Collecting "samples"

my boyfriend works a lot with samples, but he prefers to cut them from already digital files. Normally he searches for various types of videos online, and when he finds something he likes, he downloads and cuts it

thallo wrote:

my boyfriend works a lot with samples, but he prefers to cut them from already digital files. Normally he searches for various types of videos online, and when he finds something he likes, he downloads and cuts it

Ok, but I have a thing for slightly more... particular things... I don't know, the sound of the stream waterfall that passes behind my house ... difficult to find on YouTube, right?

That's why I was wondering what the best way would be to obtain the digital files that many people start from.

I am by no means an expert in audio recording technologies, but at this point it is obvious that you must start from a "home-made" recording... so, money, microphones and recorders

... beautiful question

thallo wrote:

... so, money

How much?

thallo wrote:

microphones and recorders

Which ones?

But do you want to record a sample or record a concert? It's not clear...

As for the money, it depends on what we are aiming for.

As for the microphones, it depends on the budget.

To record nature sounds, directional microphones are often used. Sennheiser models, such as the MKE400, can be very effective; they are compact in size and can also be applied to a video camera... there are also other brands with prices from 70-80 euros and up

TheSimon wrote:

But do you want to record a sample or record a concert?

Maybe both situations, we'll do nature sounds and a live concert (like a quartet) without the possibility of connecting to the mixer

Everywhere you can find sampled sounds of just about everything; I have a library that even includes burps and farts, as well as waterfalls, various types of rain, flowing or dripping water, birds, whales, elevators, household appliances, creaking doors, spaceships, various types of impacts, instruments played unconventionally, ringtones are a daily occurrence, you just have to search.....

Everyone knows the sounds on the web and various libraries, so Thallo is absolutely right: you must equip yourself to do specific work if you want to achieve something original. Even many years ago, beautiful and ready-to-use recordings existed (on 1/2 inch tape and vinyl) for use in cinema and theater, but anyone who has cultivated environmental music (Brian Eno above all) never even dreamed of using them.

Many years ago I met a guy, a musician, who invested everything he could only in ambient recording equipment, and he was the one who made me fall in love with this subject... Unfortunately, I am no longer in contact with him, otherwise I would ask him for all the information you need.

In any case, if I were in your shoes, I would think about asking some audio technician who works on images (documentaries and similar).

It is a fascinating discussion and I imagine that the music of the future will certainly return to these "verité" experiences, when it has grown tired of the latest 24-bit and 96 kHz samples... I say this as someone who, in purchasing samples and having the ability to manage them, has just spent more than they could afford... But what you are talking about is enormously fascinating and full of content that still needs to be explored on an artistic level. This is my opinion, at least.

Anyway, good luck...

Nothing to add regarding research and experimentation, or in-depth study of various microphones and recording techniques, for heaven's sake... it's just that in the end, it could happen that you spend a ton of money for your best possible recording, then some amateur comes along with a library and his Australian flute sample sounds better than yours, even though you went all the way to Australia to have an indigenous person play it for you: those who do these samplings are not fools, it's not about 'the latest 24-bit trendy samples...', there is this and that, trying to explore what already exists is a must so as not to reinvent the wheel....

I do not dispute that one should try to work with FX samples found in large quantities on the web (even if often of poor quality), but the point is that if one wants to process ambient sounds artistically, I think it's a different matter, because one cannot help but document what exists, given that the artistic movements that have used ambient sounds have done exactly this: document sounds from real contexts to re-elaborate them into artistic logics. This is what has been done so far, at least.

Ambient sounds, for those who compose them, are not like (for example) orchestral samples; rather, they are like well-made musical phrase loops, with those notes and that way of playing them (there are violin phrase loops, for example, that I would never buy...!); this is why it is important to go beyond what is available and be able to process ever-new material: the circumstances of the recording constitute an element too significant to what one wants to express, which is primarily made of extemporaneity. Therefore, if I process pre-packaged ambient sounds, the work can lose much of its raison d'être, since the process of authenticity (or truth, so to speak) can be much more important than the quality of the recording.

Even Luigi Nono ventured into these things, without caring too much about the recording quality... It may not be pleasing, of course, especially since today we are very "spoiled" by the quality of timbres and dynamics.

I mean (sorry if I insist on wanting to explain myself better): if I want to describe a village of Roma, or the little birds early in the morning on my balcony, or my favorite local market, or the carousels of a certain neighborhood, and then assemble it all with other sounds that emphasize its particular evocative quality, perhaps also combining it with other sounds that highlight a contradiction or a singular aspect, I really cannot use pre-made tracks...! With those, I can practice some ideas, for example: I take a track of highway sounds, then I add the sound of a dog barking, season it with a more or less musical sound (a single sustained note is enough) and immediately I have the abandoned dog about to be run over by trucks... But then? It's always that same dog and that same truck, and shortly after it's no longer enough, just as those violin loops mentioned above could not be used more than once each in a record... No? Well, I hope I have explained myself well.

