Unlock the Power of Sampling - Create Unique Analog Sounds with Your Existing Setup

tutorial | Nov 28, 2022

This video is about using sampling as a way to create unique analog sounds. It provides tips on how to use a microphone, speakers, and a synthesizer to record sounds, re-amp them, and create unique waveforms. The video also covers how to use a sampler to adjust the pitch and create interesting distortions.

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Transcription #

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[00:00.000] Hey folks, welcome back to another video.
[00:02.880] Every year, when there's a Black Friday or Cyber Monday or whatever, which lasts probably,
[00:10.060] it feels like it lasts at least two weeks, there is this question among producers, do
[00:17.000] I need something, do I need this synthesizer, do I need this plugin and so on.
[00:22.520] And the usual answer is, you don't need actually nothing.
[00:27.000] You don't need anything.
[00:29.120] You can do everything with everything, but it's nice to have and it's nice to have maybe
[00:35.480] a new toy in the door to get some inspiration, but there's not really a need to buy something
[00:43.400] really.
[00:44.400] So I want to show you in this video that you actually have another synth in your door or
[00:52.400] in your setup that you maybe not know that you have it.
[00:58.260] And I want to show you how you can utilize it.
[01:00.160] And this is sampling.
[01:01.960] Sampling is actually the coolest synthesizer you have because it can be everything you
[01:07.040] want it to be.
[01:08.320] It can be your next analog synthesizer or your inspiration machine.
[01:13.720] And all you need to have is maybe a microphone and you don't need to have even a nice microphone.
[01:20.600] For instance, I'm using here just a regular cheap microphone, something like this, right?
[01:32.400] But you can also use maybe a microphone in your display.
[01:37.400] Maybe you have a microphone in display or on your laptop, or maybe you can use your
[01:41.200] smartphone.
[01:42.200] There's also a microphone in there and it doesn't need to be a good sounding microphone,
[01:47.640] right?
[01:48.640] Just that you can record something.
[01:52.280] And in here I'm using an audio track and I switch on here the input for my microphone
[02:01.320] I just showed you in the cam.
[02:04.240] So I'm using this here.
[02:06.720] And what I want to create is basically a recording of the feedback of the round trip.
[02:11.960] So I'm holding basically my microphone to my speakers to record the feedback.
[02:18.000] So I'm just setting a record and then I switch to my external camera.
[02:24.200] You can see I'm holding just this microphone to my speaker, right, and record the feedback.
[02:45.800] So that's enough.
[02:48.360] And it's also nice that we have here a nice high pitched sound because every time you
[02:58.440] pitch something down in the sampler, it sounds nice.
[03:02.320] You can see we have here a nice waveform.
[03:06.800] You can maybe also use here the auto leveler preset for that.
[03:13.080] Maybe get the nice level, maybe turn the volume down so it's not too annoying, get the auto
[03:21.560] leveler on there, bring the threshold down, okay nice, something like this and then bounce
[03:42.280] it out, postfader, or maybe let's call this here feedback, bounce it, or maybe I have
[03:55.680] to put this up, postfader, yeah.
[04:02.360] So we can delete everything here and we have a nice new sound here we can use in the sampler.
[04:09.920] So we go into the sampler, just drag this in, and try to find here the root key which
[04:20.760] is G sharp seven, 32 cents, and the pitch of the feedback is decided by your round trip
[04:28.480] latency, so how long it takes for the signal to go into the door, out of the door, through
[04:35.240] your sound card, through your speakers, into the microphone and so on.
[04:40.840] So you can influence how high the pitch is, where you hold the microphone, how far you
[04:45.760] hold the microphone from the speakers, you can also decide how much room you want to
[04:51.640] have on the sound, so maybe you want to have more room texture from your room where your
[04:56.760] speakers are in, so you move away from the speaker with the microphone and then turn
[05:01.660] up the volume on the speakers itself to get the feedback running.
[05:07.220] And you can influence the sound, what you sample in the end, and the more dirt and room
[05:12.920] information that is in there, the better probably because it can shape the sound, it gives you
[05:18.840] that analog feel, right?
[05:20.800] So here we have this feedback sound, it has even a nice little modulation on there for
[05:35.400] some reason, and you can scan the wave for nice positions.
