By Mark D’Arcy-Smith

Prior to computer memory-

based samplers, musicians used

tape replay keyboards, which

store recordings on analog tape.

When a key is pressed the tape

head contacts the tape and

plays a sound.

Mellotronis an electro-mechanical, polyphonic tape

replay keyboard originally developed and

built in Birmingham, England, in the early

1960s. The heart of the instrument is a

bank of parallel linear magnetic audio

tape strips. Each of the tape strips has a

playing time of approximately eight

seconds, after which the tape comes to a

dead stop and rewinds to the start

position. such systems were expensive

and heavy due to the multiple tape

mechanisms involved, and the range of

the instrument was limited to three

octaves at the most.

EMS Musys

SystemThe first digital sampler was the EMS

Musys system, developed by Peter

Grogono (software), David Cockerell

(hardware and interfacing) and Peter

Zinovieff (system design and

operation). The system ran on two mini-

computers, Digital Equipment’s

PDP-8s (mini computer). These

had 12,000 (12k) bytes of read-

only memory, backed up by a

hard drive of 32k and by tape

storage (DecTape). EMS

equipment was used to control

the world's first digital studio.

Fairlight CMI

The Fairlight CMI (Computer

Musical Instrument) is a digital

sampling synthesizer. It was

designed in 1979 by the

founders of Fairlight (Peter

Vogel and Kim Ryrie).

The Fairlight CMI was a development

of an earlier synthesizer called the

Qasar M8, an attempt to create

sound by modeling all of the

parameters of a waveform in real

time.

Unfortunately, this was

beyond the available

processing power of the day,

and the results were

disappointing. In an attempt

to make something of it,

Vogel and Ryrie decided to

see what it would do with a

naturally recorded sound

wave as a starting point. To

their surprise the effect was

remarkable, and the digital

sampler was born.Qasar M8

E-mu SP-1200The SP-1200 became an icon of

hip hop's golden age, due to its

ability to construct the bulk of a

song within one piece of

portable gear—a first for the

industry. This resulted in

reduced studio costs and more

creative control for artists.

The SP-1200 can store up

to 100 patterns, 100

songs and has a 5000 note

maximum memory for

drum sequences.

Often samplers offer filters, modulation via

low frequency oscillation and other

synthesizer-like processes that allow the

original sound to be modified in many

different ways. Most samplers have

polyphonic capabilities - they are able to

play more than one note at the same time.

Many are also multitimbral - they can play

back different sounds at the same time.

Often "samples" consist of one part of a song, such as a rhythm break, which is then used to construct the beat for another song. For instance, hip hop music developed from DJs repeating the breaks from songs to enable continuous dancing

Funky drummer Break (James Brown) Funky drummer Break (5:10)

Amen Break (The Winstons) Amen Break

These two songs have been among the most common samples used in dance music and hip hop of recent decades, with some entire subgenres like breakbeat being based largely on complex changes of a single one of these samples.

In the 1970s, DJs who experimented with

manipulating vinyl on two turntables gave

birth to hip hop music, the first popular

music genre based originally around the art

of sampling.

Sample- a sound of short duration, as a

musical tone or a drumbeat, digitally stored

in a synthesizer for playback.

Sampling was originally developed by

experimental musicians working with electro

acoustic music, who physically manipulated

tape loops or vinyl records on a phonograph

The widespread use of sampling in popular

music increased with the rise of electronic

music and disco in the mid 1970s to early

1980s

Sampling would also use spoken word from

non-musical media.

Sampling didn’t just involve pre-existing

recordings. Some composers and musicians

sampled there own sounds.

The use of Sampling is also controversial

legally because musicians that used the

technique in the 1940s-60s sometimes did

not receive permission before creating a

musical piece with the samples ―stolen‖.

The issue with this was that only people with

a lot of money were able to use the samples,

Sampling Theorem: The Nyquist–Shannon

sampling theorem states that perfect

reconstruction of a signal is possible when

the sampling frequency is greater than twice

the maximum frequency of the signal being

sampled, or equivalently, when the Nyquist

frequency (half the sample rate) exceeds the

highest frequency of the signal being

sampled. If lower sampling rates are used,

the original signal's information may not be

completely recoverable from the sampled

signal.

The sample rate is the number of "snapshots" of

audio that are sampled every second. The

continuous audio stream is digitally encoded in a

similar way to a movie camera capturing motion

by recording an image frame many times per

second. The higher the sample rate (and bit

depth), the more accurately the original sound

can be represented.

44.1k refers to 44.1 thousand sample per second

and you will find that 44.1k, 48k and 96k are the

most common sample rates although 192k is now

becoming more popular. 44.1k is the standard for

CDs

Bit Depth refers to the number of bits you

have to capture audio

Music Tech 101:

Sampling rate and bit

depth explained

Pacman, Lassie and Bruce

lee example (Nyquist

Sampling Theorem)