Michael Stearns in his Santa Fe studio
We had the rare opportunity to get an interview with renowned film composer and ambient music pioneer Michael Stearns on the topic of sampling.
Michael Stearns is best known for his soundtracks to Ron Fricke’s epochal 70MM movies Chronos, Baraka and Samsara. He has worked on 22 IMAX films, released 17 studio albums including the highly respected Planetary Unfolding, contributed musical pieces to Avatar and Titanic and scored for the Berkshire Ballet.
Can you remember when you discovered sampling, what you felt about it and how much the impact was creatively for your music?
My first exposure to sampling was thru the original EMU sampling keyboard. A friend had one and it became an “I must have one!” item immediately. I borrowed his to use in my score for the film Chronos. The ‘cheezy’ cello parts and some drums were recorded with that. Finishing that project I knew that ‘sampling’ would become an important part of my creative process.
His current modular synthesizer system
Tell us more about one of your sampling sessions where you captured some of your iconic sounds.
For the film Baraka I used sampling a lot. There were patches that I had created on my Oberheim Matrix 12 to use in chord progressions. Because I’m not a ‘keyboard player’ I sampled the individual chords in order to perform passages in the score. I also sampled patches that I would create on my Serge Modular synthesizer to use in the score.
There is a story about a lot of bells coming together in one large room for sampling. Can you expand on that?
My friend Paul Abell had traveled around the world collecting bells from different cultures/traditions. We brought his collection into the studio and sampled single bells and groups of bells. I used these samples in the composition of the score to the Baraka film and they’ve been used on many other projects as well.
The vintage Roland S-760 rackmount sampler has an RGB output for connecting an external monitor, top notch at the time in the early 1990s.
Which samplers did you use and what was your experience with those instruments?
At different times I’ve used EMU, Synclavier, Akai and Roland samplers. The Roland samplers became my “go to” studio samplers. I started with their S-50 keyboard, moved up to S-770 and S-750 rackmount samplers and finally ended up with the S-760 which I had an entire rack of. I still keep a single S-760 in the studio because I developed a large proprietary library for it. It’s on a ‘roll around’ cart because the SCSI hard drives which hold all of the samples take up a lot of room and are hard to move.
The 'Smart Computer System Interface' to use 'larger' harddiscs for sample storage
What is the secret in sampling, do you have a special approach?
No real special approaches. Because memory was at a premium when I started, my looping was always ‘two way’, front to back to front to back. Memory is not a problem now but I still loop that way. I’m not much of a ‘one shot’ looper. Most of my music is ‘textural’ in its melodic form so the samples tend to be longer.
Do you capture instruments mostly or also sounds from the environment to incorporate them into your music?
Both. My music often incorporates nature recordings which I make in the field and sometimes sample bits and pieces of. I’ve also used samples from ‘found sounds’ I’ve recorded.
Michael in a hotel room at the Frankfurt Main airport preparing recordings for the current album Sounds Searching for People
Does sampling still play a major role in your current productions?
Yes, I use samples all of the time, even roll out the old Roland S-760 occaisionally. Mostly I work with samplers ‘in the box’ as it’s quicker to get to where I want to be musically.
There are a lot of unheard sounds in your current album collaboration Sounds Searching for People which you recorded together with composer Christian Halten. Did you use samples/sampling for the creation as well?
We used samples from an instrument called “The Beam” in several pieces. The Beam is a 12 foot long piece of extruded aluminum with 24 strings. There were also samples from the Matrix 12, modular and other vintage synthesizers.
Thank you very much, Michael.
The album Sounds Searching for People has just been released. It is available now on Bandcamp.
Image credits copyright Michael Stearns