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I want to record percussive and ambient field sounds (like punching a garbage can or a drunk person pissing onto train tracks or whatever), heavily process them, and make sequences out of them. I have a sampler and sequencer stuff within Reason, which are very powerful, and you can record/import your own samples to do shit with them, but since I don't have any kind of field recording equipment I never do this. So, although I have no experience with them, I thought it might be time to get a hardware sampler I can use to record sounds on the fly, fuck with royally, and play into my recorder; something more like an instrument and less like something I have to program.

What do I need? There are some things that I'll compromise on, depending. For instance, if it's super portable and has an onboard mic, I wouldn't mind not having onboard effects, because I can dump my samples in Reason and process/sequence/fuck with them there. But then, should I just use my phone's Voice Memo and import the files into Reason at that point?

Agh I'm lost, how do I sampler?

Critter & Guitari Kaleidoloop might be worth looking at.

Or get a field recorder (good for band practice too) or a minidisc + mic (what I used to do...and would record band practice too)

Phone's voice recorder is good too. If you are mangling them in software later, anything goes really. Heck even a walkman with a mic...just gotta have an interface on a computer (for the minidisc too, unless they finally reverse engineered the thing, but doubt it)

There's really no reason not to use the Voice Memo first and see if you can get what you need out of that.


My suggestion to you is to try and get your field recordings as clean as possible so you have a nice audio file to fuck with later.

I use a cassette recorder with an onboard mic. Works fine for me.

Use my phone mostly as a field recorder, and I think it works fine. It certainly allows me to capture any random moment since I always have it on me. I mostly get field recordings of random chattering or some droney noises coming from machines, so I guess it's different from what you're trying to do though

i think the phone is the best for field recordings b/c most likely u are already carrying it in your pocket and its pretty quick to activate.
if u are already catching sounds on your phone, the volca sample is a super great sample mangler & sequencer.

the majority of dedicated field recorders available now are pretty damn cool and most of them have built in fx. but u gotta either have it on always or be ready to pull it out, turn it on, and then record. which admittedly isn't a lot, but sometimes is enough to miss what u wanted to record, or not bother w/ pulling it out in the first place.

if u go sampler, SP sounds like your jam. (starting to feel like a broken record) they are one of more immediate samplers out there IMHO. not that it doesn't have it quirks.
get a 202 or 404 (or 404sx) to go battery if u wanna bring it around w/ u. altho like i said above, unless u are dedicating a block of time to go around and catch samples. the phone is usually the easiest to actually do in reality.

other samplers to look out for maybe. MICROGRANNY, yamaha SU series, roland ms?, zoom sampletrak. even either of the new-ish mini KP 2's have a recording/"sampling"/storage feature.

As far as my super limited experience with samplers go (hint: none), I can just add that I've been looking at the akai mpx8. Mostly because it's cheap. Okay, only because it's cheap.

Do you have an iphone? Then use Fieldscaper.

Incidentally, there's a 202 in the BST right now.

Korg Volca is kind of setup with this kind of situation in mind.

Elektron Octatrack too...but thats some big monies. (Elektron stuff is the fawkin shiznit tho. Once you start messing with one of their toys you fall into a hole and never come out)

I want an octatrack to make glitchy music with an acoustic guitar. I've had a dream of making Glitch-folk for ages.

+1 on microgranny. can't beat a granular sampler

Never played anything else, but I really love my Volca Sample. It lacks the pads that you might want, though. That makes it more of a drum machine sort of thing, not perfect to play live unless you also want to get a controller with pads to shoot the samples off. Also I have recently found out the damn memory is a little limited. But who uses 100 different samples anyway?

You could record on the phone, process in Reason and upload with the Caustic Editor for Volca Sample.

So I just learned that Voice Memo records mp3s, and for some godawful reason Reason (heh) can't import mp3s, only uncompressed files. At least my version doesn't, maybe I gotta upgrade this shit.

SP-202 and Volca Sample seem like the best options on a budget. With Volca Sample I could record sounds on my phone, import via Caustic Editor into Volca, and then output my sequences to my interface. With SP-202 I could record sounds directly to it, and play the pads outputted to my interface.

Hmmm

edit: I should have mentioned this isn't for live use.

Dude for live sound manipulation the SP series cannot be beat, I just wouldn't use it for field recording.

friendship wrote:So I just learned that Voice Memo records mp3s, and for some godawful reason Reason (heh) can't import mp3s, only uncompressed files. At least my version doesn't, maybe I gotta upgrade this shit.

u could always use a different recording app. or a batch sound converter for your computer and just convert them all to wav or whatever reason jives with.