realsamples

Awesome.

Nicolay Ketterer, Essenweinstr.19, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
+49 (0)721 6642823

Our mission is to provide professional musicians with high quality sample sounds which are inspiring and a joy to play.

What is this all about?

Samples are digital snapshots of any given instrument. They are meant to provide a musician or producer with the sound of any instrument on his keyboard, for example. So, even a musican who cannot play strings, for example, can play a cool sounding string section on his keyboard by loading the corresponding samples into a (software) sampler.
A few years back, a sample set of an instrument consisted of just a few snapshots of the instrument. This was the basis to re-create that instrument virtually. As a result, one sample of a piano, for example, was stretched over half an octave on a keyboard, and that, in turn, sounded artifical. In addition, there was no difference in dynamic articulation, because this sample was just played in different volumes when the keyboard was hit differently. That's of course anything but an authentic representation of a complicated acoustic instrument like piano and guitar with all its sublte and big nuances. Well, those "limited" recreations can sound cool in their own right (just think of the typical early 90's "Eurodance" piano sound), but once you're after the real deal, such a simple library can become downright depressing.
Things changed a bit, of course: Thanks to higher capacities of samplers and computers, it was no longer just a few - or like in the early 90's often just one sample - as the basis for a virtual instrument. In the next step, velocity layers started to appear - finally, "multisamples" of each note for different dynamic ranges of that note. Sometimes 2, sometimes 4, and if you were really lucky, you had 8 velocity layer of a piano. This sounds already good, but it's still limiting a piano performance.

What makes us different?

My opinion is that most sampled instruments still don't sound real.

First, it seems to me that most sample recordings are approached merely from a technical point of view instead of an emotional one. Music is a creative, inspiring process, so the sounds that get involved in that process should equal that nature.

Furthermore, I think that the provided capacities of software samplers allow for more. My goal is to capture an instrument in a high, analogue sound resembling resolution with as many snapshots of its personality as possible to provide a unique sense of reality.

Also, I don't believe in any type of sample licensing for commerical music productions, hence - after buying our samples - you can use them freely in your music without having to ask for permission or anything else. You just can't re-distribute or upload the samples themselves, of course, but using them within your (commerically released) music is absolutely fine. That's what it's there for!

We hope to provide a valuable contribution to your productions with our samples and we are always glad to hear from you.

Nicolay Ketterer - head of realsamples

© realsamples 2010.