[05:55.560] And if you change the playback position here every time you press a key with the maybe
[05:59.460] a random modulator, so the sound doesn't become too static every time you press a note, so
[06:08.360] go to note here, then to hold rate, and every time now you press a note, you randomize the
[06:15.160] position, the playback position here.
[06:32.940] And maybe you introduce also here at some point a loop, a region loop, something like
[06:38.960] this, maybe back and forth, and you can hold this, you can create some drones with it.
[06:57.320] And this basically is your analog synthesizer, you have a nice analog waveform, and you can
[07:04.080] record as long as you want to record it, so you have more material and it doesn't repeat
[07:10.320] that fast.
[07:11.920] But it's like your personal analog synthesizer, and it sounds sometimes even more analog than
[07:18.360] a synthesizer sounds, because you have so much dirt and conversions in there, because
[07:25.280] you convert between digital and analog and back and forth all the time, you get also
[07:31.040] all the feedback from the room in there, some reflections, maybe a bit of noise.
[07:38.400] You can also experiment with maybe holding some resonance plates in front of the speakers
[07:43.400] and try to shape the sound a bit in an analog way, and create unique sound waveforms and
[07:53.040] use it in the sampler and create unique sounds with it.
[07:57.440] So instead of using the feedback, we can also try and use maybe a synthesizer, like a polysynth,
[08:06.880] and kind of re-amp it with our speakers.
[08:10.320] So we have here a polysynth, and we draw in maybe a kind of high-pitched sound, because
[08:16.240] we want to pitch it down.
[08:18.320] Every time you pitch a sound down, you bring out all the dirt in the sample itself.
[08:23.580] So go up to maybe C5 here, something like this, and maybe also take unison.
[08:34.960] Stereo field doesn't matter right now, because we only have one microphone, a mono microphone,
[08:40.280] so we always record in mono.
[08:45.960] So I take this here.
[08:47.720] Maybe we also put on a reverb here, supermassive, maybe a bit of randomization here, we modify
[09:09.800] the pitch.
[09:10.800] Or maybe we can use just a vibrato here, go to manual, dial this back.
[09:21.920] And this is something we put out through the speakers and just record it back into the
[09:26.560] DAW.
[09:27.560] Put this over here.
[09:31.280] We need the new audio track.
[09:33.040] This is my microphone 2, I want to record it.
[09:37.320] And I just hit play here.
[09:51.960] And that's the recording.
[09:55.040] So we take this, you can hear there's a bit of room information on there.
[10:04.320] So we can amplify this a bit here more, so we can see what's going on.
[10:10.320] Yeah, we have a nice kind of noisy signal here, right?
[10:21.360] So maybe put an auto level also on this, threshold down.
[10:33.640] And then we bounce this out.
[10:42.240] Remove this, use a sampler, put the sample in there.
[10:50.280] Maybe try find here the pitch, which should be C5, right?
[10:55.640] So C5 minus 5 cents, which is okay, the looping on.
[11:05.120] And then we can play it back some octaves lower.
[11:13.760] And we maybe also need randomization here for the offset, note and hold.
[11:25.160] And of course, we need to modify here the offset.
[11:30.800] Maybe take a bit of attack and release.
[11:49.520] And this is basically the poly synth with the reverb on it through my speakers together
[11:55.280] with my room and the noise of the conversion and the noise of the room together in this
[12:00.600] new sample, which gives this nice analog feel.
[12:04.680] And it also sounds a bit like, yeah, sounds like an old synthesizer.
[12:23.680] So instead of buying, you know, expensive analog simulations, emulations, maybe try
[12:49.640] out the sampler, use a cheap microphone.
[12:52.080] You can also use your smartphone and just record some sounds from your speakers onto
[12:57.520] your smartphone, then, you know, load everything to your PC into the sampler.
[13:04.320] And you have a lot of dirty sounds, analog sounds you can experiment with.
[13:09.720] And the best thing about it, it's unique.
[13:13.160] It's unique because you have your own room.
[13:15.560] It's your, you know, your set of speakers, your smartphone microphone.
[13:19.520] So you have a lot of unique components combined and it gives you a nice, unique sound in the
[13:26.600] end.
[13:27.600] So try this out.
[13:28.600] This is a really inspiring technique and also a new way of bringing in, bringing in organic
[13:35.480] feel to your sounds and to your productions.
