Hi there, sample pickers. This month we've less of a Sample Shop than a Sample Supermarket [and that's after I cut it down! — Ed.]. I decided I needed larger premises in order to cope with the plethora of new and old releases recently brought to my attention. This month I review three CDs that have been out for some time. This need not mean they are redundant: witness Coldcut's 'Kleptomania', over a year old and still worthy of five stars.

AMG
BIG BANG PRODUCTIONS PERCUSSION POWER VOL. 1 ••½

I chose to start with this one because the last name of our 24-track studio was Big Bang. The first section houses 14 'Official Rhythms'. The opening track, 'San Juan Express', is one minute and twelve seconds of live latin percussion which starts off with a one bar count in, then proceeds to build a 'Bomba' pattern with cowbells, shakers and the odd tom tom. Later on agogo bells come into play, before a triangle makes its entrance. Failing in an attempt to get a convincing off-beat groove going, the playing sounds sticky — so much so that I thought I was listening to sequenced samples before reading the sleeve notes.

Having said that, the tracks that follow, while adopting the same format (just over a minute's worth of percussion without a lot of variation for your money) are better constructed.

Track 9, 'Master Blaster', is an interesting synthesis of 3/4 and 4/4 Columbian cross-rhythms. Other latin styles represented include Chacha, Songo, Bolero, Guacuango, Merengue, Son Montuno, Calypso, Son, Mozambique, Comparsa, Mambo and Samba. If you've heard of all of these you're a better man than I. (Oops — is that, I wonder, a politically correct thing to say?).

These loops are performed in stereo, though I'm not sure that we are not dealing with layered mono loops which have merely been panned into stereo. Track 13 is almost mono, 14 is very wide. Favoured instruments include shakers, bells, blocks, tambourine and guiro.

The second section, 'Percussion and Drums', opens with a conga rhythm before tambourine, cowbells and timbales make their entrance. Bringing up the rear is a tidy shaker, cunningly split hard and left with a short delay. I liked it — easy on the ears.

Track 16 is billed as the same plus drums. The drums sound as though they are 'off D record', rather than programmed or played with the same fidelity as the live stuff, but they blend in nicely nonetheless.

Tracks 17 and 18 pull the same trick. This time the drums and percussion do not sit well together (and there's a triangle that's well out of time!). In fact none of the remaining track pairs live up to the promise of the first. One or two come close, though. The booming drums of track 24 are interesting. That takes us on to track 34, and around 40 minutes have elapsed without anything essential happening, though 'Shake Your Hips' (track 26) got my foot tapping. All bpms are given.

Track 31 and I'm getting a bit hacked off with that triangle loop...

From tracks 35 through 52 we are regaled with patterns, stacked about four-and-a-half to a track (on average), and all exactly four bars in length. (Yes kids, there are some at 140-150bpm). Some are two bars repeated, some one bar times four. Voices are as per usual, though the odd shekere, glissando tumba and cascara rears its head now and then. Almost all loops feature only one instrument.

There are a few goodies in here, which will work better in the mix than you might think. If I told you which I'd be making it too easy for you, though, wouldn't I? Incidentally, as far as I could tell some repetitions were played and some were looped. I wouldn't be at all surprised if some of the multivoice stuff that headed this set was constructed at least in part from these smaller patterns.

The CD plays out with a selection of both 'Unisono' (multi-voiced) and 'Random' (single voice) fills. The latter are worthy of a special mention. There are around 100 of these, and a careful course of injection into your loops will liven them up no end. Sensible voicings throughout. I can think of one or two DJ remixers who'll be dipping into the timbales.

A Dutch masterpiece it isn't, but Percussion Power has some merit. If you are going to use one of the layered patterns, however, beware. You would do better to assemble your own in most cases. The feel is often not good enough to justify the loss of editing power brought about by not using sequences to trigger mini-loops and single hits. The CD's best cards are: 1) not many people will have it; and 2) there isn't too much reverb on anything. Recording quality is fine, though the palette of sounds is somewhat narrow. The sleeve is well documented, with pretty much full instrumentation given. But why no single hits to complement the loops?

£55 inc. VAT.

AMG, (Contact Details)

AMG
MASTERBITS CLIMAX-COLLECTION VOLUME 3 (GUITARS) •••½

The demo tune that heads this 1991 release is excellent. 'My Guitar' crams in more styles and sound than you'd have thought possible onto a heavy Soul II Soul backbeat. It's about twice as long as needs be, though.

Peering into the sleeve I see we are given a full list of instruments and equipment/amplifiers used. One gold star for that. Nearly all of the 47 tracks comprise nine samples, and there is an Akai data set for 117 of the 433 samples on board.

Tracks 2 and 3 have emulations of many classic rock licks. Effects include a hint of chorus and around 200ms delay. Distorted, but not destroyed (Marshall JMC 800 and Marshall speaker, Rockinger Strat with EMG pickups are credited). Net result: a slightly polite understated Woolworths copy of riffs already well past their sell by date.

