Giving samples the "vintage" treatment

DonovanDwyer · 2019-01-16T21:36:55.520Z

Record them with a shitty mic, even right off a studio monitor. Harmonica mics, cheap vintage mics, even a dictaphone can do wonders.

AdamJay · 2019-01-16T21:53:56.496Z

@tr909 will just pass things through his behringer mixer multiple times to bring up the noise floor. Sounds good, and it actually interacts with the sound better than just mixing in some noise.

Also, check out Jamie Lidell’s podcast “Hanging Out With Audiophiles”,
In the episode with Song Exploder host Hrishikesh Hirway he mentions in the “nitty gritty” segment how he took his son’s JBL Clip micro speaker and put it in weird places for unique filtering properties, and recorded its output;
Washing machines, sauce pans, cupboards, on a turntable for a slow “Leslie” rotary speaker effect, etc.

Aen · 2019-01-16T22:04:05.901Z

I’m a big fan of sampling “poorly” and processing. Unfortunately the last time I sampled my turntable (a really cool $60 target thing, with a USB jack into Ableton) I ended up having to carve off a lot of strange subs from the vocal samples. UGH. That means I either re-sample in the OT, lose a filter, or waste an FX slot with an EQ. So what I’m saying is that sometimes its more efficient to process audio thats not coming from a hunk of junk turntable.

audiolab · 2019-01-16T22:35:51.762Z

easy one this download VST https://www.izotope.com/en/products/create-and-design/vinyl.html
no need to thank me:)

Lauli · 2019-01-16T22:47:50.819Z

Sometimes when I‘m feeling extra special, I move the mic further away to get in some room acoustics and play the sample backwards. Reverse the recording again and there‘s all these misty (?) transients going on.
Microphones are great to play with, almost a shame they get so little usage with electronic music.

sezare56 · 2019-01-16T22:51:58.145Z

I was thinking about resampling OT CUE OUTs with cables with low Cue Level, to have an higher noise floor. Pass it thru filter’s distorsion and / or Lo-fi, and thru tape delay with 100% wet signal (DIR=0), delay’s filters, no feedback, adding lfo on delay time and on pitch…

audiolab:

no need to thank me:)

I’ll try to mimic it with OT but it seems very interesting if free.

tnussb · 2019-01-16T23:08:21.876Z

When you want to go really experimental use an audio transducer and a contact mic to build all kind of filters with different objects going inbetween the transducer and the contact mic.

For example a plate reverb:

the_PMO · 2019-01-17T01:32:15.112Z

Don’t forget you can also introduce artifacts to your samples just by pitching them up while sampling then pitching it back down in the after the fact. It’s not vinyl crackle but you should still get some aliasing. I suppose you would have to turn the timestretch off.

That’s a big part of the sound of vintage samples as much as bit rate. The memory limits of the time made this a necessity.

son.ra89 · 2019-01-17T14:05:16.931Z

Legowelt also has some amazing plugin for this, check out his website. Also tons of free samples etc.

DimensionsTomorrow · 2019-01-17T14:58:25.476Z

Get an old lo-fi sampler and run them through that. For instance, Yamaha SU10 or Zoom Sampletrak (I’ve heard both referred to as the “poor man’s SP1200”) or maybe a Boss SP-202.

Also, for general insight from a master, read these:

Shitty is pretty

http://www.funkydown.com/downloads/shitty1.pdf

http://www.funkydown.com/downloads/shitty2.pdf

Bwax · 2019-01-17T16:28:31.796Z

Not vinyl, but these can certainly achieve some old school sample/sampler vibes.

https://tal-software.com/products/tal-sampler

https://tal-software.com/products/tal-dac

TonyDS_1 · 2019-01-17T16:52:21.713Z

This fella can help, or one of his many siblings.

Snapseed 2.jpg3024×4032 2.8 MB

Tanburi · 2019-01-17T19:01:02.182Z

For an organic lofi vibe, you could sample the sound of someone’s lungs who has COPD and layer that with your sample.

Or just sample cellophane crinkling in your hands and layer that. I understand they used to use stuff like that to simulate campfire sounds on old radio shows.

Either one may help give a “vintage” vibe. Just make sure you sample at 24 bit for high resolution “vintage”.

v00d00ppl · 2019-01-17T19:01:59.029Z

If you can find an SP202 that’s got a nice Lo fi sound for the low price. You can clean up the muddiness with EQs on the mix phase.

Andreas_R · 2019-01-18T06:53:35.693Z

1 Layer your samples with vinyl noise and crackle
2 Record samples to old tape at low levels - almost silent. re-sample and normalize 0db
3 run your signal through an old mixer, also at low levels
4 get a field recorder or any mic, play your samples really loud (loud enough) and record them from a different room
5 s. “Own samples on vinyl”-hack

edit: these are individual ideas btw. Of course, nobody will keep you from combining these

AAdra · 2019-01-18T09:21:12.549Z

you should mess around with the lo fi on the OT more and the phasor or flanger also pitch adjustments with trigs

t · 2019-01-18T12:11:33.213Z

If you’re more interested in sampling artefacts rather than vinyl crackling, then Bitwig’s Bit-8 plugin might be worth a look.

It’s not just a simple bit-reduction effect as its name suggestions; instead it gives you full control on pretty much all the deficiencies that gave those old samplers their distinctive sound including sample clock speed and jitter, various distortion types and shapes, and most interestingly different bit quantisation types.

Combined with Bitwigs modulators (especially LFO and envelope following), this can give really nice results.

tr909 · 2019-01-18T21:51:50.640Z

indeed. i gave up fighting it. i’d work things very carefully (ok, not carefully but you get the point) with plugins, ozone, etc. but another pass into the mixer (noise, additive eq, cheap built-in effects) and most tracks sound that much better. seems wrong but my ears nearly always like it.

jb · 2019-01-18T22:06:42.407Z

Been wanting one of these since I saw someone use it as an ambient pad machine by recording a chord to each track on a looped cassette. Tried it with OTs recorders and it worked but I can tell it wasn’t quite as fun as it would be with real tapes.

TonyDS_1 · 2019-01-19T07:56:13.157Z

Have not done that yet, time for music and gear is limited these days. But made a drum loop tape with adjustable pitch + Kick-Snare-Hat on separated channels. Will make a few more of those. The pads is also worth a long session or 2,3. Maybe soon!

I love the tape vibe, makes me dream of a reel2reel somewhere in the future when I am retired