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Sampling vs Synthesis...
What's everyone's view on this? I've noticed I spend a bundle on synths and then end up making songs in Koala, true I do sample some synths and noisemakers, but mostly I prefer to find stuff on youtube or sample packs or even resampling something I play on Decent sampler.
This got me thinking... and that's always a bad sign...
I kind of get the impression that sampling is more of a 'folk music' in the sense that it's perhaps got a lower barrier of entry, both in price and in 'musical skill' needed. Thanks to apps like koala sampler ( and god especially koala sampler) All kinds of people are dabbling in music making and coming up with exciting and interesting music. Ever since the birth of hip hop, right through to the recent trend of lofi that took over youtube for a while, sampling has levelled the playing field for creative people. I think the cheapness of technology has really enabled this in such a way that as well as being a late 20th century revolution, sampling is the number one way of making 'electronic music' today. The price of hardware samplers is also fairly low considering, that for 400 or so euros you can get a full music production studio in something like the sp404 or similar hardware samplers. I also feel that granular sampling is taking this even further allowing people to mangle and shape sounds like never before.
Synthesis is a bit more elite, even with the low price of apps and things like that, I think that the barrier of entry is higher. It is less immediate, even with drambo, or other (simpler) grooveboxes it takes a bit more of a 'scientific' mind to master. In that sense synthesis is also a bit more elitist with people taking stands on particular hardware or software hills. I get the feeling sometimes that soft synths particularly, are a 'second best' to the real thing, despite the almost negligible difference in sound quality to their hardware counterparts.
In my mind, having (rightly or wrongly and probably wrongly) made these distinctions, but still enjoying making noises with various soft synths, I find myself screen shotting and sampling my fiddling around to use within a sampler.
Hmm OK I remember a comment by DJ shadow when he made 'endtroducing ' he stated that he never mixed live or synthesised music with sampled music, his tracks were always one or the other. An arbitrary choice I guess but somehow it stuck with me 30 years later.
Anyway I'm totally lost now so I'll stop, I guess something about sampling being populist and inclusive and synthesis for terrible hipsters 
of course there is a place for everything and to mix it all up as well but for me ( as if anyone cares), after years of experimenting, I have found that sampling feels much more like a blank page and gives me the chance to find my 'sound'...
or something
sorry.
Comments
As Pop will Eat itself stated:
Sample it, Loop it, Fuck it and Eat it
Maybe this is my leitmotif
The first time I used a sampler (Akai S900) it was like the world just opened up creatively. I always feel it’s going to take me somewhere interesting and I’m keen to discover where that place might be. Doesn’t always land in a place of amazing results, but for example, in Logic Pro the quick sampler is probably the most used instrument plugin. Love Koala and I’ve always loved BM3 because of the sampler built into the work flow.
I like to sample sounds I have created either in a synth or recorded and put them in a sampler to see what can be done.
Totally with you! My first sampler was an akai mpc2000xl, shortly after I bought a roland mc303 and an Sh01. I sold the synths long before the sampler (although that went too). Now koala rules the roost.
I love synthesis and the challenge of creating the sounds - both on the iPad and on my hardware synths. Specially for my 64Gb iPad 9, there is a practical aspect as well: Synth apps and synth presets usually take up much less storage space than sample collections.
I look at everything like tools to build, someone said, talking about 90’s boom bap, that you only get that true sound by sampling. Doing the drums any other way gives them too much quantization. I’m a 90’s alum so If the sample fits, you must acquit.
This is a good discussion. Me, I do both sampling and synthesis. All depending on my mood and the genre I feel like producing that day. 😅 If say for instance I want to produce Lofi or Neo Disco - I usually sample everything into Koala and away I go. If I want to produce Trance, then it's time to pull out the synths (usually in Nanostudio 2, and usually Obsidian) to achieve a lot of layering. I can make Trance in FLSM and Gadget as well.
Of course there are always exceptions. I once produced a Disco track in FLSM ("Rave Inferno"), and once produced a Metal-TripHop crossover track in Koala with vocals layered on top in Cubasis ("Va Te").
But no matter how we produce, the point is to have fun with producing.
Cheers. 🍻
I come from a tracker background, so I mostly used samples. Then I messed around with DAWs, midi & synths and had this obsession to be in control of every event and parameter. Years later I watched this producer, just bouncing and committing every midi clip to an audio clip. Or you would see him sample a synth and just use that sample to ‘play’ that synth in a DAW. This made me realize how obsessive I have become. I started committing to audio, if it was not ‘ok’ just ‘delete’. It was not meant to be and go on. This liberated me up to a point, I started to feel the joy and excitement again when I first started with trackers. I can enjoy designing a sound in a synth for hours, sample it and close the synth without saving the preset.
Man this is a good topic. I have a lot to say about this but I’ll make one point that kinda changed a lot for me.
Back when i was making a lot of hiphop, i realized i was spending so many hours digging for samples to find a specific thing i wanted.
