Sampler Musical Instrument

[noelwelsh]

Overview

The goal of this project is to implement a Sampler Musical Instrument. The sampler will use the Web Audio API and run in the browser.

Don't confuse a sampler with an analog to digital converter, which converts sound into a digital form.

Features and Applications

The core function of a sampler is to load music samples which are linked to music notes, and play back the samples using a sequencer. Beyond that they are only limited by imagination and available processing power. Possible features include:

• Loading different audio file formats
• Loading a set of samples
• Setting the audio sample start and end
• Pitching the audio sample up or down
• Slowing the audio down
• Playing more than one note at a time (Polyphonic)
• defining volume and velocity controls for the audio files
• mapping different samples to different note velocities for the same sample set

An example application is the album Entroducing... which was almost entirely composed on a sampler.

Examples

Classic hardware samplers like the Akai MPC are fairly simple devices, and easy to emulate in software.

A much more complex software example is Kontakt Sampler.