General Music Chat

What is a sampler?
I've noticed a few new bands, namely Mushroomhead and Slipknot, who have sampler artists.
Can someone explain to me what a sampler is?
And what exactly does a synth do?

Hunter,

Basically, a sampler is a kind of recorder that digitally records real sounds, and allows you to play them back. A sample can be played on a keyboard controller, drum triggers, etc.

A synthesizer , as the name implies, produces sounds electronically, useing voltage controlled generators and amplifiers, (analog or digital), Filters, waveform shapers (envelope generators to produce attack, decay, sustain, release, and break points), and a bunch of other gizmo's.
If you have a good one, and learn how to program it, you can reproduce or create virtually any sound, real or imagined. rest assured, there are lots of synthesizer sounds that no body has heard yet.

Most keyboard players are content to just use presets these days. (ol' Howlin' included.)

(dumbass pushed the button twice , probably to decrepit to program a Moog these days)

Damn!,
I must got what Kilgore George had a while back! (friggin high tec horseshit)

Why don't more people use samplers and synths?
They sound like such cool instruments. And they add a really menacing twist to Metal music.

This is what i'm talking about:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U45NfWSX-Vk

The very beggining is done by sampler and the end, where the keyboard/synths come in, (where he starts singing "Condemned man") sounds so cool.

Here's another example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kh8DmKrTRj0

again, the first part is done with a sampler.

Hunter, I'll jump in here.

I play in a pretty loud 3 piece rock band. I wanted to add a rythym guitar without paying an extra member so I bought a nice sampler. This thing would hold 3-4 hours of music. My idea was while I was playing rythym on a song I would turn it on and record what I was playing, then replay it so I could play over the top. We tryed it in practice a few times, but and this is a big butt, we would get slightly out of sync with it and the music suffered. Most people that use them use a click track to keep everyone insync. My guys said screw it lets rock out, because we tend to improvise a lot.

I think thats the reason more rock groups dont use them, they are canned music.

Ive only seen a couple of local hard rock bands using samplers with good results. Now if you are a lounge lizard, you could record all your backing tracks on one and just basically play Karaoke to it.

J.W.
What I call a sampler is a tone producing generator, based on real digitally recorded (sampled) sound bytes.

What you are referring to sounds like some thing we older guys would call a "Sequencer". Most moder hybrid synthesizer now incorporate sampler technology and sequencing capability. That type of synth is usually referred to as a "work station" and is a pretty complete music production gizmo.

I love 'em, but hasten to add that I also love to hear an honest to goodness thrashin' live guitar band

Howlin'

No Howlin I bought a little stomp box sampler, I cant remember the brand. One of them is called a boomerang, which is more of a looper. This box I had would record my rythym on the fly and then I could replay it. It also had a mic input so you could record the birds in the yard and just trigger it to play birds. A really cool deal, if I were playing fulltime I would have kept it, but being the weekend warrior I am I decided to keep it simpler and just play loud and proud.