What is a sample CD?

What I mean by a sample CD is a CD Rom containing small sections of sampled music. These can be samples of instruments, drums, percussion, bass, guitar, fx and even live noises you might hear outdoors. They can vary in length; they can be single notes (sometimes called hits) or as a groove or loop which contains a mixture of sounds which have already been mixed. For instance you may get a loop which has the kick and bass together to make it easier to add straight to the track you are producing. This can save you a lot of time and of course most of these CDs are royalty free so you don’t have to pay to use the samples, however always be sure to read the CD beforehand to understand the royalty and copyright implications.

Most sample CDs are aimed at the dance music market and are often categorized by genre like House or Techno. The samples you find on CD will be various tempos so you will have to use software to change the pitch/tempo. Most sample CDs tend to name the files with the BPM (beats per minute) so you can at least decide whether you need to speed it up or slow it down to your desired BPM. Also be aware that if the BPM is shifted too much the quality will be degraded so try and choose samples that are roughly your desired BPM

Format

The most common type of format is a WAV file although you can get REX, refill, HALion or Acid files for use in the related software. You can also get hits which are single notes or sounds for example a single drum hit. Sample CDs often contain what is also known as multisamples. These are groups of samples which can be imported straight into programs which map those multiple samples to each key on the keyboard.

Quality

When you buy a professional sample CD or a normal audio CD from the music store you will find that the quality is 16 bit 44.1 khz stereo. This is the standard CD quality and you should always look for in a sample CD. I mention this as there are lots of producers doing their own CDs who might not produce to a professional standard so its always worth checking.

Using your samples

Once you have your sample CD you will need software to play and use the samples on your computer. You will need software to read the sample files if you want to edit them. If you want to use them in your production you will need software to trigger them using your keyboard and sequencing software (mentioned in earlier blogs) to create your tracks. Check out the list of software below as a starting point:

Sample editors
Recycle
Wavelab

Software samplers
Halion
IK Multimedia Sampletank
Native instruments Kontact
Gigastudio 3

Create your own!

You can of course create your own samples. The software on the market is so good you can create a sound totally different to what you started with. There are of course plenty of old records with some great riffs you can use but beware to get clearance to use any samples that are obvious. You can of course sample whatever you want for free as long as you can’t tell what it is!

Where to buy?

I have created my own sample CD, you can get this by clicking on the link below






Check out these sites to buy various genres of sample CDs

http://www.timespace.com/

http://www.loopmasters.com/

http://www.inspirationsounds.co.uk/

Sampling

Sampling background

It’s important to realise the importance of sampling. Dance music would not be here today if it wasn't for sampling. It plays an essential role in dance music; just take a look at all the sample CDs available on the market. And not forgetting all the songs you have heard with a sample from another track used in a different way or lifted straight from the original

Over time samplers have evolved to become the most powerful tool in your music making arsenal. You can record whole sections of tracks, through to accapellas, instruments and Single notes.

In the 70s sounds would be recorded onto tape via a keyboard setup, in the 80s this developed into hardware samplers like the AkaiS900 featured here. In the 90s we now have a multitude of software sampling tools like the ones listed below as well as audio recoding software tools like Wavelab and Recycle.

The main hardware based players in the market are Akai and Roland but there are a number of software based samplers in the market including, Native Instruments Kontact, Steinburg Halion, Ableton, FL studio and Emulator X

Technique background

It doesn't just end at simply recording the sound into your hardware/software. If you have a MIDI keyboard you can plug this into your computers sequencing software, audio program or hardware. By doing this you can take one single note and spread that note over a number of keys on a keyboard to trigger the sample. I will cover this in more detail in latter blogs.

The pitch of each key can be changed by using a different frequency to imitate the different notes you would play on a keyboard. This is extremely powerful as you can take a short section of a sample and make it sound totally different just from one note.

This is however limited in the sense that it works best when spread over one octave (the seven notes listed below is one octave) at the most as the step between each key pitch can be quite high. To combat this the alternative is to sample a particular note at various root notes like A, B, C, D, E, F and G if you have them all available.


