SOUNDBYTES: SYNTHS & SAMPLERS
by Rich Studer
Dear Audio Enthusiasts,
First of all I’d like to thank you for the constructive feedback I received and invite you to further send me your comments or proposals. For example, some of you asked me about the music of the ‘Parma Project’ and wondered where to find it: I must tell you that these specific tracks aren’t available on the market as they were expressly made for this project, but if you search on Amazon.com for example, you can find some original medieval music. Just search for ‘Early Music’ and you’ll get dozens of excellent productions.
Music for Computers
My desktop music selection:
As Heard on Radio Soulwax Vol.2 – 2 Many DJ’s (Pias)
Back to Mine - The Orb (DMC)
Another Late Night - Kid Loco (Azuli)
Gold – All Her Greatest Hits – Ella Fitzgerald (Universal)
Mozart: Violin Concertos Nos. 1, 3-4. – Viktoria Mullova (Philips)
Computers for Music
Pursuing our ‘Production Elements’ series, this time I’ll concentrate on software-based tone generators: soft-synths and soft-samplers.
You certainly have already seen a Keith Emerson, Jean Michel Jarre or a Howard Jones concert where you could see a huge amount of boxes and keyboards and the artist running from one instrument to the other: these were the hardware synthesizers and the first samplers. The history of synth is fascinating and too long for this article to be narrated, but it’s useful to know that they initially were build on electro-mechanical principles like sinus generators and potentiometers (the so called analog synths, still very appreciated for their ‘warm’ sound) and that there was a digital revolution in the 80’s when some electric parts were substituted with integrated circuits (the so called digital synths). The progress brought us even smaller and more proficient synths until the end of the century when real, hardware instruments were completely cloned into software versions. Today, your computer can store the complete Jean Michel Jarre collection.
What are the main differences between synth and sampler? The first creates sounds with the help of internal generators, like electronic waveforms (sine, saw, square etc.) or integrated samples (prerecorded small pieces of audio), while the second can load and play your own samples (your favorite drum loop or your kid singing ’Frere Jaques’) and create sample banks. These two instruments can coexist on the same platform (an application or a sequencer) but can also be found independently.
Let’s take a brief overlook on what’s available today: Propellerhead’s Reason (Mac, PC, $400) is a complete electronic virtual studio with instruments like analog synth, graintable synth, samplers, drum machine, mixer, effects, loop player and pattern sequencer. The interface is set up like a ‘real’ rack of gear and you can patch the instruments together of your choice. Its samplers import different formats (wav, aiff, sf2, rex) and every instrument can be played via MIDI and recorded/arranged into Reason’s Arrange window. The ReWire application streams up to 64 Reason channels to compatible software (Steinberg’s Cubase or Nuendo, Ableton’s Live, MOTU’s Digital Performer etc).
Arturia’s Storm (Mac, PC, $250) has the same concept as Reason with the addition of some tricky toys (scratch tables…). Cakewalk’s Project5 (PC, $430, scheduled to release in March 2003) promises to be a worthy rival of Reason. It’s another soft synth workstation, offering a complete suite of synthesizers, samplers, sequencers, audio and MIDI effects, and audio looping tools in an integrated studio environment. One of its merits is to be open to third party applications (DX, DXi, MFX, VST, VSTi, ReWire client, WDM, ASIO).
The most common sequencers also integrate soft synths (you can purchase them separately): Steinberg’s Cubase integrate its Halion sampler (Mac, PC, $350) along the synths D’cota (Mac, PC, $250 ), PLEX (Mac, PC, $250), Model E (Mac, PC, $150), Virtual Guitarist (Mac, PC, $250), VB1 (Mac, PC, free), Waldorf Attack (Mac, PC, $150) and Waldorf PPG Wave 2 (Mac, PC, $200).
Emagic’s Logic hosts its EXS 24 sampler and the synths: ES-1 (Mac, $90), ES-2 (Mac, $280), EVP88 (Mac, $220), EVP73 (Mac, $110), EVB3 (Mac, $220), EVD6 (Mac, $180). Mark of the Unicorn’s Digital Performer (Mac only) has recently built up a monster sampler, the MachFive (Mac, $400) which completes the offer of third party’s software like Bithead’s Unity Session (Mac, $650), Koblo’s Studio9000 (Mac, $600), Native Instrument’s Reaktor (Mac, PC, $500), Kompakt (Mac, PC, $400), Absynth (Mac, PC, $300), B4 (Mac, PC, $240), Battery (Mac, PC, $200), FM7 (Mac, PC, $300), PRO53 (Mac, PC, $200). All these third party instruments are also available as stand alone, which means you can load them singularly and independently from a musical environment.
As you can see, I could continue for hours listing today’s soft synths. There is also a huge freeware and shareware community. I suggest you make your own tour at the manufacturer’s sites to have an idea (follow the links below). There are hundreds out there that are waiting for you…
Recommended Resource sites:
Synth Zone
Hitsquad
Maz Sound>
Rich Studer is a partner of a production studio -Digilab, owns a recording label – Invisible Recordings – and is a confirmed audiophile and electronic music fan.
email: rich@invisiblerecordings.com
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