Etude For Samplers
Notes On Etude For Samplers
Track Data
1st Movement
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks:35
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: Jul 23 2020 - Dec 8 2020
2nd Movement
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks:33
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: Oct 26 2020 - Dec 4 2020
3rd Movement
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks:31
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: Oct 29 2020 - Dec 16 2020
Coda
Composition tool: MuseScore, Studio One 5 Professional
Recording tool (DAW): Studio One 5 Professional
Number of tracks:11
Sound source: Presence XT, Impact XT, Mai-Tai, Mojito (All built-in sound sources of Studio One), TAL-NOIZEMAKER
Composition and Recording period: Nov 30 2020 - Dec 11 2020
[Etude For Samplers]
(TM writes:)
You may have felt this title is strange. You make the point.
There are countless Etudes (meaning studies) in the musical history, but as far as I know, there is none for the sampler. If there were, what would it be? When I wrote the first phrases of 1st Movement, I tentatively entitled “Etude For Samplers And Sequencers” almost as a joke.
It is a joke in part but I’m serious in part. The sampler appeared in the 1980s and rapidly became higher-quality as well as more affordable. You could say that by today, the sampler has not been virtually recognised as a musical instrument. It could sample a sound up to a couple of seconds, whereas it can now sample for, I don’t know, a couple of days or weeks possibly.
The sampler does not have its original sound. There have been no such instruments other than it. Your PC and smart phones can record any sound digitally, which is almost a sampler. It’s intangible and does not require specific independent hardware. You can say it’s now just a part of digital audio workstations (DAWs).
The track “Etude For Samplers” started from my questions. What is (or was) the sampler? Is it a musical instrument? If no, what is it? Why has it become unpopular to experimental musicians in the current century? Is there no more room for further evolution of music with the sampler?
TI suggested we combine the three pieces into one suite; it is interesting enough that music for such a modern instrument (tool, software or whatever) has a very classical form of Etude.
What sound like noise are outputs from the sampler functions, which we will discuss later.
Etude For Samplers was mastered by Gary Rees, like many other FMT tracks. When mastering it, he had a listen and kindly wrote a hugely nice text for us as follows. We were both surprised how deeply and brightly he understood this piece.
(Gary Rees writes:)
"I will be happy to help with another piece. Here are some thoughts your Etude. An amusing name for something so unlike an etude. ;-)
"I really love this piece. It offers so many original and interesting themes. The experiments with rhythm are really cool. For me the piece had an industrial and expressionist feeling. I don't mean recent industrial music, but a 20th century vibe from before the big war. Musically, I hear echoes of Bartok and the Russians in the first part of the 20th century.
"I love the opening in the first movement. It is very stylized and immediately makes one pay attention. The rhythmic interplay among voices is really wonderful. The section around 3:10 is delightful. Let's call that a quick tour of grandfather's factory. :)
"I loved the movement in the mallets in the second movement a little after 1:00. And I enjoyed the panning after 2:00.
"You wrote an excellent finale for the third movement. The final build up is really impactful.
"I thought the coda was a great, quick, and suggestive recapitulation of the memorable rhythms that starred in the show. It is like a movie trailer that we'll watch after the movie is over.
"Here is what I would describe for others. You are welcome to quote this or anything I have sent:
"In this epic work, FMT has taken their full toolbox and upended it onto the floor. They've taken up one tool at a time simply because they appreciated the angle at which the tool landed. This will get the job done, they think. But not the job you would expect. They apply their tool kit in wholly unexpected ways. And achieve wholly unexpected results. Three movements with their own personalities made by a set of implements meant for other purposes. The result is quite novel and quite unique to the FMT. "
[Background]
(TI writes:)
These pieces were not originally conceived as a suite, but rather as a series of pieces that were developed from fragments and made into a single suite.
It took me about half a year to complete this piece from TM's notes that inspired it. I don't remember the details of how each piece was created.
It's like I've been adding to it little by little, then leaving it, then remembering and adding to it again.
[Composition]
(TI writes:)
The track that would become the 1st-Movement was mixed at Studio One around August of this year, and I really liked it. However, it was somewhat underdeveloped, but I was working on other songs and left it as is. It is very different from this version.
I remember that I wrote the first part of this song in a way that TM wrote the beginning part and I wrote the rest of the song, and TM developed the fragments of each phrase with various time signatures, and then TM developed it further.
The phrases and harmonies from the middle section are atonal, with a percussive piano overlaid with a 4-degree progression in a different key. I've always liked this phrase and harmony, so I kind of just did it.
2nd and 3rd Movements were written in the same way, with TM writing the beginning phrases, and then I added my own phrases. However, unlike the 1st Movement, I didn't write any new parts, only fleshing out and slightly changing TM's motifs.
I don't think I wrote any new parts. As for the order of creation, I think they were probably created in the order of this suite.
After that, these songs were neglected, but I think it was in reaction to the unreleased track called "Primitive Dance" and "Mad Disco" (called "Kimagure Disco" at that time), which was released at the same time, that I wanted to create a classical track with no beat. So I pulled out the Musescore that I was working on for the 1st Movement and started playing around with it.
Therefore, it was not created with a unified concept in the first place.
However, we wanted to add some new elements to the concept of the suite, so TM came up with the keyword "sampler exercises", and from there the direction was established.
Basically, our sound sources are just samplers and synthesizers, so creating a song with a classical atmosphere using only samplers is not something new to us. We've released a few of these songs in the past. However, we thought about what would be the most important difference from that.