The same gear is used on tracks 4 and 5, but this time the echo is mostly displaced by a harmoniser. The licks are a little more useful, too. Only the last sample is in stereo — probably a renegade from the next set.

Track 6, 7 and 8 herald another a change of weapons. This time an Ibanez Pro Line is DI'd through a Rockman. Distorted, and sometimes chorused into stereo, the 27 licks traverse a range of sounds, though not style, which remains routinely rockist. The licks are still getting better, or maybe I'm just being seduced by rock'n'roll.

For the purposes to which I would put guitar samples, many of these are overly long and complex, and are a little short on attitude. The same could be said about tracks 9 and 10 (more electric licks), 11 (Spanish and bottleneck acoustic riffs, though one or two of the latter are more than viable), and 12 (jazz funk licks).

Tracks 13 thru 16 sport my favourite guitar, the Gibson ES 335 semi-acoustic. Riffs are generally simpler and better on track 13, but begin to get a bit dribbly around the middle of track 14. Mellow, man.

Track 17 and we're into what promises to be a much more attractive proposition: a selection of rhythm licks. Immediately the sonic environment becomes much more hospitable. Sounds veer dramatically from heavily effected to near as dammit dry, and around six out of the first nine are eminently sampleable. Track 18 is a deal tamer, and didn't inspire. 19 has soul licks, including a few JB-esque grooves with non JB-esque DI sounds. 20 and in comes the clean DI/stereo chorus with a hint of reverb sound beloved of fusion soloists in music shops Europe-wide. A plague on them! No doubt an EMG pickup or good FET preamp was employed to get that clinical cleanliness from the Strat. Similar equipment takes us through to track 23, while the riffs get ever more tedious.

Metal effects re-awake this reviewers interest. Some of the swoops and sustains covering tracks 24 thru 26 are quite formidable. I shall be dipping into those later. The 'Mixed Effect Licks' of track 27 also feature some untapped classics which someone should put to good use. On to 28 and 29. The samples included under the heading 'Total Electro' feature more effect than guitar in some cases. Those that don't are very good indeed. The blippy sequences are intriguing.

Track 30 has more standard heavy guitar, but the playing is less musical, simpler, and the samples stand a better chance of integrating sonically with your sequencing than was the case with the opening tracks on this CD. Much the same goes for track 31.

Thereafter we are treated to a wide range of multisampled single note sets, recorded in stereo. Samples are normally taken at five semitone intervals (A1, D1, G1 and so on), and decays are allowed to fade into silence in most cases.

First off is a 6-string Ovation acoustic, which sounds more like a 12-string, due, perhaps, to the unnatural but interestingly wide stereo mic technique employed. (Or is it electronic gimmickry? Shame on you if it is!)

Other acoustic instruments featured include a Flageolet, 12-string Yamaha, and concert guitar. Among the clean electric guitar sets were Flageolet, Ibanez pro-line, Ibanez proline mute set, Strat, short Strat, Gibson ES 335, and V-Line long and short. On some sounds I thought I detected an unwelcome whiff of chorus, which was particularly noticeable on the 335 and V-line sets. Also, one or two of the high-attack plucked V-line samples seemed to exhibited a tad of digital transient clipping. As a rule, though, recording quality was pristine.

Track 43 heads a list of distorted sample sets. 'Heavy Rockinger', 'Short Distortion', 'Strato Distortion', 'Short Strat', 'Oktave Distortion' (sic), and 'Oktave Dist — Feedback' are all pretty much self explanatory. Once again there is perhaps a tendency to overuse chorus. I say overuse because it is an effect that's easy to apply in the mix but impossible to remove from a sample, which has the added disadvantage of making looping much more tiresome. Many of the samples offered here are not designed to be looped, but those of us with limited RAM (yes, 16MB is limited) will no doubt be attempting to do so.

Some of the sounds in the 8MB Akai data set that follows did not appear on the audio only portion of the CD, and seemed to bear a close relationship to examples heard on the demo that preceded this collection. Whether it loads properly or not I cannot tell you (yet).

So, what's the verdict? Particularly on the first couple of tracks, licks tend to be too dribbly and long-winded to be of much use to the average samplist — editing out highlights would be a better bet. Pity the CD's compilers haven't done that for you already. There are many good dive-bombs and sustains just waiting to be picked off, detuned, reversed and gated.

In situations where the longer bouts of jazzy soloing might apply, such as in film and TV background music and the like, a live musician is likely to be more useful. Otherwise, you'd really have to start off with the guitar samples, and write a backing track to them, rather than work the other way around.

The effects sets held some pleasant surprises, and the multi-samples seemed pretty well prepared, though overall there was too much chorus and not enough essence for my liking. Nevertheless, if you end up programming a tune as wicked as the first half of the demo that opens this CD from the samples contained therein (drumloops extra), then the expense would be more than justified. Though I preferred 'Funk Guitar' from Time & Space, 'Guitars Vol.3' from Masterbits would make a reasonable complementary purchase, were you into guitar in a big way, since it more or less covers the bases that the former leaves out.

£45 inc VAT.