I realized i could probably just have made that sound on my own by now if i had a couple good instruments/apps/synths.
So that’s when i got into more synths and trying to make my own sounds. It was like i just need a bass line or a horn riff, and instead of searching for days for a sample i can just make it with an app and add flavor.
I basically sample everything into koala that i wrote or ripped from somewhere else.
Arranging with samples lets me lay down the idea and not have to remember how to play it again. Just sample and stash!
Getting away from just sampling other people stuff made me expand my sound massively and get more creative.
I still sample other stuff but i absolutely mix it into my own.
To me its not synths vs samples but more about the arrangement of a song.
Arranging samples is far smoother than trying to sequence parts!
Also you can swap samples around into any project. Arrangements are kinda were i get stuck in finishing songs,… i love awesome midi apps that create sweet arps ans riffs. But im sampling those too fit another project.
I’m not trying to build a song around a bunch of midi apps and midi sequencers. I like audio for arrangement
@sevenape Your comments very closely reflect my own thoughts and experience. Even though I’d used sampling for some special found-sound manipulation effects, I was very much a synthesis snob for many years. In some ways I still am, but it’s more a degree of preference now, rather than a dismissal. And of course that’s due in no small part to my own adoption of it a bit more, as well as to appreciation of what others have made of it.
Your observation of popularized sampling use as a kind of folkway is really interesting, and I think apropos. “Real” synthesis was for a long time a rarified pursuit, strongly identified with academic and technical subcultures. “Let’s grab these machines and make some damn music” was a different mindset, and samplers offered a way to capture and remake a variety of sound that would have otherwise required a lot of synth gear.
Mostly everyone is going to say “I do both” (and so do I), but I think the term “sample” or “sampling” can also be broken down even further.
Now, there’s people making “music” or new arrangements with samples, which may be little bits, or short recordings of musical phrases, even up to a few bars, that were re-sampled for use in new arrangements (popular in the lo-fi or hip hop genres) for example, which as @sevenape suggests, lowers the barrier to entry into music making, (and it absolutely does!) where the person using the sample or samples don’t really need to know how to play an instrument, or really have any musical skills at all. They only need to have one, an ear, and two, learn some arranging, or production techniques to create something “new” out of previously recorded, or existing music.
But then there’s another side of the whole “sample” coin, and that is the world of Romplers and/or sample based instruments.
I’ve published recordings myself, where I’ve claimed “no samples have been used” or “this piece is all synthesis” only to later realize that I kinda lied… because I used “Bassalicious 2” for example, for my Bass instrument (which is definitely a Rompler that uses tiny recordings, AKA Samples of each note of a real bass guitar), or where I’ve also used Hammerhead or Patterning 3 (for example) which also use Samples (or tiny, short recordings) for each drum hit/sound.
Now most of us already know and understand all of this, and the differences between. But for the newcomers, and those aspiring new producers just getting started; “Sampling” is a broad term!
Don’t forget to tune in next week where we will discuss the differences between Impulse Response files, where some are used to simulate the sound of a guitar amp cabinet, and others to simulate the sound of a room aka “convolution reverb”.
IMO it's a mistake to assign a quick umbrella judgment about either approach. They are tools in the toolkit. Sampling is a tricky one, too, because it can also be component of synthesis. A granular processor manipulating a loop is synthesis in my book.
I have no doubt that working with samples can help a musician achieve an aimed-for result more quickly. Using conventional subtractive synthesis to roll your own drum sounds requires a lot of knowledge of how sounds are constructed. On the other hand, diving into samples invariably leads to layering, tweaking envelopes, and so forth. In other words, after a certain point in the creative journey, the samplist becomes a synthesist.
I've always preferred synthesis for my own creative process. I like to sit down with an empty canvas and coax interesting sounds out of a modular set of tools (hardware modular for a long time, now AUM). Koala and granular apps have opened my eyes to the utility and creative potential of samples, though.
But I have the advantage of not needing to make money from music, so speed isn't a concern. If I were a pro I'd be all about samples.
One thing that bothers me about sampling is the dark cloud of copyright that hangs over everything. That brief period of hip hop's first decade showed what creative possibilities exist, but you can't do those things today unless you've got the deep pockets. When I hear tracks from big musicians using a sample of a classic song I roll my eyes at how cynical it all feels. "Look at what a fancy sample I can afford!"
it is completely dependent on musical genre .. there are sample based genres, there are synth based genres .. and tons and of genres in between .. use what you need to make music you like and don’t care what other people do ..
As creating the same exact sound, even on the same analog synth, is almost impossible, sampling them gives one consistent production quality.
This approach becomes even easier with devices like MPC Live that do auto sampling.
I was a bit of a synthesis snob myself for a long time, even with drum sounds, but after a while I’ve found the snobbishness to be limiting. 🙂
I like this discussion.
I've spent a lot of time going back and forth on this topic, doing trial and error and just learning over the years as we all do. For a long time I was way more into MIDI as an archival tool, recording MIDI clips to use later with different sounds. I still do this (a lot), but I've also gotten more into the workflow of recording audio clips for arrangement purposes. If nothing else, it frees up some CPU cycles when the project starts growing.
