Sample Recreation time again

I'm currently knee deep in a sample recreation for a fairly Legend-ary artist. Sample recreation is far and away the most difficult work i could ever imagine doing. It is the most tedious, the most time consuming, the most specialized, often the most frustrating, and I happen to be very good at it. Kanye West once in a crowded room annointed me "The Ripley's Believe It Or Not of Sample Recreation". Thats one of the highest compliments of my career.

Recreating a sample, let alone an old soul sample like this one, is quite often a Pandora's Box in that the closer you think your getting the more clearly you hear how far away you still are. Its a series of baby steps, subtly refining little parts, touching up other little parts, recording, re-recording, re-recording again, and again, and again. i've so far recut the same guitar part 4 times and i think its getting really close, now i'm cutting the piano again for the third time, but after hearing it back, I'm switching microphones, switching mic position, and changing EQ. Once i think i've got the raw piano recording as close as that process will get me, I'll probably spend another few hours fine tuning the equalization, levels, compression, ambience. ugh. All told, I'll spend dozens of hours working on this thing. probably 3 to 5 dozen hours, Oh yeah, and its only 2 bars of music.

There are so many obstacles to overcome when trying to EXACTLY match the sound of a vintage record. Keep in mind what exactly your attempting to recreate. 1) A List session players who usually had amazing instruments and amplifiers 2) all vintage recording gear, recorded to analog tape and probably mastered directly to vinyl 3) unquantized performances, which need to be matched because their performances give that sample its feel and vibe as much as anything else sonically.

Now fortunately for me, I have one of the most vast and well rounded collections of sounds and samples on Earth. When you do sample recreation fore the guys i do, you invest HEAVILY in sounds. That investment also comes in very handy when i'm doing my own productions. But often, I'm using mostly live instruments. This sample has live drums, bass, piano, shaker, cymbal, flute, and several guitars. I found sampled drums that, with alot of manipulation, are working very well, but i played the shaker part live (about 50 times trying several different shakers), i'm using all live guitars thru my Madison amps, live piano, live bass, sampled flute and sampled cymbal. You can imagine how many variables can be present in recreating a guitar tone - type of guitar, type of strings, thickness of your pick, how hard you pick each individual string, picking downstrokes or upstrokes, which pickup to use, how to set the amp, how to mic the amp, what pedals to use. The combinations are almost endless. Fortunately, i have alot of guitars, pedals and patience. I'm getting close with this thing and I'm going for perfect. Wish me luck.

-Ken Lewis