New Educational Versions for Students and Teachers / Interview with Luc Bonnet

2010/06/22 Are you a student or a teacher? With our new Educational Program we offer you special rebate conditions for SampleRobot and WaveRobot products. If you are interested please send an email with the topic "Educational Version" to contact[at]samplerobot.com.

We are glad that Hollywood score mixer and recording engineer Luc Bonnet, who worked on blockbusters like Angels & Demons and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, talked with us about sampling. He uses SampleRobot to create custom sampled instruments for the soundtracks he is working on.

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Can you talk a little bit about your background? How did you become a Hollywood score mixer?

My background is really the music business: Band recordings, album and CD productions. I was planning on being a recording engineer/producer in a major studio in the UK or the US. I then met Henning Lohner, who is an accomplished filmmaker and film music composer. We started working together and I subsequently ended up engineering and producing film scores for Henning and several other individuals at Remote Control in Santa Monica. Henning was in a way the one who introduced me to the film music world and made it possible for me to see a career in this particular business.

Can you give a short introduction of how sampling is used in modern film music productions?

The modern film composition is relying heavily on samples and would in a way not exist to this extent without it. There is hardly a film music production these days without samples and even if the final product is an entirely "organic orchestra" - the layouts and the entire pre-production is always done with samples. The great thing about samples and sampling in general is that it gives you an incredible flexibility. Also the immediate feedback is something that no one wants to work without anymore. The fact that one can produce an entire orchestral score and listen to it, without actually having to record the orchestra is phenomenal.

There are people that rely entirely on pre-recorded and manufactured sound libraries and although you can get a great variety of sounds you will always lack a certain amount of individualism. The moment that samples and sampling get really interesting is when you start making your own sounds. Some composers really take the opportunity and develop new libraries for every movie. It's like a cook experimenting with new vegetables and spices when he is creating a new menu. One can always eat the pre-cooked and manufactured tomato soup and although it does not necessarily taste bad, it will never be an identifiable signature dish for your restaurant or you as a cook.

How did SampleRobot influence the way you are working with sampling?

SampleRobot allows you to create these individual sound libraries without having the cost and man power usually associated with them, a reason why most of them are made by large companies or corporations. Since SampleRobot everybody who has a microphone, a computer and a creative brain can make his/her own sampling library with ease. The process has become much less technical and one is able to focus a lot more on the creative and the designing aspects.
Personally I would love to see native Mac compatibility for SampleRobot.

And the future of sampling?

I think the future will hold a lot in store for us. We will definitely see more open source and interchangeable libraries. Like-minded people all over the world will share their own sounds even more over Internet platforms, forums and the like. Also I am convinced that programs like SampleRobot will be in every studio in the world. Anybody that wants to develop his/her own sound will have one of those.
We are already at a point where the average listener is not able to tell the difference between a well produced sample score and an orchestra. The reason that I am saying "well produced" is that the programming of samples is as much of an art as playing an instrument is. One needs to be able to really know what he/she is doing in order to get good results with samples.

Thank you very much for this interview. [Imagery: Thanks to Pete "Oso" Snell]

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A new SampleRobot review can be found on the web portal Buenasideas (available in German only). Please follow this link to read it.

New SampleRobot Video from soundsandgear.com

2010/06/18 Joe from soundsandgear.com shows you how easy it is to sample virtual instruments with SampleRobot. Here you can find his report with video tutorial. Thanks Joe!
Sampling virtual instruments has many advantages. You can use sounds of virtual instruments that are licensed for 1 or 2 computers on as many computers as you want. You just load them up quickly on any machine without any time-consuming new software installation. Furthermore you can turn CPU-hungry plug-ins into performance lightweights. Joe solves sampling of virtual instruments elegantly with the virtual MIDI cable LoopBe and the Creative Sound Blaster X-FI Go USB which can record the playback stream of any audio application. For more information about sampling virtual instruments see chapter "Recording" on page 87-89 in the SampleRobot Operation Manual.

Mobile Sampling / New SampleRobot 3.09 Downloads / Musikmesse 2010

2010/03/03 Rekord M is the new mobile audio recorder from ESI Audiotechnik. This little handy guy is optimally appropriate to any live sampling purposes. Equipped with 4GB internal memory, integrated stereo microphone and monitor speaker you can record everywhere and anytime. Together with SampleRobot you can turn your recordings into directly playable virtual instruments for MAC and PC.

Also good news for all users of SampleRobot 3, SampleRobot 3 Essentials and WaveRobot 3: You can download the new program versions 3.09 free of charge immediately from the User-Support-Area. The current versions offer new import functionality for waveformat-extensible files and also lots of optimizations and enhancements. Here is an overview. 

If you would like to check out all product news or if you have any questions regarding SampleRobot or WaveRobot please visit us at the Musikmesse 2010 in Frankfurt am Main, 2010/03/24-03/27. We are looking forward to meet you at ESI Audiotechnik's booth no. C77 in hall 5.1!

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