporate them into my sequences. I primarily use them for "space" sound effects. But there are a number of other things that I have found useful for my sequences too, like thunder and rain, a race car peeling out (Anthony's Song), etc.

 

You're right about one thing, with how great the Motif series sounds, I've never found the need to buy piano or Rhodes samples and use them instead of the edited factory sounds. The Motif ES handles the smaller samples I use pretty well even though it only has USB 1.1, which is pretty slow. The samples are saved with my sequences and into my sets so I don't have to load them separately from my sequences in order for them to play back during a gig.

 

Mike T.

Yamaha Motif ES8, Alesis Ion, Prophet 5 Rev 3.2, 1979 Rhodes Mark 1 Suitcase 73 Piano, Arp Odyssey Md III, Roland R-70 Drum Machine, Digitech Vocalist Live Pro. Roland Boss Chorus Ensemble CE-1.

 

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Besides using sampling to build sound libraries, sampling can also be used dynamically in live (or recorded) sessions so that one can do things like harmonize with one's self, add various effects (like vocoding, delay, reverb, etc) to a particular channel, looping, running vocals or other instrument parts through the board for creating new sonic experiences, etc.

 

It just depends upon how big is your imagination, and how much are you willing to experiment around with and tweak things. :)

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I use sampling for triggering sounds.

Here's an example: The band is doing Floyd's Time, so natch the alarm clocks at the beginning are sampled, and then triggered off one of the pads on my Fantom X. During the intro, I also trigger the pig grunts from Pigs (3 Different Ones), the sequence from The Wall where the groupie says "are all these your guitars?", and from DSOTM where the old guy says "there is no DSOTM..." etc. It's alot of fun for me, and the audience gets a kick out of it too.

Basically, anything that is signature in a song that can be isolated, and used to give more authenticity to the performance, gets sampled.

 

 

What we record in life, echoes in eternity.

 

MOXF8, Electro 6D, XK1c, Motif XSr, PEKPER, Voyager, Univox MiniKorg.

https://www.abandoned-film.com

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I use sampling for triggering sounds.

Here's an example: The band is doing Floyd's Time, so natch the alarm clocks at the beginning are sampled, and then triggered off one of the pads on my Fantom X. During the intro, I also trigger the pig grunts from Pigs (3 Different Ones), the sequence from The Wall where the groupie says "are all these your guitars?", and from DSOTM where the old guy says "there is no DSOTM..." etc. It's alot of fun for me, and the audience gets a kick out of it too.

Basically, anything that is signature in a song that can be isolated, and used to give more authenticity to the performance, gets sampled.

 

I was once in a band that did Floyd's Time and also Money. I used samples for the clocks and the cash register sounds.

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