Hi everyone.
First I would like to say that I am sorry for the blog delay, the blog supposed to be online on Wednesday as that day is the day for a new blog, but I had a small medical problem and therefore I wasn't able to release it on that day.
For some time I wanted to make this video, but it is really complicated to make some videos as many of the topics need a lot of explanation in order that you understand the idea of what I want to say. Even in this video that you can see, I am not sure did I make it to be clear, and therefore I always write the blogs after I record the video and in this written form I always try to make clear what I think I missed to say in the video.
Many of my customers and people that I do teaching 1 on 1 have the same thoughts about using the samples I did some time ago. On my producer beginnings, I was feeling bad to use any samples, and I thought that I am doing something bad if I use samples. My belief was that I need to make everything, so if I am using samples I felt a bit guilty and therefore I did;t use them as all. My beginning was pretty hard as I did;t want to use samples and I was losing a lot of time in order to create everything on my own. In this period of time, I got a pretty good understanding of synthesis and I am glad that I had this period, as result, I got pretty good knowledge when it comes to but synthesis, but whole that period I can say I only got the knowledge while results weren't that good.
After I meet several producers and after we shared our working approaches, I saw how many samples others have been using and that my knowledge about music production was much higher than theirs, but still, the results they had were much much better than mine, so I decided to start using the samples. After i started using samples, my results went trough the roof and that's the moment when my career started to get results.
The idea of this blog is not that sampling is better or more important than synthesis, but it is about that sampling is equally important as any other part of making the music. There are several PsyTrance Producers with extremely strong career and I heard about the 100% that is not using any VSTi, and they use only samples, but I do not want to use any names in my videos and blogs in order that I avoid any kind of conflict between any of that artist and myself. But there are producers that are 100% sample-based, and they made big careers. On the other side, there are so many producers that only use synthesis as their sound source, and that is kind of approved and approved as the right way to make psytrance music.
My personal approach is that in my tracks, I will use samples as much as I use synthesis, even that I am really good with the synthesis and I believe that I understand synthesis 100%. There is a lot of reasons why I love to use samples. So let's start with the first one.
Colour:
The colour is the first reason why I love using samples. By using the samples, we are borrowing a piece of art that somebody else did. If we do everything on our own, we will always do some things the same, and if we use some piece of sound form somebody else, it is like we are getting someone else pieces in our music, and I strongly believe that is the richness that we can get in our music. Now, several years ago, it wasn't possible to make a sample pack without plenty of hardware gear. Microphones, Preamps, compressor, recorders, mixing desks... Each piece of any hardware unit have a colour signature, and every sample that has been made or recorded in this way will have that colour signature. If you buy any of the Spectrasonics samples or if you use Omnisphere, you will get this kind of colour in your music. There are a lot of software plugins to colour your sound, tape emulators, distortions, but all of those are emulations, and they can help you to colour your sound, but I have proved to my self that hardware and software cannot be even close in the results when it comes to colour. All other aspects when we compare hardware and software we could debate about, but I am 100% sure that software colours can't be compared with the hardware ones. I could go into the details about this but I am afraid that this blog will not have an end if I go to that field.
So the conclusion is when you use the right samples, and that samples that have been made by using a lot of hardware, you will have that piece of colour in your music and the more colours you get, the more rich your sound will be.
If you check this video, you will understand why Prodigy had so rich sound. As all the samples that have been using for creating their tracks, samples from Led Zeppelin, Nirvana, Funky music from the 60s... all this music have been recorded through many different hardware pieces and all of them have different colours, and if you use those samples, you would colour your tracks with that as well.
Now, we are coming to the point where we need to understand that Sample packs that are getting released today are nothing else than if you use the presets, as today everybody can make a sample pack with a few VSTi-s and only one sound card. The Drum Template that I released last year is coloured with plenty of the hardware gear I used in friends of my studio. I was using the Theromioni Culture vulture, SLL Fusion, Bax Eq, Manley Massive Passive, Phoenix Compressor, API Preamps, and I really wanted to offer something that is not just a raw Daw with a few Plugins. I am planning to make more of those Templates, and the last one is pretty good quality and I am using it for my production all the time.
Sampling:
Sampling is an art by itself! Just sampling as a technique is an art by itself, and manipulating the samples (audio stems) will give you totally different sound when compared with the synthesis. Sometimes when we change the pitch of the sample, the sample can lose a bit of quality which for me in some cases sounds amazing, and we have clear synthesis for some sounds, and some sound that lose a bit of quality by sampling, it just gives richness in my music. Sometimes I will make a slingshot sound form any VSTi and I will bounce it in the wrong key, and then I will transpose it as a sample, just in order that it gets a different sounding moment. This technique or this sound type is called Lo-Fi, and you probably saw it in some sample packs or is some libraries.
The conclusion: My advice to all of you is that you shell get rid of all limitations that you created in your head, as the limitations will not give you anything good. If you stay open to all the techniques and if you have them in your mind while you work on your music, there is a possibility that you come to some amazing sounding effects by applying all different techniques. If you use all different types of sounds, then there is an even bigger chance that you make something really unique and beautiful.
Check the video below as in this video I have shared some of the sample packs that I use, and if you manage to get some of the older packs that have been recorded through all different hardware gear, your tracks will also get some of the colours from these pieces.