Talk:E-mu SP-1200

Talk:E-mu SP1200

Hello, I'm interested in adding some facts about the drum machine SP1200 plus some additional information about what Hip Hop Producers say about the Machine and how they used it and why it was so instrumental to the evolution of HIP HOP.

What Do you think? The SP1200 was actually a drum machine and sampler combined. Was originally created for dance music producers. "The machine rose to such prominence that its strengths and weaknesses sculpted an entire era of music: The crunchy digitized drums, choppy segmented samples, and murky filtered basslines that characterize the vintage New York sound are all mechanisms of the machine."Ben Detrick November 13th, 2007 What some of Hip Hop's best producers say about the SP1200

Ski-Hip Hop Producer Produced for artists such as Jay-Z,Camp Lo etc.) The strength of the SP was definitely the way the 12-bit sounded when you threw the sample or the snare or the kick in there—it just sounded so dirty. It was a definite, definite fucking plus with the machine. The limited sampling time made you become more creative. That's how a lot of producers learned how to chop the samples: We didn't have no time, so we had to figure out ways to stretch the sounds and make it all mesh together. We basically made musical collages just by chopping little bits and notes.

Hank Shocklee-( Producer for Public Enemy) There's little tricks that were developed on it. For example, you got 12 seconds [10.07, according to the manufacturer] of sample time to divide amongst eight pads. So depending on how much you use on each pad, you decrease the amount of sample time that you have. You take a 33 1/3 record and play it on 45, and you cheat the system. [Another] aspect that we created is out of a mistake—one day I was playing "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" and it came out real muffled. I couldn't hear any of the high-end part of it. I found out that if you put the phono or quarter-inch jack halfway in, it filters the high frequency. Now I just got the bass part of the sample. I was like, "Oh, shit, this is the craziest thing on the planet!" The Machine and the Masters

Lord Finesse( East Coast Rapper/ Producer member of East Coast Hip Hop group DITC )They had me as a special guest on Stretch and Bobbito, one of the popular radio shows of the '90s. I thought it would be slick if I brought my 1200 down. A lot of producers did total beats with their 1200, and I think I did two or three, and one specifically was when I chopped up Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On." I chopped all around his voice using the 1200 and put an instrumental in the back. I played it over the air, and me and KRS-One freestyled over it. It was real slick.

Ski- People said they never saw anyone work the SP as fast as me and Large Professor— not that it means anything. It's crazy. I can't explain it—it's like the shit is programmed in my brain. I worked with Jay-Z and did all of Reasonable Doubt on the SP-1200. For "Dead Presidents," everything was made on the SP, man: the whole sequence, the drum sounds, the Nas sample. The only thing that wasn't done on the SP was the sample, [but] I ran it through it to give it that sound.

Pete Rock Everything that you ever heard from me back in the day was the SP-1200. That machine made "Reminisce" [[["They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.)"],]] "Straighten It Out," "Shut 'Em Down," "Jump Around." When I made "Reminisce"—I had friend of mine that passed away, and it was a shock to the community. I was kind of depressed when I made it. And to this day, I can't believe I made it through, the way I was feeling. I guess it was for my boy. When I found the record by Tom Scott, basically I just heard something incredible that touched me and made me cry. It had such a beautiful bassline, and I started with that first. I found some other sounds and then heard some sax in there and used that. Next thing you know, I have a beautiful beat made. When I mixed the song down, I had Charlie Brown from Leaders of the New School in the session with me, and we all just started crying. An End of an Era

Pete Rock - I used the MPC [a technologically superior sampler line first introduced in 1988] on Soul Survivor II. That was kind of the beginning of using it. I thought it had a thinner sound than the SP, but it had way more sample time—like three minutes. So, can't beat that. I got hundreds of beats on the SP-1200, but I like the MPC. I'm really starting to get in the midst of it now. Hank Shocklee They've mastered the computer to the point it does things the SP-1200 can't do. [But] we would have better records today if people said, "Look, you've got five hours to make a record." The problem is that people got all day. They got all week. They got all month. They got all year. So thus, you in there second-guessing yourself. With the 1200, you can't second-guess yourself, man. You got 2.5 seconds a pad, man. . . . Till this day, nobody has understood and created a machine that can best it. http://djproaudio.blogspot.com/2007/11/e-mu-systems-released-sp-1200-1987.html --Geographic1 (talk) 01:54, 17 June 2008 (UTC)

According to DJ Muggs, SP-1200 has been used on all House of Pain records (see documentary 'LA Originals'). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.117.169.122 (talk) 08:01, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

References

Sampling Rate

There are now highly reputable sources cited, including a disambiguation from E-mu co-founder and original SP-12 and SP-1200 designer Dave Rossum provided on this specific subject for the 2011 book SP-1200: The Art and Science (on page 60).

Dave is quoted:

“I don’t know where the rumour started that there was a different sample rate between the SP-12 and the SP-1200? I haven’t been able to find a set of SP-12 schematics to absolutely confirm it, but the sample rate of the Drumulator was 26.04 kHz (5 MHz divided by 6*32), and the SP-1200 is the same (20MHz divided by 3*256), so I’m pretty sure the SP-12 was the same as well. That rate was chosen in the early Drumulator R&D days as a good compromise between perceived audio bandwidth (high end) and total sample time.”