RAM (random access memory) considerations

A careful consideration when recording samples is the size of the audio file you produce.. If recorded directly into your computer the standard windows file will be WAV format. A 1 hour WAV file is likely to be about 650MB. A file 1 hour long will be around 100MB if in MP3 format. A sample CD full of WAVs can be around 800MB. If you have a number of sample CDs on your computer you will soon end up with a full hard drive so its important to bear in mind before saving everything to hard drive. I tend to keep my sample CDs and load them up when I am looking for a particular sound then save it to the relevant directory. If buying a new computer always bear this in mind and try and go for the largest hard drive. As mentioned in my previous blog, its also worth buying two and having a separate audio drive to your main C drive.

Buying a Windows based laptop for producing music

As everyone seems to be on the move these days it is surprising how many people have laptops rather than desktop PC’s. This is especially true if you are musician. It is ideal to be able to work on your music while traveling, music is time consuming and making the most of it is important.

With all this in mind I thought I would try and put something together for anyone starting to do any of the above. This is a fairly new experience for me as I recently acquired an old laptop. I am running a laptop with 240mg of ram, a 40gb hard drive and an intel Celeron 2.4ghz processor. This is not something I would have thought would be able to handle much when making music however I have been using it fine when running Propellerhead Reason.

I strongly recommend considering using a second hand laptop for this reason but it all depends on what your aim is. One of the main differences in using a laptop on the move is that you don’t always have a keyboard to be able to trigger your sounds with. This is not necessarily an issue as you can do it without, however I find it a lot easier with a keyboard as it gives you more freedom and creativity. What it does mean is that you may spend more time experimenting with notes in your key editor in your sequencing software which can bring a new way of working which can also be a good thing, I will cover more keybords later.

Advantages of using a laptop for music

Laptops come in useful when you need to produce music while on the move.

Being able to go to the artist rather than the artist coming to you is more common nowadays.

Although portable digital recorders are useful for recording live sounds laptops can also be used for this

As more and more DJs are using MP3 rather than vinyl they have slowly moved to DJing with their laptop. Check out the link below to see the 2009 top ten review on DJ software

http://dj-software-review.toptenreviews.com/



What should I look for when buying a brand new laptop?
Much of my previous blog regarding processor, ram, hard disc, cd/dvd drive applies here so its worth reading that first, however there are some other things that differ from this which you need to consider.

Interfaces
Installing a soundcard in an existing laptop is not that simple and as far as I am aware it is only really expensive laptops that have dedicated quality soundcards. To plug external devices into your laptop you need an interface. The types of interfaces on the market are USB, PCMCIA and firewire.

USB (universal series bus)
This is common in most laptops and you normally find 3 or 4 which is a good start. These ports can transfer data at high speeds which is important for making music as you don’t want any delay (known as latency) between external devices and your sequencing software like Cubase.

PCMCIA (Personal Computer Memory Card International Association)
This is commonly known as ‘express card’ or ‘PC Card’. These cards can be used for wireless, modem and other functions in laptops that may not have them natively. These cards can range from £20 to £700, check out this link to give you an idea of what you can achieve using this interface

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/category/computer-music/audio-interfaces/pcmcia-/-laptop/

Firewire
Firewire is a brand name created by Apple Inc for IEEE 1394 interface. Its basically used for high speed data trasnfer. There is a debate between using PCMIA and Firewire. They are basically two technologies that get the same result, they give you more inputs. Depending on what you are trying to achieve I find that you tend to get more inputs at a cheaper price with Firewire. The important thing to remember is that you want low latency (delay) when buying any of these products.

Check out this link to give you an idea of a Firewire device which is really good value for money.

http://www.dolphinmusic.co.uk/product/35673-esi-duafire-includes-cubase-4-le-.html

Its worth mentioning that if you are recoding live, you may want to buy a laptop that is quiet so you don’t get any background noise.

