Trying to find tutorial or tips on old sampling techniques

I am aware I am decades late to the sampling party however it's never too late right?!

So I am trying to understand and to utilize this "workflow" or should I say "technique" at my Force and its own Sample editor.

This is what I am talking about: "If you are familiar with the E-mu SP-1200* workflow, you know the way the device is typically used is with a pitched-up source such as a turntable playing a LP record at 45RPM or 78RPM, and a detune after sampling in the SP-1200* to get back to the original pitch and duration. This was initially done to save sampling time, but the resulting artifacts soon became the signature of the device, and of whole musical trend"

What I am asking about is - Is there any incentive for me doing something like that on my Force. I am not talking about recording samples themselves. I already have samples at my disposal. I am looking for a way to mangle and process my samples and drums.

Is there any good tutorial for Force (or MPC os) to kinda emulate above with some processing? I know I can load a sample in Keygroup and tune it with sampler Semi and Fine values, I am specifically looking for ways to add artifacts and reproduce weird sounds.

You can do this if you wish, it doesn't have the same artefacts though. Have you explored all the new(ish) 'DRUM FX' in track edit, along with all the various FX plugins? Plenty of FX to keep you busy, you'll come up with all sorts of stuff. But ultimately if you want 'that' sound, you'll need to get one of those vintage 12 bit samplers. I have an Akai S900 which does the trick.

MPC-Tutor wrote:You can do this if you wish, it doesn't have the same artefacts though. Have you explored all the new(ish) 'DRUM FX' in track edit, along with all the various FX plugins? Plenty of FX to keep you busy, you'll come up with all sorts of stuff. But ultimately if you want 'that' sound, you'll need to get one of those vintage 12 bit samplers. I have an Akai S900 which does the trick.

Thanks for your response. Yeah I expected it won't have same artefact and I don't mind it. I was looking to see if I could find what's the procedure. Like steps. Say I open sample editor - what exactly am I supposed to do to emulate above mention procedure. Yes I am looking for baby steps by step process.


I was investigating Drum FX over the weekend and I am finding it awesome for sound shaping. One thing I noticed - Force Manual page 392 - There are 15 effects listed but I see 14 not 15. There is no "Stereo Width" in my Force. That may be perhaps because I am loading only mono samples? Or this is perhaps used to widen mono samples but for some reason they dropped it?

I’m guessing you don’t have a turntable so I would think you could pitch up the sample and resample it? I might just try it out myself.

tomatoattack wrote:here are 15 effects listed but I see 14 not 15. There is no "Stereo Width" in my Force.

Just an error in the manual, it's not there in the MPC either. There is a separate Stereo width FX plugin though

I was looking to see if I could find what's the procedure. Like steps. Say I open sample editor - what exactly am I supposed to do to emulate above mention procedure. Yes I am looking for baby steps by step process.

You can just open a sample in 'SAMPLE EDIT' and adjust the 'TUNE' parameter ('-5.00' I believe), there's nothing more to it. Or open TRACK EDIT > SAMPLES, assign your sample to LAYER 1 and then adjust the SEMI value (-5). This assumes you've already sampled the 33 rpm record at 45 rpm.

If you have no record to sample from, you could tune down the sample in SAMPLE EDIT first, and then use PROCESS > PITCH SHIFT to speed it back up. This will introduce artefacts, but probably not desirable ones!

"with a pitched-up source such as a turntable playing a LP record at 45RPM or 78RPM, and a detune after sampling in the SP-1200* to get back to the original pitch and duration. This was initially done to save sampling time, but the resulting artifacts soon became the signature of the device, and of whole musical trend"


What I am asking about is - Is there any incentive for me doing something like that on my Force.

I don't have a turntable and haven't tried that technique, but theoretically you get the following effects:
- Your sample will have even a lower effective sampling rate than the SP-1200's 26.04 kHz. For example if you played the vinyl with double speed (maybe not possible in reality but makes for a simple example), and then play back with half-speed on the sampler, it corresponds to having sampled at half the rate, i.e. 13 kHz. The actual speed difference that was used by producers in the 1980s was probably different case-by-case, depending on whatever pitch-down speeds they used on their turntables, but the principle is the same. The effective sampling rate drops down.
- It's a 12 bit sample, so there are more quantization artifacts than with 16 bit sampling
- Due to the low sampling rate, the treble will definitely be cut off. With 16 kHz sampling rate, the highest frequency that can even theoretically be reproduced is 8 kHz. With 13 kHz the highest frequency that the sample can theoretically contain is 6.5 kHz. And these are theoretical optimal numbers, actual figures are even lower.
- Due to the low sampling rate, there is more aliasing, depending on what sort of a lowpass filtering the SP-1200 had on its input and outputs.
- Some bass and treble will be cut or attenuated due to the machine's filtering and because of the vinyl format itself (according to Wikipedia - I've never seen an SP-1200)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mu_SP-1200

To reproduce these effects digitally, starting from modern high-quality samples, you could try to
- EQ out lows and highs
- Add vinyl noises and distortion and whatever artifacts you like, to make it sound more like your originally high-quality samples were coming from vinyl. (and you might even want to simulate old recording and mixing styles)
- Resample to lower sampling rates, maybe with a "bad" converter that adds aliasing
- "Bit-crush" to 12 bit

I think all of these are already possible with the Force. No?

Yeah I was having a blast with the AIR Lo-Fi. A lot of grunge there.

Thanks again to everyone.