Synths vs. Samples

I've never been a fan of making samples sound like synths... it's like reinventing the wheel. I watched an Ableton video for sampler, it was this long explanation of how you can take a piano sample, and through editing via sampler, you can make it sound like a synth bass. why not just... use a synth? now, if you're doing like morphing granular stuff, where you are making complex evolving "synth" parts with a sample, that's a bit different... but just to make static synth sound, never made sense to me.

I really would like to get a field recorder, and when I do that, I'll definitely get back into sample manipulation, but that's for the future... and it would never replace synths for me... just add a different element.

well yeah if you're taking something already very defined like a piano or a cymbal sound and try to turn it into a synthesizer like tone, i'd agree with you that it's like reinventing the wheel. And i'm not even talking about manipulating or granularly fucking with a sample/recording until it resembles a synth, i mean finding unique sounds in our reality that do not sound immediately recognizable as 'real' sounds. I think Richard Devine for certain exploits this 'uncanny valley' of sound, and other people should too.

try recreating the start up warming tone sound of a flat bed scanner or a copy machine on a Nord, it's near impossible and in a sense would be reinventing the wheel if you tried to make on an entirely electronic instrument a sound like that . makes for great instant organic paddy synthish sounds and if used cleverly in a song the listener wouldn't immediately think 'sample!' There are plenty of electronic and synth esque real life sounds that we hear everyday that we take for granted.

In my mind once you take something into a wave editor and start chopping it up you've already turned it into a 'sample' , there's no going back.

ace thread

hardware samplers are annoying cause you gottta put a lot into them... atleast the yamaha i used to have

vsts have made the game a lot easier.

the thing i like about reason is every once in awhile i feel the need to use a certain instrument sample and i can do thta. i guess it's the classical type person in me , liking to use real instruments, but obviously can't play them myself or don't have access to them.

synths are great for basslines and shit, but i'm going to have to say samplers./

I probably overdo it with the samples