From the way you speak, it is evident that you have fallen a bit behind with sampling, which has reached such a level of specificity, sectorization, and perfection that it allows you to do hours of assembly without a single loop repeating. There are bird song samples organized by families, genera, and species, in which a single sample lasts minutes, not seconds, without loops. The same goes for whales and similar things. Then I throw out a provocation from the opposite side: do you think a listener, if they know that the sample of market voices was collected by you with your nice little microphone, is happier than with a pre-existing, better-realized sample, without too many hassles and background interference?

I think that currently the quality of samples is important, so one must evaluate the best solution; "do it yourself" is not necessarily better a priori just because I searched for and sampled it personally, just as a live performance is not necessarily always better than one with sampled sounds. I remember at a workshop a participant had a wind quartet play his piece live, but they were so out of tune that frankly I preferred my computerized performance...

Currently, with the perfection achieved by VSTs, in the cost/benefit and convenience/inconvenience balance, it is almost worth using an excellent sampled piano rather than a real one, which requires appropriate equipment and skills to record.

As usual, split hairs; thank you very much for the ideas and all the considerations you are providing.

Thank you.

Useful links? I mean, where do I find these little streams?

Partially agree with all of you... Sounds/Noises of nature: they are spontaneous and the only difference in capture is represented by the type of equipment used. Speaking of musical instruments, in my opinion, the discussion is very different and one should separate the listener's impressions from the musician's impressions. Let's put ourselves in the listener's point of view. We can state as true that it is truly difficult to recognize performances recorded via digital samples rather than analog recordings, and this has already been demonstrated in another topic where a real challenge to find the analog was conducted. The search could then shift toward searching for sound imperfection or possible imperfect note intonation to uncover the analog. I will tell you, when I can choose an audio product from the '40s-'50s, I prefer it 100 times over a contemporary product, precisely because being perfect does not necessarily mean being better. Moreover, this ARTIFICIAL perfection generates great mental confusion that completely fails to meet the listener's expectations in live recordings, where there can be error and where there can be an imperfect sound rendering, perhaps due to environmental factors such as humidity, especially for woodwinds and strings, or absence of reverb and thus sonic dryness, or perhaps the opposite: too much natural reverb. Non-professional listeners, accustomed to the aforementioned recordings, are therefore led to judge a beautiful performance negatively just because there was a wrong note or because of the aforementioned "audio rendering". The ear is therefore shaped to recognize only that which is perfect, yet if we look closely at Michelangelo's paintings, approaching them shows clearly that it is not a photograph. There you have it, art is made by humans, not by computers.

Speaking from the musician's point of view, personally, I adapt to playing on digital pianos, while still realizing that I have to give up many things. One among many is the vibrato pedal, a large part of voice polyphony, and generally everything that makes the difference in expressivity.

Returning to an audio fidelity type of discussion, it must be said that the sample can be better than the acoustic as long as the estimation is performed on a single note. Already in the case of dyads the discussion changes because, from a purely mathematical point of view, the sum of the waves of two samples (e.g., C - E) is different from the sum of the waves of the same dyad recorded acoustically, because the first sum does not take into account the interaction between partials. I am not at home right now, but tonight I would like to let you hear the sarabande from Bach's second part for violin. You will hear the difference with your own ears.

The recording is by violinist Alessandro Marino who, if he wishes, can intervene and give us his points of view...

geppino12575 wrote:

From the way you speak, it is evident that you have fallen a bit behind with sampling, which has reached such a level of specificity, sectorization, and perfection that it allows you to do hours of assembly without a single loop repeating. There are bird song samples organized by families, genera, and species, in which a single sample lasts minutes, not seconds, without loops. The same goes for whales and similar things.

I know they last minutes and that there are excellent ones; I already have some (provided in the Apple package for Garageband) and I wanted to look for others, but I haven't found many. Perhaps I wasn't very good at searching for them...

geppino12575 wrote:

Then I throw out a provocation from the opposite side: do you think a listener, if they know that those market voice samples were collected by you with your nice little microphone, is happier than with a pre-existing and better-produced sample, without too many annoyances and background interference?

I was actually referring to an artistic movement, for which the authenticity of the experience represented an essential content. I fear we are imagining different contexts regarding the use of these sounds.

geppino12575 wrote:

I think that currently the quality of samples is important, [...].

Imagine that, you're telling this to me who just gave a thousand euros to East West...!

Here is the recording...