Capable of everything from realistic instrument recreation to futuristic sound manipulation, the sampler - a digital instrument that allows the user to load in audio recordings (‘samples’) and then play them back at various pitches via MIDI - is arguably the biggest electronic music game-changer of the past 30 years, having defined production trends and even shaped entire genres.įundamentally, a sampler is a synthesizer that uses an audio file as its oscillator: load in a segment of audio (a sample), play MIDI notes up and down the keyboard, and the sampler will play back the sample at the desired musical pitch.
