Try this sampling trick!

[gmeredith]

Here's a little trick - you can use any lo-fi sampler to try this, such as a Casio SK-1/5 or 8 etc, or a yamaha VSS sampler. I used my Casio SK-8. I also tried it on my Casio FZ-1, but its better on a low quality sampler.

Basically, you take a recorded sound source, for example, a 45 rpm 7" vinyl single record, of say, a drum beat or something. Hook up a record player up to the SK sampler line input. Play the record at its normal 45rpm speed.

Record this record into the sampler on a sampler memory. Play it back. It should sound like the record, only poorer quality, obviously, as the SK is a lo-fi sampler.

Repeat the recording on another sample voice memory so you can compare it to the first sample (only on the SK5 and 8 will you be able to keep the first one as well, though. On the SK-1 which has only 1 memory, record your SK on a computer and then overwrite the sample with the next one, record it to computer, then compare the 2). Only this time, slow the record down to 33rpm. Record the sample. Play it back. It should sound like the slowed down record. Now play the sample back 4 or 5 notes up on the keyboard, so that the sample is tuned up to the same as the record's pitch and tempo as it should be played at 45rpm.

Compare the first sample and the second "tuned up" sample. Tell me what you notice.

If you don't have a record player, you can use your computer in place of it, and use a wav file of a good quality drum beat. In this case, use a soft sample player or program to slow the playback of the wav file down - you can be even more extreme than the record player in this case - tune it down a whole OCTAVE.
- Make sure you don't slow it down using a "time stretch/pitch shift" type of software effect, where the pitch can be dropped but the beat stays at the same tempo - in this case, we want it to work just like the slowed record - where the pitch drops an octave AND the tempo slows down by half.

Now, when you play it back on the sampler, play it back a whole octave up to play it at the same pitch and tempo as the original wav file.

Tell me what you think!!

Cheers, Graham

[Gordonjcp]

You *should* get slightly cleaner-sounding samples, because of the increase in sample rate.  Doing it the other way round is more useful - listen to the wahwah guitar hook in Public Enemy - "By The Time I Get To Arizona", and you'll hear it sounds all aliased and crunchy.  You can even pick out a faint whistle, which is the unfiltered sample rate.  What they used to do was play LPs at 45 or even 78 and pitch them down in the sampler to squeeze longer samples into precious memory.

[gmeredith]

You *should* get slightly cleaner-sounding samples, because of the increase in sample rate

Yeah!! Much better! Have a listen to my results:

http://www.jz-server.de/forum2/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?614

But DON"T tell this to the Yahoo Electribe group!!! :

http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/electribe/message/11410

Doing it the other way round is more useful

Yeah, that's lots of fun also. Especially since you've only got about 1 second of sampling time in the SK's this makes a big difference in what you can fit in it.

Cheers, Graham

[Circuitbenders]

ah hahahaha, so you've come up against zoinky420 on the yahoo groups. Try doing a search for that name on the yahoo bending group. The guy is an idiot and seems to get wound up over just about anything. Combine that with a total inability to admit he might be wrong and you've got a lethal combination. You cannot win there because he will refuse to lose 

He'll  be threatening to come round your house and shoot your dog before you know it.

[gmeredith]

Ha!! Yeah, I found him. I did know of him from the benders group before this, but I suddenly saw him surface again on that Electribe group. Really hijacked the thread, too I decided just to be civil all the way through, so people would see him for who he is. I hope in the end that people would have read through the smoke screen to see what I was actually getting at. I'm not sure they did, though. They seemed to tie themselves up with a whole bunch of sampling theory and declare that what I was doing was impossible. No one actually tried doing it on their own samplers to see if it worked

Cheers, Graham

[Gordonjcp]

I actually joined the Electribe group just to read the thread, and I hate to say it but I'm inclined to agree with zoinky420.  I doubt if the sampler is actually playing the sample back at a faster sample rate (unless it's a Fairlight or Synclavier, which used exactly this technique) but is using a phase accumulator and playing back at a constant 32kHz.

