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| College Work: Digital Audio & Synthesis: The History of the Sampler | |||
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The History and Development Kieran McAtamney-Sanders Brief: Research the history and development of the Sampler.
Conclude with vision to the future of sampling systems Deliverables: An essay of 1500 to 2000 words. Chapter 1: Introduction In order to investigate their beginnings, It is necessary to define what
is meant by a Sampler; A piece of equipment which plays back a pre-recorded
audio clip (or “sample”) on demand, commonly at the press of
a key on a keyboard. This definition is particularly important since the
name “sampler” is also used to denote a component in the Analogue
to Digital conversion process. To avoid confusion, I will refer in this
essay to the former as a Sampler (capitalized) and the latter as a sampler. Chapter 2: Sampler History In the loosest sense of the word, a sampler is defined as any piece of equipment which can Record, Store and Replay a sound. Thus, the first recording device (Thomas Edison’s Phonograph, 1877) can also be said to be the first Sampler. This rather open definition also includes such equipment as the Tape recorder, Mini-Disc, DAT tape and a myriad of other devices. It is more appropriate, therefore to restrict our definition to the more common usage of the term; a device designed to record, store and replay sounds on demand as part of the recording/performance process. One spur for the development of sampler technology was the development of music based on “Real-World” sounds, dubbed “Musique Concrete” by Schaeffer in 1948. However, at this time the only method for creating such music was by manual editing and tape splicing. An early instance of a live performance making use of pre-recorded material as an intrinsic part of the composition was Mauricio Kagel’s “Transicion II” , and involved two pianists, and two tape recorder operators who played a combination of pre-recorded material and material recorded during the concert itself. Among the earliest “true” samplers was the Mellotron. This
was a tape-based system, with each key press activating a short section
of tape for playback. Recording new samples, however, was not an easy
task, since each key required a separate recorded tape. The early Samplers were of limited flexibility, as described above, due to their analogue nature - they were dependant on physical tape playback, which not only made importing / creating new samples laborious, but also sorely limited the flexibility of the user as to what they could do with the samples once they were loaded. Even such seemingly simple tasks as looping a sample became difficult, since each keystroke started a separate tape, created great difficulty in synchronising start-points. The possible length of samples was also limited by the difficulties associated with storing and playing lengthy tape loops without tangling them. All this was to change with the advent of Digital technology in the music industry - The introduction of RAM storage removed the limitations on sample looping (which has since become one of the most useful features of the Sampler to the modern musician), since Random Access means that a sample can be started at any point in the recording, and re-started almost instantaneously. Digital Sampler, however, did not so quickly remove the limitations on the length of samples,, since the cost of RAM remained high for some time. Even today, most samplers are still limited to an average of 16MB of ram (around 96 seconds of samples in total). The first commercial Digital Sampler was the Fairlight Computer Music
Instrument (CMI), released in 1979. The Fairlight began life as the QUASAR
M8 in 1978, and was designed by Australian engineers Peter Vogel and Kim
Ryrie. The Fairlight was limited to 32k of memory, and 16khz, 8-bit sampling.
Despite these seemingly meagre specifications, the Fairlight was a revolutionary
piece of machinery, demonstrating for the first time the full range of
possibilities offered by samplers, as well as including sequencing and
synthesis capabilities. The Fairlight was followed by the first wholly dedicated Digital Sampler in 1981, the Emulator from E-Mu Systems. Both were, by today’s standards, extremely basic, but were embraced by artists such as Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, and used to great effect. One of the major limitations of this “First Generation” of Digital Samplers was the lack of significant multisampling (mapping different samples to different keys), as well as their tiny memory capacities, which limited the length of samples severely. This was improved on greatly in 1984 by the Emulator II, which had 512kb of memory, allowing for far longer samples. In 1985 the company which has since come to dominate the Sampler market made its first foray into the area; The AKAI S612. This was capable of 12-bit sampling at any rate from 4khz to 32khz. At the lowest sample rate it allowed 8 seconds of samples to be stored. The S612 was also among the first samplers to make use of the new MIDI system, allowing the sampler to be separated from the keyboard. It also included filtering, allowing the user to tailor samples once they had been recorded. In the next few years, Sampler memories continued to grow, until, in 1990 the AKAI S1100, which had 2MB upgradeable to 32MB. With this increased memory, the S1100 was capable of CD-Quality samples. The S1100 was also the first commercially available Sampler with an internal hard disk. Since the S1100, the advances in samplers have been in their audio processing capabilities, up to today’s samplers, which include a large range of digital effects, and software compatibility allowing samples t be edited on the computer and then quickly and easily imported to the sampler. Chapter 3: Possible Futures From its origins in the analogue world the Sampler has, along with much of the paraphernalia of the recording studio, become an increasingly Digital animal. This has led to a vast increase in the quantity of samples that can be held in a single machine. It is now common, at least in the more professionally created sample sets for a single keystroke to activate one of a range of samples depending on, among other things, the speed and pressure with which the key is pressed. Increasingly, software is becoming available which provides a direct interface between the Personal Computer and the Hardware Sampler. This not only puts a more flexible front-end on the “little grey box”, but allows easy access to the myriad hard disk editing packages available to fine-tune samples. This development is in turn set to be overshadowed by the rapidly increasing possibilities offered by Software only Samplers. With the advent of Software Samplers, it is likely that this variety and quantity of samples available simultaneously will continue to grow, and one can easily envisage a time when the Software Sampler, limited only by available hard drive space, will have a library of hundreds of thousands, even millions of samples all available at a few milliseconds notice. The possibility of longer and greater quality samples may also serve to shake the Sampler out of its current niche as a mere playback device for pilfered drum loops. It is to be hoped that as the technology becomes more flexible so will more of its users; the Sampler is an immensely powerful and versatile tool for both the recording and live artist, and, when used to its full potential can achieve astounding results. It is therefore a pity that a large proportion of musicians still see it as a glorified drum machine, and one can only hope that this will change as the technology continues to mature. Bibliography: Books: Bartlett, B & J; 1998; Practical recording Techniques, Second Edition; Focal Press; UK Russ, M; 1996; Sound Synthesis & Sampling; Focal Press; UK Watkinson, J; 1994; An Introduction to Digital Audio; Focal Press; UK Internet Resources: A History of Sampling, Website,
accessed 13th October, Available at AKAI Professional Audio Products, Website, accessed 13th October, Available at http://www.akaipro.com/ Dartmouth University, Website, accessed 13th October,
Available at E-Mu / ENSONIQ, Website, accessed 13th October,
Available at Obsolete.com, Website, accessed 13th October, Available
at Acknowledgements: Thanks to Dane Ramshaw for the loan of his books, and collection of URL’s to get me headed in the right direction. |
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