THE EVOLUTION OF SAMPLERS
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| Publicity photo of Q-Tip with his Akai MPC 2000XL Sampler and MIDI keyboard (2008) |
Sampling has
been a key part of hip hop production since the early the early ‘80s and have
since evolved into a more simple and efficient process with the help of computer software, but back in the '80s and '90s, producers relied mainly on drum machines, synthesizers and samplers to create beats.
Early models
of samplers were used during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, with the most popular
being the Mellotron. Appearing similar to an organ, the Mellotron worked with each key connected to a tape frame that would basically
play a pre-recorded instrumental piece. It worked in a similar way to a cassette
deck with each tape containing about eight seconds of audio for each note; when
a key is pressed, a playback head contacts the corresponding tape, creating the
desired sound, with a spring mechanism rewinding the tape when the key is
released. The tapes are also removable so multiple sounds can be used.
Paul McCartney himself can be seen demonstrating how the Mellotron works in the video below:
Paul McCartney Demonstrating the Mellotron (2011)
Since the
Mellotron was very heavy and very expensive, it wasn’t really used by many musicians
out of the studio and most popular artists at the time had little interest in the
device, however it was used by many of the more experimental artists like Tangerine Dream, King Crimson, Genesis, and even some more recent artists like Radiohead and Oasis. The instrument also appeared in quite a few well-known songs by artists with bigger budgets; this including David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” Oasis’ “Wonderwall,”
Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and “Kashmir,” and the Rolling Stones' “2000 Light Years from
Home," along with a number of Beatles songs.
Throughout
the years, advancements have been made to proto-samplers, with the Computer
Music Melodian becoming the first commercially available sampling synthesizer
in 1976 and the Synclavier I being released as the first commercially available digital synthesizer and
sampler in 1977, with its predecessors later becoming widely used in TV and movie soundtracks and by early pioneering electronic groups like Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream.
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| The three lead developers of the Synclavier I (from left to right: Sydney A. Alonsa, Jon Appleton and Cameron Jones, 1977) |
During the late '70s and early ‘80s, as new wave and synthpop began to take off, many companies saw the marketing
potentials among synthesizers and samplers. This was proven by the widespread
use of the Fairlight CMI (Computer Musical Instrument).
Even though it was very expensive at the time (costing around $30,000, equivalent to almost $100,000 today), it quickly became popular among many of the ‘80s most recognizable electronic and new wave artists, including ABC, A-ha, Devo, Duran Duran, New Order, Tears for Fears, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, The Cars, Gary Numan and Thomas Dolby (the creator of “She Blinded Me With Science”).
Its features
included a built in computer and an early touchscreen monitor interface where the
user can edit and add effects to the sounds by drawing onto the screen’s
waveform with light pen. It came with 16 voices (sounds), 14MB memory and
16-bit sampling. Samples could either be recorded with the built-in microphone or
be inserted via 8-inch floppy disk. The samples would then be pitch shifted to
the corresponding note on the keyboard. It basically worked like today’s
average MIDI keyboard.
Even though
the Fairlight CMI lacked in sound quality and samples only lasted a couple seconds long at the most, its
technology was ground-breaking at the time and it paved the way for more efficient
and less expensive samplers that would later be used in hip hop production.
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| Jazz musician Herbie Hancoock with a Fairlight CMI III (early 1980's) |
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| Kate Bush with an earlier model of the Fairlight CMI (early 1980's) |
Before
sampling became common among hip hop producers, drum machines like the Oberheim
DMX were commonly used to the percussion for beats. The device was first introduced
in 1981 and featured all the typical sounds of an average drum set, many of
them being sampled from an actual drum set. Each of the 24 buttons would correspond to a different
drum sound and the user would typically record simple drum beats, play them in a
loop, and add more drum sounds over to give the beat more complexity.
There wasn't any for users to add custom sounds or samples, but the device still became very popular with electronic and synthpop artists like New Order, Madonna, and Prince. It also quickly became a very popular instrument among early hip hop artists like Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. Iconic songs like the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘till Brooklyn, Run-DMC’s “Sucker MCs,” and Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” prominently used the device.
There wasn't any for users to add custom sounds or samples, but the device still became very popular with electronic and synthpop artists like New Order, Madonna, and Prince. It also quickly became a very popular instrument among early hip hop artists like Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys. Iconic songs like the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep ‘till Brooklyn, Run-DMC’s “Sucker MCs,” and Slick Rick’s “Children’s Story” prominently used the device.
Later versions of the Oberheim DMX included more diverse drum sounds and pre-MIDI synchronization, but the technology of the product never really caught up to its competitors, later resulting in the company’s bankruptcy in 1985.
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| The Oberheim DMX |
Throughout
the majority of the eighties, the two major producers of samplers were competitors
E-mu Systems and Akai. E-mu came into the sampler market first by introducing
the E-mu Emulator I in 1981.
After facing financial disaster, E-mu entered a new market and developed the innovative Emulator I which featured up to eight voices of polyphony and real-time looping and trimming. Samples could be inserted via floppy disk and played on the keyboard to create melodies, similar to how the Fairlight CMI worked.
