Re: [microsound] Sampling (was projects)

[ndkent <ndkent@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> The word "sampling" seems to have more than one meaning. The original
> meaning, perhaps first coined by EMU or Fairlight for the first digital
> samplers (I don't believe that analogue samplers were actually called
> samplers at the time),

Correct. Additionally something like a Melotron (multiple tape playback 
technology) or an Optigan (optical technology) also lacked a means of 
immediate capture and playback from the instrument

>  was closer to recording (in general). It was implied
> that to sample something was to record sound into the machine via a
> microphone.

The principles of digital recording were already known. "Sample" 
derives from measuring a value. In the case of digital recording, 
sampled values are taken at regular timer intervals and stored.

Actually there was something kind of close in name and technique going 
on in analog synthesis technology. You had the sample and hold circuit, 
best known for making those steppy random burble effects on earlier 
synthesizer recordings. It's actually noise being sampled a sub audio 
clock rate (=  a frequency less than human perception - say 2 Hz) and 
holding the value until the next sample is taken. If you crank up the 
rate of samples per second taken the sampled and held result if 
unscaled will come closer and closer to approximating the source. This 
cranking up of the sample rate worked in reverse too. Take an old style 
analog step sequencer. The kind with a row of knobs. Typically those 
things play sixteenth notes or there abouts as set by the knobs. But a 
well designed one can play back the row of notes at audio rates (say 60 
cycles of each note a second) - at those rates you get digital 
waveforms on analog gear. Though I can't think of examples the 
pre-digital technology was there to do an extremely crude 1 cycle 
sampled wave using sampled info repeatedly played by a step sequencer.

It's understood that what became the Fairlight CMI started as a digital 
synthesizer with digital waveforms in memory. While in prototype form 
it was realized it could be scaled up from sampling a wave cycle  to 
sampling longer wave cycles given sufficient RAM and A to D converters. 
Same with the Synclavier which started as an Additive/FM digital synth 
and was initially released with no sampling capability. The Emulator 
though was first conceived as a sampler.

> Gradually that first meaning has been superseded by a meaning
> which is much closer to "appropriation." I would think that most 
> people when
> they use the term sampling today, are referring to the process of
> re-recording a short section of pre-recorded sound.
> Also "sampling" connotes brevity. This makes it distinct from 
> "recording"
> which is usually used to describe the capture of much longer segments 
> of
> sound. So in this sense field recording is not sampling (unless the
> recordings are very short).

Well unquestionably past technology limited sampling length rather than 
being defined by length. More a technological limitation than a 
determining factor.

 Sampling does imply the sound is going to be reused and presumably 
altered (i.e. played back at a different rate), so yes, if it's not 
being manipulated then using another term may be more straightforward. 
But I can remember the historical transition you are using. People 
began using sampling technology to edit, loop or trigger a phrase or 
longer soundbyte into a precise location.

 You are on the mark if you consider the term becoming a tech oriented 
euphemism of sorts over time. It doesn't always work to say that you 
ripped off some audio ( ummmm... maybe in these days of heightened 
patriotism one can claim to be "liberating" some sound ) or conversely 
saying you are manipulating the context.


There do seem to be some parallels between creating a sculpture and a 
sound piece. You can chip or carve away at something. You can work with 
something soft and shapable.  You can create boundaries and fill them. 
You can collect and assemble objects. You can appropriate something 
whole or in part.

nicholas d. kent
http://www.artskool.biz/jem/ndkent/


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