Key Of Grey

Photo courtesy of The Standard Deviant

July 4th, 2008 – When my friends listen to music I’ve written, be it for a movie or otherwise, they often ask if I also play the instruments. Since I don’t have the money to hire other musicians, the answer has always been yes and inevitably, they continue the line of questioning with, “Oh, do you play it all on synthesizers or something?”. I want to correct them, but there’s really no point. For all you out there though, it’s pretty important to know the difference between a synthesizer and a sampler if you intend to use them.

In the beginning, there were synthesizers; big devices like the ARP, and the VCS-3 pictured in this post. They output electronic sounds through various resistors, capacitors and other doodads. Eventually, synthesizers became very sophisticated; electronic sounds could be combined together and layered to essentially mimic real sounds and instruments. I used to play on a Yamaha DX7 in my garage band days and it had a lot of great sounds.

Samplers, on the other hand, are devices that allow you to capture real sounds and play them back to build something bigger. The first samplers were really tape reel machines. To use them, you would have to record something and then physically dice up the magnetic tape and affix it to an intact length of tape. This was cumbersome and with the advent of the computer age (and the accompanying digital storage), samplers became much more sophisticated and allowed sounds to be uploaded, or recorded directly, into the device to be played back like an instrument.

Samplers today are what help a composer to record a piece that sounds like it was performed by a real orchestra, or a hiphop producer to make a beat that sounds like it was played on a real drum kit. In essence, both the orchestra and drumkit are real. They were recorded from a real instrument and played back into the recording. Modern samplers are incredibly complicated. Software titles such as Vienna Symphonic, not only map every note of a viola as a separate sample for you to play using your midi device, but a different recorded sound is used depending on the velocity you choose, not just the same sample at a lower volume. This allows incredibly realistic dynamics. You might be surprised which blockbuster film composers use software for the songs instead of recording real orchestras.

It all really boils down to one main difference: samplers play back previously recorded sounds, while synthesizers make their own sounds. Both samplers and synthesizers come in hardware or software form and it’s really up to you which you choose to use. In my personal experience, software samplers are easier to use and offer greater set flexibility for the purpose of recording while hardware samplers are fantastic for live performances. I use software synthesizers due to budget constraints, however I would easily give them up for the gritty and full sound of an analog synth. If you have any questions about either synthesizers or samplers, post a comment and I’ll try to answer it to the best of my ability. Happy composing!

PS. Happy Independence Day to our American friends!