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/