Nowadays, samplers, unlike synthesizers, are no longer "cutting edge instruments" and their position as instruments is becoming more limited.
Its role is now integrated with the DAW and is one of its functions. Samplers as instruments are only used in hip-hop for backing track production and live performances, and not necessarily as stand-alone samplers in mainstream music performance and production.
In fact, samplers were originally developed as "recording equipment.
The Fairlight CMI and Synclavier were developed as workstations rather than instruments, and the Emulator was not initially controllable from the outside.
Now all of the sampler's functions can be used as individual functions of the DAW.
For example, the waveform editing and effect functions of a DAW can be used to create sounds such as pitch changes and filters in exactly the same way (even in this song, the parts that are handled in phrases are edited directly on the DAW).
However, in the 80's and 90's, there were some very unique instruments and workstations, and there were some unique functions that are rarely used nowadays.
For example, there is something called the PageR function in Fairlight. This function allows you to assign a tone to each note, and was sometimes heard in music of the late 80s and 90s. So this is it! This is the kind of thing that makes you go, "Oh!
To recreate this, I created 8 tracks, set up a tone for each, and cut and pasted the MIDI data note by note.
Therefore, in the mix of this song I did not use a synthesizer. Preset samplers and live recordings. All single melody combinations except for the piano inspired sound.
Fairlight's PageR simulation
I used sounds from the sampler's presets that I wondered what they were actually used for. I didn't try to make it too effective. I'm using effects that existed in the early days of samplers.
The basic settings vary from 1 to 3. 1 is the specification of the Emulator II, and 3 and Coda are the settings for today's music. These are the limitations of this project.
I was thinking, "What was the "sampler" once an "instrument" in this song? I was wondering what the "sampler" was.
I was thinking that the sampler was a musical instrument as a stopover in the middle of evolution. In a sense, it was like a flower in the process of technological evolution. In a sense, it was like a flower in the process of technological evolution.
(TM writes:)
1st Movement
I wrote the original phrases for the sampled alto sax, piano and violin, in which the interval between one tone and its next is often quite large, and that resulted in the unnatural sounds. Using mainly black keys also aims for unnaturality.
I put the sequences of eighth notes as my homage to the sampler pioneers such as Pierre Schaeffer, Yellow Magic Orchestra, Art Of Noise, Brian Eno, Holger Czukay and so on, so forth, who did not necessarily use eighth notes mostly; it’s just my impression.
Especially, I would like to note that I love the noise that TI put late in the track as well as many tempo changes that I made. The digital music including one that featured the sampler tends to have only a few tempo changes.
2nd Movement
This begins with, again, the sequences of eighth notes. The tentative title during process was “String Quartet Groove”, so my intention was to make unique groove with the sampled strings.
It’s my impression that most of the music focusing on the sampler had zero groove. 1st and 2nd Movements are my challenge to that (without using the rhythm instruments). So is 3rd. Of course, even though there are many, many pieces with use of samplers which have groove, I could say the early sampler-focused music had none.
Anyway, as I stated before, now that the sampler is no longer something special and can be used with any digital device in a sense, the sampler-focused music has disappeared. To me that is a very interesting phenomenon.
While the sampler can record only for two seconds, many musicians paid attention to that. But after it can do for two weeks, nobody is interested. That’s very human. And FMT focuses on that; very FMT-esque.
There is a noise like a tape is rolling too quickly; that is what only the recent sampler can do. That’s the sound of the sampler playing this 2nd Movement very very quickly. Interestingly enough, in the process of making the tracks, the noise was updated every time we changed something in the tracks. Similarly, we put a noise quickly playing 1st Movement in 1st Movement, 2nd in 2nd, 3rd in 3rd, and the whole in Coda.
The tempo changes here as well, though not as many as 1st Movement. It’s almost impossible for real ensemble to play exactly to the intended tempo changing that frequently. That was an intention of mine.
3rd Movement
Obviously, this Movement aims at complex and accidental harmonies and groove with the polyrhythmical strings. I love them.
The sampled percussion joins for the first time in this whole Etude. I have not heard orchestral percussion with a lot of effect and unnatural drum rolls. I love the groove.
I wrote this Movement after we decided to treat 1st and 2nd Movements as a suite and the title has been “3rd Movement” since the notation was completely blank. The composition did not take much time.
The interlude is the first section structured with chord progression. I’ve loved this since the 1980s. Interestingly, it’s rather sad and sentimental itself, but if you put it into this Movement it has become so different. Anyhow, that’s totally my personal interest.
Besides, there sounds dial tones in the interlude. The dial tone is a sort of scale music. So we put them on the chordal section. When the sampler plays a recorded phrase of the dial tone, the higher the tone is, the quicker it becomes. Hearing that, many people (or musicians at least) could recognise “oh, that’s nothing but a sampler.” I just wanted to locate such a sound here.
As I wrote above, there is also a quick play of the whole Movement and it contains more groove. 2nd has more than 1st, and 3rd has a lot more, which TI nicely adjusted.
Coda
Coda was composed after all the above three Movements from TI’s suggestion. The motif is a (manually) sampled phrase of 1st Movement at the doubled tempo. 2nd and 3rd Movements are added decoratively. Along with those, a quick play of ALL the Movements appears.
What I was going to make here is a “curtain call”, where variously starred samplers come back to the stage.
Above, I write “(manually) sampled” to mean I copied some parts on the notation from the three Movements and literally rewrote to halve every note. Oh dear, what an inefficient way!! I should have simply doubled the tempo (ie, BPM). 😊
Anyway, Coda sounds not too serious; I love the way.
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