After facing financial disaster, E-mu entered a new market and developed the innovative Emulator I which featured up to eight voices of polyphony and real-time looping and trimming. Samples could be inserted via floppy disk and played on the keyboard to create melodies, similar to how the Fairlight CMI worked.
While
finding moderate success, with the first unit being bought by Stevie Wonder himself,
the Emulator I was still somewhat basic, with low quality 8-bit 27 kHz sampling
specs and only 128 KB of memory, allowing about two seconds of sampling time. This was good for those who wanted to sample short sounds like single piano chords and drum hits, but anyone who wanted to sample anything longer would have to wait a few more years.
The 1984
Emulator II was released to much more success and acclaim. It included analogue
filters, early MIDI, computer control, and much more sample editing features, including manual/auto looping, reverse, fading, and splicing. It also improved
sample quality and expanded memory storage to a whole megabyte, which allowed slightly longer
samples to be used.
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| The E-mu Emulator II
The next
year, E-mu released the SP-12, one of the first commercially successful drum
machine & sampler combo, redesigned from E-mu’s earlier Drumulator drum
machine. It came with pre-set drum sounds like other drum machines at the time,
but with the added ability to combine the drum loops with samples. The beats were
also able to be mixed and edited with the built-in sliders.
It became a
popular choice among hip hop producers at the time, including DJ Premier of Gang
Starr and Ced-Gee of the Ultramagnetic MCs, who also worked on eight tracks on Boogie Down Productions’ 1987 debut album Criminal Minded.
Ced-Gee also introduced BDP producer and DJ Scott La Rock to the SP-12 and how
he would use it to not only loop samples, but chop and rearrange them.
Even with the sample limit of only a few seconds, he was still able to make longer samples by joining multiple shorter samples from the same source together. This can be heard on the track “Dope Beat” in which he took four separate samples from the iconic opening guitar riff of the AC/DC song “Black in Black” and sequenced them in a way to sound whole.
"Dope Beat" by Boogie Down Productions (1987)
While E-mu Systems
dominated much of the sampler market, their products were still very expensive,
making it inaccessible to many hip hop groups that didn’t have financial
backing from a major label. The SP-12 was being sold for $2,745, and while it costed
much less than its predecessor the Emulator II (at $7,995), other companies like
Esoniq, Casio and Yamaha began to offer samplers for less than $2,000. Around the
time E-mu released the SP-12, Japanese electronic company Akai released the
Akai S900.
Previously a producer of mainly VCRs, cassette decks, turntables, and receivers, Akai saw potential in the sampler industry and teamed up with Roger Linn of Linn Electronics to create affordable samplers to compete against E-mu Systems. Their first release, the S612, was released in 1985, but it wasn't as technologically advanced as the samplers E-mu produced. It had poor sound quality and very limited sample space, but Akai's next model marked a major improvement.
The Akai
S900 was released in 1986 as one of the first truly affordable samplers. It was much more professional and hi-fi than the samplers released by Yamaha
and Casio, , and unlike most other samplers, it allowed longer audio
samples, with up to 63 seconds of sample time, although this would in turn sacrifice the audio quality. It contained a lot of editing features,
stereo input and output, MIDI and a built-in disk drive that could load samples
while the machine is in use. It even came with software updates, that the user
could purchase and load via floppy disc.
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| Advertisement for Akai S900 (1986)
The device became very popular and proved that Akai would become a sufficient competitor to E-mu, who responded by releasing the Emax that same year for $2,995, marketing it to the lower end of the sampling market.
Various models of the Emax were sold in order to target specific parts of the sampler market. This included the Emax Rack, Emax HD, Emax HD Rack, and Emax SE (Synthesis Enhanced), but the standard Emax became the most popular among muisicians.
The Emax came with an extensive library of pre-set samples, MIDI implementation, and a variety of editing features, which were very easy to use. While the instruments were very advanced at the time, the standard Emax had a lower quality sample input and, unlike the Akai S900, the 512K built-in memory only allowed a few seconds of samples to be recorded. This was later updated with the Emax II in 1989 which came with 4MB of memory.
1987 soon
became the decade’s biggest year for samplers, at least for E-mu, who released
the Emulator III and the ground-breaking SP-1200.
The Emulator
III became the company’s biggest and most professional sampler-synthesizer. It appeared
much like its two predecessors, but had a lot more advanced features, 16-bit CD
quality specs, multiple studio-convenient outputs, and the ability to be connected
to a Macintosh computer for easier graphical editing. It was also one of the
first samplers to include a CD drive, in which the user could take and save samples
from CDs, which were fairly new at the time.
Unfortunately,
while the Emulator III sold very well, many of the units had faulty memory
sockets and problems with its 40MB hard drive, which in turn caused a huge
product recall. If it wasn’t for the release of the SP-1200 later that year,
the company could have faced a financial crisis.
The SP-1200
was released in August as an upgrade to the SP-12 to widespread acclaim. It was
the drum machine and sampler combo that made sampling a mainstay in hip hop and
it soon became very widely used throughout the golden era of hip hop.