[13:39.460] And I use it from time to time.
[13:41.280] Last time I did the stream, I used my kalimba thing here, sampled it a bit, pitched it down.
[13:48.680] Right?
[13:51.720] So everyone has something at home where you can make music in an analog environment, sample
[13:59.160] it and then make instruments out of it.
[14:03.780] So in this setup, I'm using my Korg analog synthesizer.
[14:08.960] It's a monologue going straight into this cheap amplifier here.
[14:13.280] I think it's around 100 bucks, so it's not super expensive.
[14:17.440] And then I record this speaker here with my cheap microphone.
[14:21.400] And then I record this into Bitwig and then I can sample this.
[14:25.600] So all I have to do is basically just play one sound on this analog synth and record
[14:31.000] it.
[14:32.000] So that's what we do.
[14:34.440] And because of this setup, you get all the dirt from the amplifier, you get the room
[14:39.280] in there, you get an analog feel from the synthesizer in there and you can also sample
[14:43.660] as long as you want because it's not like the 80s or the 90s where you had like a sample
[14:49.160] space of two seconds or even less.
[14:52.040] In Bitwig, you have all the space you want and you can record as long as you want to
[14:58.040] get all the information in there.
[15:00.280] So I'm switching here to Bitwig.
[15:04.120] And if you're my audio track, I select my microphone, select it.
[15:10.480] And then I record something.
[15:31.440] So this is just the sound we need.
[15:35.440] And we clean this up a bit here, maybe to get the DC offset out there here with a low
[15:42.800] cut, maybe a high cut.
[15:48.040] See, there's a lot of noise here.
[15:52.400] We only want this frequency here, or maybe I'll see it in a EQ5 banner.
[15:59.120] This is the main fundamental frequency here and you get all this dirt in here and you
[16:03.400] can cut the sound if you want to, but maybe you want to leave it in.
[16:10.280] And then we also probably want to auto level this again.
[16:20.480] Get the nice balanced.
[16:23.520] Yeah, it's okay.
[16:27.920] Use this bit here, bounce it out, delete this, and use a sampler, put this in the sampler.
[16:46.280] And then we use a randomize for the start offset here.
[16:53.440] Watch this to hold, 3, and then also the deck 2's key, which is C5.
[17:01.560] Oh, this is right, yeah, it's C5.
[17:13.080] You can hear there's a lot of pitch modulation in there already.
[17:28.880] Of course the signal is completely mono, that's probably nice to have a reverb on it.
[17:50.040] When you record it, a lot of overtones or harmonics, maybe with the amplifier where
[17:55.080] you increase the overdrive, you can also use then here a bit of filtering to remove some
[18:02.520] upper frequencies.
[18:26.000] And sometimes I use just demo versions of VST instruments and re-amp it or re-sample
[18:44.280] it through my speakers for the sampler.
[18:46.920] Just one tone, I just want to have a dirty sound, I don't want to replicate the synthesizer
[18:53.400] to 100%, it's just to get some noises in there, some tonal noises and some interesting analog
[19:00.640] unique waveforms.
[19:03.160] So this is my tip, my inspiration for today, maybe you want to try it out when you got
[19:07.600] home from work, instead of just buying the next synthesizer, because you already have
[19:15.840] probably 20 or 30, try out the sampler.
[19:21.840] It's so fun to actually come up with some interesting analog distortions.
[19:26.940] Like I said, it depends on how you position your microphone, what you put between your
[19:32.760] microphone and your sound source, how long the latency round trip is, what kind of tonal
[19:38.360] sound you use, which kind of VST you use, maybe you just use the feedback like I did
[19:43.120] before.
[19:44.440] And like I said, you can sample as long as you want, so you can maybe sample up to two
[19:55.920] minutes and have a lot of interesting, unique analog modulations.
[20:03.480] And then you can jump around here in the waveform with the random modulator every time you hit
[20:08.360] the key.
[20:09.360] So you get every time a different feel for the attack.
[20:13.560] Okay, that's it for this video.
[20:16.000] Thanks for watching, leave a like if you liked the video, subscribe to the channel, leave
[20:19.520] a comment if you have some questions and I'll see you in the next video.
[20:22.440] Thanks for watching and bye.