Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    I had a few other samples I used for similar purposes:
    
    I had a "laugh track" sample (until my reliable Roland sampler
    garbaged the disk by having a system error in the middle of a
    save operation) that I used to play when our singer attempted
    a joke that didn't quite work - suffice to say that patch
    saved the singer from embarressment on many occasions because
    whereas people often didn't think his jokes where funny, they
    ALWAYS laughed at the laugh sample.
    
    Actually that laugh track sample was about as complex a sample
    as I've created from scratch.  It had a velocity cross fade
    from "light chuckles" to "hard laughter" (they came from a sound
    efx CD I borrowed), and I even had a few zones on the keyboard
    for different kinds of laughs.
    
    I've also used "telephone bells", "police sirens", etc.
    
    All kinds of great things you can use during the breaks between
    the songs.
    
    	db

The yamaha library had a few disks with animals and sound efx.  The animals are
quite funny to hear.  (in unny octaves they re better).

Chad

    Sampler tricks are great fun at gigs! I've got this horse whinney that
    I tossed out during a break in the tune Mony-Mony. The break was
    usually dead silence for 1 measure, then back in full force with the
    chorus. Well, the band nearly fell apart! Everyone was laughing so
    hard, we could hardly play/sing! 
    
        One funny thing that I tried with the EPS is to sample your voice
    saying a word/sentence backwards, then play the sample backwards. The effect
    is halarious. It makes you sound like a foreigner trying to speak 
    English. 

    I rented a movie that had a section with seals clapping and orking. 
    (is that a word?) .. so I dumped the seals track to cassette and
    forgot about it.  A few weeks ago I copied it into the EMAX, set
    a medium-length loop, and assigned it to the lowest key on the KX88.
    
    So now I'm ready to play out.  Prior to playing a very-serious
    piano solo, I will announce that I've taken preventative measures
    against unauthorized taping.. and then while playing will periodically 
    trigger the seals clapping and orking.
    
    karl

>The yamaha library had a few disks with animals and sound efx.  The animals are
>quite funny to hear. 
    
    Yeah there's a similar two disk thing in my Roland library.
    
    Got some really great ones for such purpose like:
    
    	o Turkey gobbles  (another one that's saved the singer)
    	o Hog calls  and dog barks ("Hey Joe, I sampled your wife")
    	o Monkey screams
    
    	db

                -< I'm sorry, but that's not SERIOUS music... >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	Now I'm quite amazed. I mentioned doing this when I play
	(using a lowly CZ-101 with chickens, pigs, buzzing flys,
	airplanes, bombs, trains, crickets and elephants) & It was
	considered cliche by many people. I guess getting out in
	front of a crowd & 'surprizing them' changes your perspective
	a bit. The next thing I'll hear is that some of you are
	saying 'Lets Party!!!'. As I say, if it ain't fun, why bother.

	By the way, the buzzing fly (from the CZ patches listed in this 
	notes file) is handy when I want to insult my keyboard player,
	as I mention over the P.A. for him to check his fly.
	The Crickets add a nice effect in songs like 'Colour My World',
	and the Chickens & Pigs do wonders for 'Rocky Top'.

	'Chickens' is probably my most heavily used CZ-101 patch, you'd
	have to hear it to really appreciate it ('Chirping birds' would
	probably be the second most heavily used patch).

	Weird sounds aren't just for samplers.

							Jens

    I ripped off the movie "Airplane" for the line "Have you ever seen a
    grown man naked?" Just the thing to play during the garter ceremony
    at a wedding....
    
    Edd

    As it hasn't rained in Tucson since February, my wife was walking
    around wistfully saying "I miss the rain..."
    
    You guessed it.. I have a disk with thunderstorm sounds, birds and
    various animals incl lions and elephants.. so I made a 45-minute
    cassette of rain in the jungle for her.  She plays it several times
    a week while studying for school.
    
    karlXshabazz

    Hey Karl, we (Phoenix) had rain last week for the first time since
    Easter.
    
    Rough summer this year!
    
    Mike

	I have a bunch of disks for that purpose. Probably 15 sound fx disks,
	and a bunch of TV/B-movie/etc. clips.

	I sampled off of some ancient sound fx records (the Mars library). 
	All sorts of car crashes, horns honking, etc.

	The best stuff is the Bob Tilton generator, the Bush generator.
	and the Tuna Generator. The Bob Generator was used in the performance
	art thing I did in April. I sampled nouns, verbs, and a number of
	prepositional phrases, all with his voice somewhat constant. Makes
	great sentances which are not at all what he originally said, not
	that he makes any sense anyway. But "Meet Randy and Barbara Satan"
	and "Kill Truth" got good responses from the audience. 

	The Bush Generator is along the same lines but more into phrases,
	such as "Drugs is Crucial" and "The spirit of democracy must not be
	denied"..

	Dr. Tuna is a local college radio personality who happens to also
	be active in the reggae scene. He has been the DJ for the past four
	ReggaeFests. I copped some samples of him on the radio and made a
	Tuna Generator which I popped out during our set at the Reggaefest this
	year. He was standing on the side of the stage and he started laughing
	uncontrollably when I hit "This is great" and "Clanking and grinding"
	in his voice during a dub section. The crowd got a kick out of it too.

