If you’ve listened to some 90s and early 00s ambient-oriented tracks and tried to recreate their sounds with just a synth, you’ll notice that downsampling and bitcrushing won’t get you the same kind of sound you hear in there. It will sound dull(er) and less… complete, lush, rich? That is because back in the day artists sampled their synths and the technical side of that process had some cool side effects.

You can sample in two different ways. You can sample whole chords, where your parallel harmonies and frequency stretching will combine into a weird but cool sound. Or, on the topic of this video, you can sample an individual note from a synth and have your frequency stretching happen with different magnitudes for every note of the chord. That will create an interesting and rich sound!

This Thought-Forms video will show you an exact how-to with some tips on how to develop that sampler sound once you get the basics. It’s quick, concise and really informative.

I hope you find this technique useful. AMN out!