The sampler is a musical instrument, mainly an attribute of electronic music, but recently it has been increasingly used in other styles and directions of this art. It is with the help of this device that the musician has the ability to record and edit various sounds, as well as perform many other manipulations.
What is a sampler for, and which companies produce the most popular devices?
It would seem, why do you need a sampler if you have, for example, a familiar synthesizer at your disposal? But why! The main difference of this device from other electric musical devices is the use of modern samples instead of ordinary wave generators, which digitize the sound and are laid out on a MIDI keyboard.
The so-called "sampling" allows the musician to change the pitch of the desired tone, according to the specified conditions. This property gave a "start" to the development of such directions as hip-hop, drum and bass, hardcore and asid house.
The modern music industry has gone far ahead and even learned to use samplers not only as stand-alone devices, but also as an additional option for other musical instruments. For example, the same synthesizers.
Music stores currently offer their customers a wide range of samplers from leading manufacturing companies. The following models of these devices are considered the most purchased - various variations of Akai Professional, Emagic, E-mu Systems, Ensoniq, IK Multimedia, Korg, Kurzwell, MOTU, Roland, Yamaha and others.
The history of the creation of the sampler
For the first time, a device of this type was invented by inventors from the London company EMS in 1969. Then the developers named their new product "MUSYS". The names of these three people will remain in the milestones of the electronic devices and music industry for a long time: Peter Grogono was engaged in programming, David Cockerell was in charge of the interface, and Peter Zinoviev, a native of Russia, was engaged in system design and algorithmization.
The first, still rather primitive, development was run on a pair of small computers, each of which had only 12 KB of RAM.
Already seven years later, the first commercial development, which was called Computer Music Melodian, went on sale. Then, in 1979, it was combined with the polyphonic functions of the Fairlight CMI synthesizer, which was quite expensive - over 20 thousand US dollars. At the end of the 70s, this factor alienated buyers, and after only two years, the E-mu Emulator sampler was released into the mass sale, which was already half the price.
But the real heyday of this type of device was due to the developers from Akai, who in 1985 provided the sampler with 12-bit and 6-voice capabilities. The device supported a frequency of 32 kilohertz, and its memory capacity was 128 KB. Then other manufacturing companies took up this idea and began to release their own versions of samplers.