Saturday, August 22, 2009

The Importance of Sampling Synthesizers

By Tim Benedict

The invention of synthesizers has been a real breakthrough for musicians of all stripes. The synthesizers ability to reproduce existing sounds and create new sounds has given musicians the ability to create new, interesting music. Since being introduced to the mass market, synthesizers have grown more powerful and flexible as electronic technology has progressed. There are now many different types of synthesizers on the market. One of these types is the sampling synthesizer.

A sampling synthesizer is a type of synthesizer that stores sound samples in RAM and then plays each sound back based on how an instrument is configured. Unlike a general synthesizer, it does not produce sounds from scratch. The sampling synthesizer first starts with sounds being recorded from multiple recordings or with samples of different natural or instrumental sounds.

A sampling synthesizer (or sample based synthesizer) works differently from the additive or subtractive synthesis used in other synthesizers. subtractive synthesizers filter square or sawtooth waves to generate their sounds. Additive synthesizers assemble their sounds by adding together different sine waves.

The effectiveness of a sampling synthesizer is dependent upon the volume of the sample sounds it has since it uses these sound samples to reproduce sounds of natural instruments. The high price of computer memory greatly limited the number of sounds that a sampling synthesizer held when it was first developed, but over the years, as memory chips have become less and less expensive, the amount of sounds samples increased so that now there is much greater flexibility and quality to the instrument.

Sampling synthesizers store sounds as pre-recorded samples rather than sounds recorded in real-time and use less processing power than a digital synthesizers. This makes them a much better instrument than either an analog or digital synthesizer.

The polyphony of the sampling synthesizer is higher than an analog synthesizer since it does not have to duplicate its circuitry to allow more sound patterns to be generated.

When the sampling synthesizer was first developed, the price of memory and processing power made it very expensive. Improving technology enabled the introduction of comparatively affordable samplers like the Roland D50 and the Korg M1 in the late eighties. The Korg M1 also introduced the music workstation concept.

An example of early sample based synthesis is found on Stevie Wonders album "Secret Life of Plants" recorded in 1976. He used the synthesizer to make melodies from recorded natural sounds. In the tune "the first garden", Wonder used sampled bird chirps as the lead instrument in the song.

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