	The TV stuff has things like the Robot on Lost in Space saying
	"Danger, Will Robinson" and stuff like that. Also got Godzilla 
	screeching and roaring. Great fun to demo the equipment with.

	/pjh

	I thought I had told this before, but can't think of where...

	When I had the MKS100 sampler, I once got my son (then 4 yrs) down in
the studio to say into it "Dad, could I have the keys to the car?".  Playing it
back on a lower key not only brought his voice into a teenager's registers, but
magnified his toddler's pronunciations such that he sounded like a burnt-out
hippie.  Though I no longer have the sampler, I still have the event (narrated 
by yours truly) on cassette for chuckles.

	Dan

    Well, this isn't really stupid, but it probably pertains to 0.001% of
    the readership...  For those of you using a sampler as your drum/
    percussion SGU, entering percussion events on a keyboard, using a
    sequencer that can alter note duration, read on.  The rest of you hit
    'next unseen'..
    
    I was running out of polyphony on my Emax, playing a stereo bass part,
    full drums (some drums with stereo components) and a full conga/latin
    perc section.  I had plenty of memory, but bass notes were truncated,
    and various drum/perc hits were choked off.  Using Performer on the
    MAC, I examined the MIDI event list for all the percussion parts, which
    I'd played on the keyboard.  What I found is that some of these drum
    and perc hits had duration over a quarter-note long.  So using a backup
    copy of the tune, I ruthlessly shortened every single percussion event
    to duration 0/0/002, which is pretty damn short.  All percussion events
    still worked, just as loud, and my lack-of-polyphony problem went away.
    
    karl

    
    Saw a real stupid trick at a clinic last night..
    
    A rap tune done on an EPS-M plus hard disk.  The entire rap was
    sampled.  Pretty hilarious.  Good demonstration of loading new samples
    while playing others. 
    
    							Brian 

    A longish piece I'm working on seemed to call for a short section that
    sounds like it's off an ancient 78RPM record.  The instrumentation was
    simple, just ran it (mono of course) thru a graphic EQ and rolled off
    all the bass and most of the treble.  But getting the requisite record 
    hiss and 'pops' were a problem.  After experimenting and failing with 
    various percussion setups, I changed my tactics.
    
    Dug out the old Dual turntable and put on the oldest, scratchiest
    record I could find ('Strolling' with the Sport Coats, what a treasure)
    and sampled the lead-in hiss and pops into the EMAX, about 3 seconds'
    worth.  Didn't worry too much about the loop points, as you may
    imagine.  So now I have high-tech 78RPM-style record noise.  Worked
    fine.
    
    I do, of course, fully realize the irony of the above. ;-) ... and the 
    corniness quotient.  It may or may not be heard by another living 
    creature, depending on how it works.  Of course, I just humiliated
    myself publicly... karl

    re: .-1
    
    Actually I think that's pretty cool.
    
    Looking back thru this note (which I created), I was amazed to find
    that it did NOT include the trick that I probably use my sampler for
    more than anything else.
    
    It's sorta the ultra-high tech version of some tricks that have been
    around for awhile.
    
    If you're learning a song and there's a phrase you're having trouble
    with, either because you can't discern a particular note, or maybe
    the phrase is played too fast, common tricks used in the past
    was to diddle the speed, like turn the record player to 16 RPM
    or, if you were fortunate enough to have a two-speed tape-deck,
    record at the higher speed, and playback at the slower.
    
    However, if you wanted to do this repeatedly you'd have to constantly
    fiddle with the needle on the record player, or the transport controls
    on the tape recorder.
    
    What I do is I SAMPLE the phrase.  I can play it back at a variety
    of tempos just by playing different keys.  Play the key an octave
    lower than the sample key and it's half speed. 
    
    1) Learning the notes by slowing down the playback
    
    Sometimes things become too muddy an octave lower, so you use keys
    less than an octave lower.  THe lick will be transposed, but once
    you've figured it out the notes in the tranposed key, it's not
    hard to transpose it back to the right key.  What I do is I use
    the transpose feature on the keyboard I use to figure out the lick
    so I don't even have to re-transpose.
    
    I usually just try different keys until it's slow enough for me to
    figure out, but still fast enough to not sound muddy.
    
    2) High Tech needle dropping
    
    Sometimes it's easier to learn the part if you repeat it over and 
    over again.  To do this, I just loop the sample.
    
    3) Bringing out muddy bass parts by speeding up the playback
    
    Now, I've talked mostly of slowing things down.  But I've also found
    that if you're trying to figure out a bass line that is hard to hear,
    SPEEDING UP the playback can also bring out the bass line rather
    remarkably.
    
    4) Nailing rhythmic patterns
    
    I've also found that this is not only useful for getting the notes,
    but sometimes if there's a particular fast rhythmic pattern that's
    hard to nail, I can nail it by playing along to a slowed down sample
    and then just gradually increasing the tempo.
    
    5) Using filters to notch out the part you're trying to learn
    
    I've also used the sampler's filters to notch the part I'm trying to
    learn out from the rest of the mix.
    
    I do this A LOT by the way and have had a LOT of success with it.
    
    	db