Another thing to think about is the battery, newer laptops have a longer battery life but since it is likely you will be recording for a long period of time you will probably be using the power pack most of the time anyway.

Connecting to external devices such as keyboard
With these interfaces you can connect decks, cd player, mini disc, mixers and more importantly a keyboard. Check out this link for an idea of a budget midi interface. It plugs into your USB port so you can plug a number of midi leads and offers

http://www.gear4music.com/Recording-and-Computers/Edirol-UM-3EX-3in3out-USB-MIDI-Interface/6HB

Think I have covered the main points. On my next blog I will start getting into some production tips. Some of the topics I will cover over the next few blogs are below:

Sampling
MIDI
Programming
ASIO
The DJ and computers

Buying a desktop windows based PC for producing music

If you want to make music on the move then obviously a laptop is the best option however, most people tend to have a desktop environment which is what I will be covering in this blog.

There are lots of powerful PCs on the market these days. You can pick up a decent desktop for £400. The main things to think about are:

The power of the processor
I would look for a processor that’s a minimum of 2ghz. There are two types of manufacturers – Intel and AMD. There has been some debate over which is best for some time. AMD have always been the cheaper competitor but nowadays deciding between an Intel processor and AMD is not so much of an issue as they are very similar in processing power so don’t worry to much about this. I would also look for a processor that is dual core. These are built for multitasking which is ideal for music production.

The size of the memory called Ram
Go for a minimum of 1Gig of memory. Most PCs have this as standard these days.

The size of the hard drive
Go for a hard drive with a minimum of 200GB space. It is also worth considering buying a PC with two hard drives, you can then dedicate a separate hard drive just to audio. Also try and get a SATA hard drive. These are a new type and run better and faster than the old IDE version.

Check it has an ASIO soundcard fitted
It is worth considering buying a PC without and installing a sound card yourself as is a straight forward process but if you feel you are not up for it then ensure it has one already installed. Most sound cards come fitted with the below:

- Stereo inputs and outputs so you can plug in your instruments, turntables etc.
- Midi connector. This is a digital standard used for the connection between your keyboard and computer. You can also use a USB lead to communicate with your computer.
- S/PDIF
- Input Stereo ¼ inch jack (with separate left & right)
- Output Stereo ¼ inch jack (with separate left & right)
- Ultra low latency. This is an important feature, you want to be able to plug in your keyboard and not have any delay when triggering sounds in your computer. Latency is the short delay in your soundcard converting analogue signals to digital.

At this point I cannot recommend the EMU 0404 enough and no I am not being paid to tell you this! You can buy one for about £50 and it comes bundled with the software below.

Check out a great review here

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep04/articles/emu0404.htm

- Cakewalk SONAR LE
- Steinberg Cubase LE and Wavelab Lite
- Ableton Live Lite for E-MU
- IK Multimedia AmpliTube LE
- SFX Machine LT
- E-MU's Proteus X LE Desktop Sound Module - everything you need to create, record, edit, master and burn is in the box

If you need to install your audio card yourself see this document below. All you basically need to do is slot the card into a spare PCI slot in your computer; once it is fitted your computer should recognize it, you then have to install the drivers from a CD that comes with it.

http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/choosing-and-installing-a-new-sound-card.html

Most people tend to have desktop PCs, even an older PC with 512mb of ram and a 1.8ghz processor is enough. It all depends on how hard you want to work your computer. I started off with this spec on my PC and this was enough to record a basic track with about 6 VSTis (virtual studio technology instrument, more on this later) running at the same time.

One thing to bear in mind is that newer software can use a lot of power so keeping up with the times is sometimes necessary, getting the latest spec PC is a good start but don’t let anyone rip you off by telling you that you need to spend thousands.

Remember that to make good music you don’t need to spend lots of money. It’s not the amount of money you spend; it’s about what you do with the equipment you have that’s important. You don’t have to spend lots of money to be creative; creativity comes from within your head and your heart and not your wallet!!