Basically a phase accumulator works like this - if you play back at 1:1 then you play back every sample (sample as in individual slice of time) in memory at the normal sample rate.  If you pitch the sample up an octave, you'd play back every second sample.  If you pitch the sample up a major third, then the ratio is 1.26:1 - so for every "tick" of the 32kHz sample clock you'd play a sample and add 1.26 to the playback position.

Doesn't that make the sound distorted?  Well yes, it does.  So we use interpolation to make up the values between the samples.  In this case if we're playing back from 1.26 samples into the memory, then we mix 0.74 of sample 1 and 0.26 of sample 2 to get the interpolated value.

If we didn't do this, we'd just either skip over samples as we played (in this case we'd play 1,2,3,5,6.7.8.10) if we pitched it up, or repeat samples if we pitched it down.  This is what early samplers like the Ensoniq Mirage do, which is why you get those lovely crunchy aliasing Peter Gabriel-like textures when you bang it down a couple of octaves.

You will get some nice effects by playing around with the frequency artifacts,  but as I said it's more useful sampling in a pitched-up sound and slowing it down for a nice gritty hiphop feel.

[iqoruvuc]

Last time I went on the yahoo group people had signed with slight name variations of 'zoinky420' and were impersonating him.  One of the members had seemed to pass a virus around that was randomly reposting fragments of already posted messages - it was hillarious!

As for zoinky420 - according to him he is the inventer of any bend and if you think otherwise he will come round you house (from canada) for a fight.  I think he left to start up his own forum in the end.  You should pass his details on to S-cat 

[Circuitbenders]

You will get some nice effects by playing around with the frequency artifacts,  but as I said it's more useful sampling in a pitched-up sound and slowing it down for a nice gritty hiphop feel.

That always sounds good if you are using a voice recorder or memo recorder with an clock speed / pitch control to make horribly crunchy breakbeats. Record with the pitch up and playback with the pitch at a normal speed. I've found that if you sample yourself whistling with the clcok speed right up and then play it back slowed down it sounds like the end of the world on stuff like those voice recording picture frames.

I actually joined the Electribe group just to read the thread, and I hate to say it but I'm inclined to agree with zoinky420.

He may well be right, but theres a reason why he's loathed on every yahoo group and forum i've seen him on 

[gmeredith]

Hi Gordon,

I doubt if the sampler is actually playing the sample back at a faster sample rate

Yes, after making the original post, I had then found out that the pitch tuning feature in the ES-1 was not a simple clock speed type sample manipulation like playing the keys higher up on an SK sampler - it retains a fixed rate output and does a "time stretch/pitch shift" time slice interpolate algorythm thingy - as you described technically - so it doesn't work in the same way as the fairlight old school samplers like you mentioned. But the trick still seems to work on the ES-1, because of the artificial frequencies manufactured by the processing - it gives an approximation of what it would be like. It beats using normal 32k ES-1 quality, especially on hihats and cymbals. I'll do a spectrum analysis of the ES-1 samples and post them up so we can see what's going on.

I like your "nitpick" with zoinky - you watch him pounce hehe!!

people had signed with slight name variations of 'zoinky420' and were impersonating him

You know, just yesterday on the way home, I thought "wouldn't it be good if someone logged in with his name of sorts, and actually started arguing with the real zoinky, and claim that THEY were the real zoinky and had been the victim of identity fraud!!" You could have him contradicting himself, abusing himself - the world would be your oyster!!

P.S. Happy 100th post to meeee!!!

Cheers, Graham

[iqoruvuc]

people had signed with slight name variations of 'zoinky420' and were impersonating him

If anyone has seen or remembers Fist of Fun or This Morning with Richard and Not Judy, then it was a bit like the Rod Hull thing.   'I am the REAL Rod Hull!  I challange you to a Rod Hull competition!'  but with Zoinkey