I've also made a small collection of "auto sampler" MIDI clips that just play notes at fixed time and pitch intervals, which I can use to sample synthesized sounds I've designed. I have a series of matching marker sets for RX that automate chopping these later. This lets me move entirely into a sample-based workflow after a sound design phase.
As I go more in that direction, I find the sampler to be a more valuable tool. But, I really like the sound of synthesizers, so for me personally there's not going to be a one-or-the-other choice.
Blessed to have access to both types of technologies
The nice thing about synthesis is that it can create very 'pure' sounds that don't take up more than their share of the audio spectrum. I usually include some kind of synthesised 'pulse' (square wave) or triangle wave sound somewhere in a mix just to fill it out a little, knowing that it won't run amok across the spectrum.
There's been a bunch of discussion on trackers recently, and one of my favourite things about working with samples, particularly sampled chords, is how using them force you to do certain things.
If all you have is a minor chord sample, then your progressions are all going to be minor chords.
These kind of limited modulation choices instinctively makes a piece sound like its from a tracker or video game from the 90s to me, as they simply pitch shifted the limited number of samples they had.
I had a lot of fun with this during my attempt at 'Ninjutsu Hiphop', pitch shifting a whole bunch of stuff from the 'Skyline Masher' pack and some sampled SID chords.
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/53573/the-ninja-twins-ninjutsu-hip-hop-spoken-word-retro
Both can be fun and inspiring.
Usually it is sound that inspires me, no matter if it's a sample or synthesis. Although I really like to dive into synthesis, presets play a huge role for me. Some sounds will literally call for being shaped into melody when I'm in the mood, and for some reason this happens more often with synthesized sounds and samples that I've recorded for myself.
Thank you everyone for your comments very interesting! I was pondering them just now while walking my sausage dogs, and a few thoughts popped into my head… some are maybe more relevant than others:
Maybe age and or location has some influence? I was born in 75, the first “proper” music I listened to was Pink Floyd. Probably because their “momentary lapse of reason “ album was on sale in my local sainsbury’s and I liked the cover. That was very synth heavy I believe and I loved the strange otherworldly sounds… this led me on a bit of a journey taking in bands like tangerine dream, BUT when I was a teenager, one of my friends gave me a pop will eat itself album and my mind was blown… here was a band making music with bits and pieces of other people’s music. I didn’t know at the time that they were basically copying groups like public enemy… but that came quickly and I soon got into de la soul and later on gang Starr and souls of mischief etc etc. as a background to all of this I was going to raves and listening to hardcore, I had heard techno on kiss fm late at night, but it was the crazy phrenetic sampledelic sound of hardcore that grabbed me, I would get a rush of happiness hearing a sample I recognized flipped and used in a track. Of course this led to jungle and appreciation of the break beat. One guy with his amiga could take pieces of sounds that were made in expensive studios by amazing musicians, mastered with the best equipment and flip it into something else, something his ( or her) own.
This led to a backlash, I noticed that people were criticising rave music saying they were just sampling techno and making music for people on drugs, and later on people were releasing albums with the notice “no samples used on this record” Two that I remember very clearly were the first Rage Against the Machine album, and a dub album made by the dudes from At The Drive In. I noticed in some circles sampling became something cheesy or maybe even was considered to be cheating… I dunno…
I agree with everyone who says “ just use the tools you want to make the track”. I would never tell people not to use synths, but for me, on a deep level sampling has something that just catches my soul somehow.
Perhaps this is something like the idea that tribes people thought that taking a photo could steal your soul ( not sure if anyone ever thought that, or it was just a joke in crocodile Dundee) maybe sampling also takes a bit of the soul of the original music, it’s a way of connecting over time and space, not to say that it’s stealing… of course as @Edward_Alexander said it can be done in a crass and cynical way, but mostly I find myself surprised and delighted by samples in music. I can hear a million tracks that sample funky drummer or the amen break and hear so many different shades of emotion. But they all have that same basis… in this way I feel sampling is like folk music, like a passing around of a song, that is altered and adapted by the player but has a root in the original sentiment,
Hmm…
I've had a sampler since the early 90s. I used it like a synthesiser and drum machine. I would sample drums and have one hit per key and still programme in the beats. I did use loops, but I never had the mindset to sample records or other snippets of other people's music. I basically used it the same way I used my ROMplers.
My brain just was never wired to be a samplist. Nothin elitist about it. I grew up listening to the likes of Yazoo and wanted to be like Vince Clarke...
I like synths.
I think you might have @‘d the wrong person. Either that or you’ve misunderstood my post.
I never suggested using samples could be “done in a crass or cynical way”
I only agreed with the notion that using samples can “lower the barrier to entry into making music”, and then went on to explain a bit about romplers.
You’re right it was @suboptimal apologies to both of you
It’s far too hot here to think straight