Top 5 beginners tips for sampling

I know as media composers, a great many of us haven’t exactly experienced the same emptiness appearing in our schedules that our friends and families have since early last year. But if like me and you’ve found a little bit more time to work on something new with your music, your attention may have turned to sampling. You may also find the initial excitement soon give way to bewilderment once you crack open that sampler or DAW. 

Which is why I’ve compiled what I believe to be the five most important things to remember when approaching this area for the first time. Until fairly recently my personal sampling experience was practically non-existent, so these tips have evolved from the biggest challenges I’ve encountered in the process of learning how to create fully-fledged sample libraries from start to finish. Whether you’re keen to make professional-quality packages and libraries, you’re hoping to create sample patches without getting into scripting, or simply wanting to know how to make your own unique sound palette, this article will help you get the most out of your audio.

Know Your Sampler

A poor workman may blame his tools, but it’s particularly telling when the workman doesn’t even know how to properly use the tool in the first place. From the simplest of free plugins, to the detailed powerhouses of Kontakt and EXS24, If you don’t even know the basics of importing your audio and mapping, then you’re going to struggle. If you’re wanting to dig deep into the programming, then learning the code to get it to do what you want will take a lot of time looking over manuals, online tutorials, and asking others for help. Even if you want to keep it simple and just create a patch for personal use, understanding the essentials, the shortcuts, and the audio signal through the plugin will be an enormous time-saver. 

Getting to know all the nooks and crannies of your sampler will likely take quite a while, and a fair bit of experimenting. If you’re planning a detailed sample library that offers a lot of control over articulation, velocity, pitch, FX, and other such parameters, then starting small and giving yourself the space to wrap your head around each step in the process will help you enjoy it all in the long run. Which brings me onto my next tip.

Don’t Over-Complicate

Whatever your wild ambitions for your samples, taking a moment to consider what is actually manageable with the time and resources you have at your disposal will help avoid disappointment and sampling burnout. I know from my own libraries that once you have the samples recorded, some level of editing will be necessary before even importing into the sampler. Sometimes you’ll need to go in and surgically remove background noises or apply careful EQ. Sometimes it might “only” be a case of tightening the attack and release (so that the sound will immediately start when triggered in the sampler), and adjusting the volume levels. Regardless of how much TLC in needs before the sampler stage, if you’ve got more than a couple of audio files then it will take more time than you initially anticipated. It’s tough work if you’re not usually one for doing much of your own mixing or mastering, and to finish slogging through that stage only to find you need to write practically an essay of script from scratch because you told yourself the UI would feature a host of parameter controls…well, it’s going to wear you out. Don’t run before you can walk, and try to limit yourself while you’re still getting to grips with the process. Start with just a handful of well-chosen audio files (and maybe just the one knob or slider if you’re creating a front-end UI), and see where things go from there. Slowly.

Experiment

It’s probably in every modern composer’s nature to try new things with instruments and tech out of curiosity and the sheer hell of it, but when sampling you’re going to want to turn that dial way up (both figuratively and literally). While no two sample libraries will every sound truly the same due to instrumentation/sound sources, effects, recording space and so on, the market is already pretty saturated with vintage piano libraries. That’s not to say that another one wouldn’t be of any interest! And certainly if you’re thinking of sampling for personal use, it’s a pretty moot point anyway. But probably the biggest joy of sampling as an individual is taking often common sounds and adding your own personal twist on them. Sure, you’ve got a nice Broadwood upright from 1913 that would sound lovely in a score, but try recording it with the top off or with sheets of paper behind the hammers, run it through some interesting reverb or delay, and THEN import it into your sampler and start messing with the sound there. NOW we’ve got a library with a bit more pizazz! And best of all, it’s uniquely yours.

Plan and Prototype

This is probably of more use if you’re hoping to package up your samples and share them, but even if you’re developing this skill for personal benefit it’ll still go a long way to organise things in a way that works for you. Needless to say, a good plan is vital if you want an end product that’s clear and easy to use. Think about what the UI will look like, what parameters you might want to give the user control over and if they’re going to be in the form of a knob/slider/switch/button, how you’ll lay it out on the screen and if you should split your library into multiple patches or try and put it all on one. Will you have round robins? Different velocity layers (samples that are triggered depending on the MIDI velocity you input)? Multiple articulations? What about the instrument/sound rage that it’ll play, and how many of those pitches will you record individually? Having a good idea of all of this will help save time and make the recording stage more successful. It’s also wise in the middle of the recording session to make a very quick edit of a sample or two and run that through the sampler, just to make sure you’re on the right track. It also provides an opportunity for you to adjust your plan and goals. If you find that playing that harp with the other hand holding it in an unusual position works better when run through your Echorec, then go with it! It’s all about finding that sweet balance between knowing what you’re doing and keeping an open mind.

Listen

Each stage of the sampling process involves careful, musically (and often scientifically) informed listening. It’s all too easy when recording your samples not notice or give enough credit to just how loud noise and other unpleasant sounds can be once you’ve brought the audio up to commercial levels. You may well be after a lovely clear synth sound that excels with a good high pass filter that you add in your sampler, but you don’t notice the sound of a household appliance taking up room near the top, or the sound of shouting just at the exact frequencies you’re hoping to boost. That’s part of the reason planning and prototyping is important in getting exactly the sound you want without compromising (too much at least). Sometimes however, you’ve captured a sound and it wasn’t possible to prototype on the spot, or the sound can’t be easily replicated for the purpose of a cleaner recording. That’s life. Sometimes you have to try your best with audio clean-up processes, sometimes you might have to weigh up the pros/cons of using that particular sample, and sometimes you just have to roll with it and adapt. Combining samples, using very precise filtering of frequencies and boosting others, or adding other effects to hide imperfections might do the trick. But listening to your samples as you go along (or as soon as you can) to get as clear an idea of what will be possible to create out of them, and then using your musical/audible instinct and imagination to work around issues will stop you getting stuck.

Hopefully these tips will help guard you against the biggest mistakes when beginning to sample. It certainly isn’t an exhaustive list, and given the variety of goals and experience people have when it comes to learning this skill, I’m afraid I can’t go more detailed than that. Some of these tips might seem a little obvious, but it’s surprising how easy it is to imagine you’re creating something exactly like how you planned, only to realise down the line that you’ve worked yourself into a corner you definitely don’t want to be in. But it’s all a learning experience, and the best and quickest way to improve is to just get stuck in!