Sampler needed?

[ned911]

We are your basic cover band (www.romanholidayband.com) with bass, drums, guitar and lead vocals.

 

We are looking to get some background sounds for songs like Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Stacy's Mom and a couple of Cars tunes.

 

Don't want to rely on a PC to push midi live - would like to be able to trigger the samples via footswitch or some other method.

 

Do we need a sampler for this? or a synth? There is a old Ensoniq Mirage for sale locally - would this work?

[Yoozer]

 

Originally posted by ned911 We are looking to get some background sounds for songs like Boulevard of Broken Dreams, Stacy's Mom and a couple of Cars tunes.

 

What kind of sounds? Just atmosphere (sound effects) or chromatic (strings, orchestral, etc) stuff?

 

 

Do we need a sampler for this?

 

If it's atmospheric stuff, yes. If it's orchestral, you might consider a synthesizer.

 

 

There is a old Ensoniq Mirage for sale locally - would this work?

 

Nope, the memory it has is far too small and the result may be too lo-fi, plus the operation is (by today's standards, with dragging, dropping, selecting with the mouse and looking for peaks) not that easy.

 

You'd be off better with a Compact-Flash based phrase sampler like a Roland SP-404 for atmospheric stuff; just hit the button and it starts to play. You can also dump samples up to 512 mb on such cards, so for long soundscapes you're covered.

[ned911]

Mainly orchestral, synth pads and the leslie effect at the beginning of Blvd.

[Yoozer]

You have a spare hand to play all this? A lower level performance synth like the Juno-D could already help you out with this, or a module+controller comination, but in that case, forget just switching; you'll need playing .

 

If it's just an intro or something that's going to be played on beforehand (or recorded from the actual song) a phrase sampler will still work.

[program_insect]

Don't help him, he's perpetuating "Stacy's Mom".