AMG, (Contact Details)

AMG
MASTERBITS CLIMAX COLLECTION VOLUME 5 (VIOLINS) ••••

A demo piece composed by Ken Mine and Uwe Kinast starts off encouragingly, with some arresting tremelonde playing, but soon degenerates into a quagmire of layered strings over a tremendously tedious beat. Not a good advertisement. Mind you, I've heard worse on the latest Rod Stewart album. [Hang your head in shame for even listening to the wretched thing — Ed]

What follows are a series of 51 multisample violin sets. The stingiest hold four samples, the most generous (and therefore those providing the hardest work for the determined samplist) house 15. Samples are offered in realistic (narrow) stereo, and saving memory by taking them in mono shouldn't unduly impair their effectiveness, especially if you apply a touch of restrained stereo reverb in the mix.

There are 29 consecutive tracks containing sustained string samples. The first three sets each comprise 15 single samples of violin groups, taken at a density of four to the octave. Groups of 16, eight and four violins are represented. A similar solo violin set follows. The 16 and four groups exhibit, at a low level, a similar long reverb tail, which I feel should really be truncated. The group of eight and solo violins seem fairly dry, with no digital hangover evident.

The higher notes exhibited an unusually high level of (I presume) resinous bow scraping. Perhaps some attempt to reduce this by a more judicious microphone placement might have improved matters. (On the other hand, some might see this as a mark of added realism. Unfortunately, there are no samples of an audience coughing or musicians chairs creaking to further satisfy such sensibilities.) Otherwise, recording quality seemed fine, EQ flat, and distortion was nowhere evident.

Track 6 has the solo violin again, this time playing the open strings. The solo samples of tracks 5 and 6 are played ff (or, in the CD's nomenclature, 'Fingered Loud'), and here (though nowhere else on the CD) I thought I could detect a hint of over-enthusiastic sample trimming at the start of individual notes.

For the record, FL = fingered loud, FS = fingered soft, OL = open string loud, and OS... well you get the picture.

There follow four solo violin tracks, the first two of which each come with 14 samples of 'Lite Vibrato' (sic), F, L and FS. Two further tracks each have 15 samples of heavy vibrato, also FL and FS. As is usual on this CD, samples are a good few seconds in length each, giving plenty of space to find that perfect loop point — a 38-note dual velocity fully sampled voice could cost you over 8MB at 44.1 kHz.

Next up come four Open L, and four Open S samples, similar to the Solo Open set already dealt with.

Slow tremolo samples, again solo violin, occupy the next four tracks. Two have 15 samples each, corresponding to FL and FS. The others represent the open strings.

Next up comes four tracks of fast tremolo, adopting exactly the same format as the former. The fast tremolo FS set appealed, especially on the low samples. On the high ones the finger hammering came through distractingly strongly, though again such realism might appeal. In a full mix such natural 'imperfections' as bow scraping and fingering will recess anyway.

Tracks 21-24 house a similarly comprehensive 5th glissando set. Around a second is held before sliding up to the second note. 12, 12, 4 and 4 samples are offered, less here since several notes are spanned by each sample. Solo violin samples are offered, as per usual. For those of you who needed to know, a handy hint is given that if you reverse the above samples you get a glissando down! No mention is made of the un-natural reverse attack characteristics that would inevitably ensue from undertaking such a process!

Other tracks include as follows: Regular half step trills (15 samples), ponticello trills (11), natural harmonics (9 L and 9 S), sustained harmonics (10 L and 10 S).

Thereafter we are offered a range of short attack sounds. We kick off with four tracks containing a total of 38 pizzicato samples, conforming to the by now familiar format.

We then move on to 'Bartok F' (11) and 'Bartok O' (four, of course). These are hard, sustained plucks, whereas the former pizzis were damped.

Not a lot comes between these, and the following 19 'col legno' plucks that sensible envelope decay mapping couldn't simulate respectably. How pernickety do you want to get?

Ponticello FL, FS, OL and OS provides us with a 30 sample solo spicato-type set of short bowed accents — these could be used over sustained notes to inject dynamic detail for added realism, in addition to being used as notes in their own right.

Other playing styles covered include natural harmonics and harmonics, L and S (36 samples), muted (bowed accents) L and S (30 samples), and eight major and eight minor scales (together spanning two octaves) played both fast and slow. These could be used in addition to single note sequencing when constructing a part, giving added realism to note runs.

There follow 25 Akai format data sections covering a fair amount of the samples previously encountered. Check with the distributors to see if they work properly. I bet they do. The sleeve takes time out to explain what is going on. For example, track 77 contains a 151 sample track "covering the whole volume converted to 29kHz, dividing the 11 different violin programs to different MIDI channels" (sic).

This CD covers most of what you'd ever want from a solo violin set, with a few ensembles thrown in. The presentation and annotation are excellent. Fidelity is high and samples are usably dry. Is it a classic? Time will tell. (Quick thought: would it be quicker to hire in a violinist for your recording session?)

£45 inc VAT.

AMG, (Contact Details).