TW #84 — Perfect Samples: The Piano (Sklathill)

A do-it-yourself guide to sampling a piano (and, by extension, any sustained instrument).

Key claims#

• Find the lowest sample rate that still sounds good (the author likes 8-bit 16 kHz); cheap sound cards add noise you can hear at 8-bit 11 kHz.
• Multisample: one key can stand in for at most ±7 semitones, often only ±1, so sample many keys; high notes (1½ octaves above middle C and up) decay into near-sine tone and loop easily, low notes are hard to loop — cheaper keyboards are easier because their low notes are simpler.
• Real pianos have personalities: Steinway (balanced, beautiful highs), Mason & Hamlin (great middle three octaves), Baldwin (bright, jazz), Bösendorfer (mellow, new age), Yamaha (adequate). Rent a studio piano; mic placement — close over the strings (bright, percussive), at the pianist's head (mellower), or out in the room (reverb, omni pattern); record to tape or DAT and keep backups of the originals.
• For S3M/MOD trackers without ping-pong loops, build one by hand: append the reversed loop segment to the sample (… 8 9 10 11 12 11 10 9 and loop from 8 to the end).
• Necros's "The Grey Note" (from Progression) uses seven or eight sax passages as samples, jumping between them with sample offsets, with an echo channel to hide the seams — realistic because of the human imperfections.

Relevance#

Source for multisampling, sample-looping and the realism side of instrument-design.

Pages touched#

multisampling, sample-looping, instrument-design, sample-offset, necros.