MULTISAMPLING
Stock up your hard drive with our sampling workshop
If you’ve been at this music-making game for any time at all, then you’re likely already aware that there are loads of virtual analogue synths on the market. Hardware options like those from Roland and Novation abound, while software variants cram our plugins folders to bursting. Manufacturers and developers alike tout their own particular methods of achieving the most accurate and authentic analogue sound.
Yet there are many for whom an imitation simply won’t do. It’s got to be the real deal or nothing. If you’re lucky, you might have one or two actual vintage analogue synths around – or know somebody who does. If the latter, you may be able to make use of a decent sampler to realise your analogue dreams, assuming your chum will allow you to spend a couple of hours with the object of your desire. If not, there may be a retailer that will rent out some tasty vintage (or at least analogue) synths for a price. A single day with such an instrument can provide a wealth of samples with which you can build your own virtual synths.
Ah, but aren’t samples too static to convincingly stand in for the real thing? This can indeed be true, particularly when dealing with some of the phrase and loopbased samplers on the market these days. But with a good old-fashioned multisampler, you can achieve astonishing realism.
You see, a multisampler will allow you to combine multiple samples of the same sound at different pitches and velocities in order to better recreate what the original instrument sounded like. This minimises some of the undesirable artefacts associated with samplers. The more samples you use, the more faithful the reproduction.
Over the next few pages, we’ll show you how you can employ your favourite multisampler to recreate vintage analogue synthesisers. We’ll give you tips and tricks to do it up right and even provide you with a bunch of professionally quality samples to get you started.
Still, the fact that so many of us are drawn to vintage sounds is reason enough to explore what it takes to recreate those sounds. Softsynth developers have invested countless hours researching the subject and the results are plain to hear in the best of them. The rest can, with some effort, be simulated, as we’ll see.
“A single day can provide a wealth of samples”