With all the talk of samplers since TE decided to release the ridiculously hyped K.O. II, I decided to finally pick up Koala Sampler. I’ve heard many good things about it, and for good reason. It’s amazing! It’s so immediate and fun and actually stupid powerful if you shell out (~$15 for everything) for the mixer, effects, and time stretch extras.
I dusted off my ancient sample collection and plopped them on my phone (Galaxy S23 Ultra) and am putting finishing touches on 3 tracks in just a few days, and just hauling it out to play with my daughter who gets a kick out of it. I even found a new use for my Samson Go mic which works with Android and has a headphone jack. It’s perfect since the S23 Ultra doesn’t have a headphone jack (fuck you very much Apple, Google, and Samsung) and the Samson mic is obviously much better quality than the (actually not that bad) internal mic.
My phone battery hates me. Though I don’t really notice Koala being any more demanding than anything else. I’m just using my phone so much more.
The base version is ~$5 and very much worth it to check out if phone sampling is for you. I really recommend at least the mixer upgrade. It really adds a lot of functionality for another $5. The time stretch stuff that comes with Samurai (the name of the other upgrade) is decent as well, though certainly not as necessary if you mostly use one-shots instead of loops.
I like Koala for how EASY PEASEY it is to resample. I like to just record my voice, mess with them in the effects to create the “instrument” I need, then hit resample. By 10/15 minutes I have a full set of sounds to make a banger with
Yup. They really made it super easy and intuitive to use. I’m always kind of left bewildered at how much I get done with it in such a short time. At least until I export my files to PC and see how much post-processing I need to do. :-P
Oh no doubt. But post processing can be really fun in its own way. Mixing/mastering can be just as creative as the composition itself
Definitely. I was just hoping to be able to do a bit more on the go since I’m away from my PC so much these days. I’ve got a bunch of tracks going on Koala right now, but since Koala is super easy and fun, it’s discouraging to plop the loops on PC, find the levels all over the place and have to do all that editing. It might be time to whip out the “I don’t care about the super nitty gritty anymore, time to compress some masters and crank out some tracks.”
I guess it depends on what your after in music. I’ve decided to do what I used to consider demos as actual releases honestly. It’s too expensive to get professionals to polish your music, and the open source stuff has gotten so far that if you have a little know how you can at least make your tracks listenable.
I’d love to hear your music btw, or at least a heartfelt jam
I’ve always done music for myself. I never even released anything (aside from a burnt CD or two 20+ years ago) until a year and a half ago when I decided to whip up some album covers for stuff that didn’t have them and released everything on Distrokid. It’s been eye-opening.
I never expected to be successful given my proclivities, but then I have 11 million listens across 20 releases. Unfortunately, that gets you about $40. Not exactly a living wage for 20 years of work. Good thing it’s just my hobby and I love the shit out of it. I’ve got one album half in the can, and the ideas for the next are already percolating.
This is one of my favorite tracks off my most recent release.
This is - by a wide margin - my most successful track on Distrokid.
Seriously though. Onslaught was done with a Pentium PC running pirated Cool Edit Pro with a cheap guitar, an ancient stadium mic stolen from my university’s storage room, sung under a blanket so I wouldn’t wake my roommate who had a graduation recital coming up, with vocals and guitar processed through a Zoom 505. Bass and drums are sequenced in Csound. It’s some of my least-polished stuff, and it accounts for 4+ million listens of my 11 million total.
What do people want?!?
I’d love to hear your experiences and music, too.
Saved this post so I can listen to it tonight. Stuck at work unfortunately:(
I was a guitarist and vocalist for a multi regional death metal band for a long time. There was an elitist attitude in the weirdest ways, in some ways non polished releases are excellent until their not…or polished releases sound excellent until it’s too fake. That version of me is a stranger now and I’m glad he is a memory that helped me grow to who I am.
This version of me is working hard! I have quite a bit of loops and beats I’ve assembled and plan to Creative Commons non commercial release. I’ll send you the link when it’s ready :) My set up is semi Modular eurorack, the sq80, some pedals, and of course the computer (apple for now but working towards Linux and open source everything)
Haha! That might explain the “success” of Onslaught. It’s the closest thing to metal I’ve done.
I have it loaded on my iPad but have never taken the time to dive in. It was good to fully get my hands dirty editing samples and tweaking the sound to what I like and not just loading the .wav on a pad and calling it a day.
How are you managing loading samples back and forth from your main computer to your Koala app?
I just plug my phone in and drag and drop. I’m on Android, though. iPhones probably more complex.
Yeah, there it is. I keep a folder in iCloud to sync samples but drag and drop sounds ideal.