by Hennessy

I remember when the guys at Native Instrument announced the imminent relase of a new instrument plugin, without revealing what it was going to be.

If my memory serves me well they just stated it was the software version 'one of the most influential instruments of our time'.

Those were really glorious day for VSTis. The new protocol was becoming hugely successfull, thanks to the functionality improvements of Cubase 5.1, and N-I had gained a leader role within sotware houses relasing its amazing 'Vintage line' of plugins, that included Pro52 (nowadays Pro53), Fm7 and B4. Basically the massive approvation of the crowd was due to the fact that those applications were more or less perfect soft-reincarnations of three classic instruments of modern music, the Sequential Circuit Prophet 5 analog synth, the Yamaha DX7 digital synth and the Hammond B3 organ (an add-on pack for N-I B4 also provide sounds modeled on the base of Farfisa, Vox Continental and indian Harmonium).

A poll was started on N-I website and the results showed that most people were expecting a brand new Fender Rhodes or Minimoog clone. 303's, 808's & 909's were excluded just because Propellerhead's Rebirth was already rockin' around. In some way most were thinking of another emulation of that kind of evergreen gear.

Then Kontakt came. A sampler.

Somehow also many samplers are considered 'classics'. But Kontakt, just like almost any other software sampler, did not trace back the design nor the features of its elder brothers. Actually several old and new hardware units have got their unique features (the superb AKAI S6000 filter set) or a really special sound (the EMU SP1200 with its peculiar 12bit timbre), but none of those are considered an indiscussed benchmark unit. None had such a huge character to generate a collective obsessive madness for 'that' sound (look at the insane addiction to Roland TB303), eventually capable to convince software houses to launch
the cheaper software clone for the masses. Maybe also a possible explanation is that samplers, being genuine digital devices, virtually will never stop evolving and improving - just like computer components - it's a non-sense to look back fanatically to the old school.

If we stop and think about it for a while, the core function of sampler, as the same word can suggest, is just to record and playback sounds. Sure, it's clear that it does that in a different way from a walkman (by the way the first 'sampler', the Mellotron, was a proper tape player), but still there's not a lot more behind this basic functionality.

It's legitimate then to say "hey! it doesn't even have its own sound! how then could it have had such a big impact in music?" There's no answer I can find for such a question. Because it's just not about the *sampler* in itself. It's the logic of *sampling* that drastically changed the whole approach to music, eventually changing the music itself.

The first productions making a heavy use of samplers literally set a new taste in music.
Just think of how hip-hop was born. Skipping loops of old jazz records were the whole rhythmic arsenal of the pioneers, A Tribe Called Quest or De La Soul; these days that drum flavour is the true essence of the new-school R'nB that blows up the pop charts, to the point that a even a multi-platinum Santana album had more than one single with no "drummer" but a "drum programmer" between the acknowledgments. Also remember when disco music turned into house music in the mid '80s. The shuffled sampled piano and strings in Marshall Jefferson's anthem 'Move your body' and the broken vocals of Loletta Halloway recycled in Blackbox classic 'Ride on time' had a swing we still feel in today's biggest dance records. In both cases the use of a sampler was originally due to a lack of proper recording gear and instruments. After all an acceptable compromise. But the sampled instrument eventually became preferable to the original one. Just better sounding. It's hard to believe that a rap producer who drives a Lamborghini cannot manage to get a battery and a drummer able to play in 4/4 isn't it?

I would also like to make you notice this. Hip-hop has been in many case a loud voice coming from the ghetto in North America. Around house music the so called 'club culture' grew world-wide. Both had and still have today a huge influence in people's lifestyle. So would be exaggerated to assert that in the long run the use of samplers, by making all this possible, had a social and cultural function that no other musical instrument had before? I like to think it's like that.

Few weeks ago I was down the pub having a talk with a friend of mine. He's a rock and roll fan, and when he asked me how people can love music when there are no 'real instruments' played I just replied 'cause we love it'. After a few drinks we even realised that we both really like a song that uses lots of samples. Its name 'Tomorrow never knows' by The Beatles, contained in 'Revolver', 1967. That wicked George Martin, he already knew what was going to happen to music. But he just couldn't wait for digital technologies to come, so he materially cut and pasted the audio tape with a real pair of hardware scissors. With pretty good results, we have to admit.

As I tried to demonstrate, I hope without boring you too much, sampling is definitively a key feature of contemporary music. When it all started the means were poor but the results have been great. It has been like that because the guys from old school really loved those complicated boxes without graphical user interface. They knew they were the bottles into which they put their messages to send to the world. Today we have got much, much more. But our 32bit VSTi and DXi still need our love to sing something new, and the best advice I can give you is not to limit yourself to load patches or match loops. You can get much more, and the closer you get with your sampler the more you'll realise there's just no way to push it to the limit. Take a look at the manual but don't fear to press all buttons randomly to see what happens. And if don't want to learn through trial and error, just do as the scholar does: listen to the music, and learn from the masters. Fatboy Slim's 'The Rockafeller Skank' is a good example of genuine breakbeat sampling skill. Todd Edward's remix of Indo's 'R u sleepin?' will enlighten you on how sampled vocals can be really soulful. Modjo's 'Chillin' is an amazing fresh result of some smart cut and paste over Chic's ultra-notorious 'Le Freak'. There are loads of tracks that can reveal to you much more than manuals and tutorials.

One last thing: don't ever say things like "I cannot do it without hard disk streaming, I'm stuck until an update comes out to fix this". Think positive. If you truly blame it on the sampler, then smash it and set it on fire, just like Jimi Hendrix did with his out of tune, right-hand inverted Fender Stratocaster. But remember to save a backup copy of your work before.