Samplers

Music Tech || MT CA1 - Introduction to Music Technology and the Music Business

What are samplers?

• Use short pieces of audio to create sound.

• Generates sound by playing back pieces of audio.

• Store short pieces of recorded audio. They then play these when instructed.

• Samplers can trigger recordings of real instruments that can be played musically.

What is a trigger?

A signal that tells another device to do something, for example, pressing a key.

How does a trigger work?

• The trigger, for instance, is pressing a key.

• The sampler finds the corresponding audio files.

• The sampler then plays back the audio.

What are the controls on a sampler?

Looping, truncating, velocity editing, crossfading, tuning, and pitch mapping.

What is looping?

Where the sampler is told to continually play back a section of audio from start to finish.

What is truncating?

“Trimming” - used to shorten the length of a file.

What is velocity editing?

Velocity if the force of which the note was played, measured as decimals. You can edit how much force is applied.

What is crossfading?

Added to regions that have been cut to make the sound more realistic and smoother.

What is coarse tuning?

Measured in semitones. Will change the pitch of a sample one semitone at a time.

What is fine tuning?

Measured in cents. Will change the pitch of a sample in between semitones.

What is pitch mapping?

Taking one sample of a note and map it across a pitch range of a keyboard.