Similar to
the Akai S900 and the E-mu SP-12, the sampler came with eight touch pads and
four banks for a total capacity of 32 samples to be used at a time. Sampling
time was also increased to 10 seconds with little quality loss, which was a lot for the time. With all of the
updated features and hardware, the SP-1200 became one of the first samplers
with the ability for users to create entire tracks without the need of separate
devices.
Influential DJ,
rapper and producer Pete Rock began to heavily use the SP-1200 for producing
beats for many well-known hip hop artists, including Gang Starr, A Tribe Called Quest, The
Roots, and his own group Pete Rock & CL Smooth, who's highly acclaimed debut album Mecca and the Soul Brother prominently featured SP-1200 production.
Public Enemy’s production team the Bomb Squad prevalently used the SP-1200 throughout the production of their highly acclaimed third studio album Fear of a Black Planet. Even though the sample quality was still somewhat lo-fi as a sacrifice for the longer sampling time, many rappers preferred the raw sound, which could be heard in many golden-age hip hop albums.
Along with the SP-12, the SP-1200 was used by many big-name
hip-hop artists during the late ‘80s and ‘90s, including the Beastie Boys,
Cypress Hill, Busta Rhymes, Ultramagnetic MC’s, Janet Jackson, and the Wu-Tang
Clan.
Even with
the success of the SP-1200, E-mu found it hard to keep up with the intense competition
from large Japanese electronic companies, specifically Akai, who began to
release a number of successful sampler models in 1988, which in turn caused E-mu
to shift their focus more towards computer soundcard development and a new line of
Proteus sounds modules, that eventually saved the company from going under.
In the meantime,
Akai soon began to dominate the sampler market, first with the release of the iconic MPC60, the first of many MPC (Midi
Production Center) products that would soon become a major influence
in the development of electronic and hip hop music.
The MPC60
was a professional level, all in one digital sampler,
drum machine and MIDI sequencer. It was much smaller in size in comparison to
most other samplers and it became the first Akai product to feature its iconic 4×4 grid of pressure-sensitive
rubber pads, giving the instruments a more natural sound. It also featured much
higher quality recording specs, up to 63 seconds of sampling time (13 seconds max
before audio quality reduction), and a standard floppy disk drive to insert
different sounds and instruments.
The device was fairly easy to use. Each of the 16 pads would be designated a specific sample. The user would create and record beats, and continue to add more and more layers of samples until satisfaction. The samples could also be slowed down, sped up and pitch-shifted in order to combine the samples more naturally.
It came with a lot of different functions and the possible beat combinations that could be made were endless.
Below
is a video of an Akai MPC60 in use via Beats By Spiveys Creations, YouTube.
"MPC 60 Beat 1 in 60 Beats" via YouTube
Because
of all the features that were built in to the MPC60, studios were no longer
needed by producers to make beats. The compact sampler could literally be set
up anywhere with an outlet, and at the cost of around $5,000, anyone with the
money could buy an MPC60 and make beats in the comfort of their own home, which
was what many did at the time. One producer and DJ in particular created an
entire album using only an MPC60 sampler, along with a Technics turntable and
Alesis tape recorder to source samples from.
As mentioned
in a previous post, DJ Shadow released his debut studio album Endtroducing… on September 16, 1996. It
was composed entirely from samples that were edited, mixed with effects and rearranged into a full album of unique sample-collage music. Most of the samples were
sourced from old vinyl records he bought at Rare Records, a record store in his
native Sacramento; the interior of that record store is featured on the album’s
artwork.
He
sampled records ranging from a variety genres including psychedelia, funk, jazz,
new age, hip hop, easy listening, and some non-music records. Most of the
records he sampled were very obscure (which avoided lawsuits), but he did
sample a few well known artists as well, including Björk, Metallica, and the
Beastie Boys, but they were chopped and edited enough to sound unrecognizable
at first.
The
album proved the unlimited possibilities that could be achieved with the MPC60.
The Akai MPC60
set the blueprint for many future compact, high quality samplers that would highly
benefit hip hop producers for years to come and Akai continued their line of MPC samplers, with each one being more advanced than the last.
Many of the greatest hip hop producers of the ‘90s prominently used an Akai MPC sampler throughout their production, like Dr. Dre, Just Blaze, and Q-Tip, but eventually, music sampling software took over and became the main source for producers to make beats.
During the
late ‘90s and early 2000s, computer software soon became the main choice among hip hop producers, replacing the sampler entirely, but there were still many producers dedicated to the MPC
samplers, such as MF Doom, Q Tip, and Kanye West. Much of Kanye’s first album The College Dropout was produced
prominently with an Akai MPC model, as well as many of his most acclaimed and
iconic songs. Sometimes he would even bring am MPC sampler on stage to perform
with at shows.
J Dilla, one
of the most acclaimed producers in hip hop, was also very dedicated to the Akai
MPC. Like DJ Shadow, he became a very influential figure in instrumental hip
hop and beat tapes; his 2005 album Donuts
is often considered one of the greatest instrumental hip hop albums of all time.
He used the Akai MPC throughout his career, but unlike anyone before him, he
kept adding to his skill constantly, finding new ways to work the machine and
create complex beats. This is analyzed in the video below:
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