(Though there may have been an unfortunate error in a version of an SP-12 owner's manual, the fact remains that the sample rates are certainly the same between the SP-12 and SP-1200.)

The schematics clearly show that the instruments are the same in the area that generates the channel counter (which must be the sample rate). The only difference is the SP-12 used a 74HCT163, the SP-1200 a 74S163, they are functionally the same).

One can see that the 20MHz crystal oscillator is divided by 3 by the 74HCT74s, then by 8 stages of divide-by-2 in the '163 counters. This can be calculated as 20,000,000Hz/3/256 = 26,041 2/3Hz (26,041.666666...Hz), the correct sample rate.

Also, when E-mu updated the SP-12 to the SP-1200, E-mu provided ways for users to transfer their SP-12 sounds. They would have all played back at a noticeably wrong rate, and would have been terribly off-pitch (and there would have been a huge upset) had they not been the same sample rate. It would not have made sense to change the sample rate between the SP-12 and SP-1200.

If one has both an SP-12 and an original SP-1200, they can transfer a sample from the SP-12 to the SP-1200 via the cassette interface, and observe that there is no pitch change (and thus no sample rate change). Vactrol (talk) 05:55, 5 July 2024 (UTC)

SP-1200 is a sampling drum machine

Multiple reputable sources are referenced in inline citations for the fact that SP-1200 is a sampling drum machine (as opposed to just a sampler or drum machine only).

Mark Vail, a high regarded author of multiple books on synthesizers, drum machines, and samplers is cited. The Sound on Sound article and the “Art and Science” book cited were produced with input from SP-1200’s original designer.

Sampling is what sets apart SP-12, the first sampling drum machine, and SP-1200, only the second sampling drum machine, from earlier and other types of drum machine. For example, the TR-808 drum machine works by producing sounds using circuitry for analog synthesis.

This is a very important and influential advancement in music technology, the music products industry, the music industry, the history of hip-hop and dance music, the accessibility of music production to disadvantaged groups, and to musical artistry as well. Vactrol (talk) 20:13, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

First, I want to say that article is impressively well sourced. Wikipedia articles about music gear are usually very poorly sourced and researched, so thanks for your work here.

There are two problems with "sampling drum machine":

• It creates a WP:SEAOFBLUE problem, with two wikilinks next to one another, which is generally undesirable.
• For the lead sentence, it's best to speak in general, fundamental terms and get more specific later. You don't want to overload the first sentence with detail. What is the main, most basic definition of the SP-1200? If we have to pick one, based on the sources, it sounds like "sampler" probably covers it. We can then get into more detail about how it was designed as a drum machine.

On the same subject, per WP:CITELEAD, the lead should contain no citations. It should only summarise information given and sourced in the article body. Popcornfud (talk) 12:31, 25 August 2024 (UTC)

I truthfully strongly disagree with the assessment that the sources, which say "sampling drum machine" verbatim, support calling it a sampler only as opposed to a drum machine or a sampling drum machine. Though not overly attached to exact phrasing, I honestly think that the SP-1200 is both a drum machine and sampler in most basic terms and it seems to be a significant misrepresentation to exclude one or the other. My hope is that the article communicates the revelation that this concept of a sampling drum machine turned out to be in music, where samplers and drum machines had been available separately years earlier.

I was not aware of the CITELEAD consideration. On reading it though, it does not seem to say that there should not be citations in the lead at this time. "Although the presence of citations in the lead is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article, there is no exception to citation requirements specific to leads. The necessity for citations in a lead should be determined on a case-by-case basis by editorial consensus. Complex, current, or controversial subjects may require many citations; others, few or none." I am not really sure what best to do about citations in the lead, and appreciate your bringing it up, because I might have otherwise been temped to relocate these really reputable citations for it indeed being a "sampling drum machine" right after those words, earlier in the article.

In other words, while I am not sure what to do about CITELEAD or SEAOFBLUE problems, the concept of a sampling drum machine is perhaps the most essential point of the article and should be in the lead in my honest opinion. I hope that some kind of consensus or compromise can be made without losing too much of the point of the article or what the source of SP-1200's notoriety is.

I was really inspired to edit for the first time in order to correct erroneous sample rate information when I realized that some Wikipedia articles were from where this was being perpetuated, and that there were some great sources with which to correct some other important facts like this, mostly somehow relating to numbers, just like the ten/twenty seconds of sampling time and the years of things. From there, the article seemed to end abruptly and lacked useful music-focused information for which there are good sources available to cite. I hope that these earnest thoughts and helpful intentions prove to provide some value to someone landing on the article in the course of future edits. Thanks. Vactrol (talk) 01:06, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Is every claim given in the lead also in the article body, and supported by a citation in the article body? Or are some claims (and sources) only in the lead? Popcornfud (talk) 11:35, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Some claims and sources are only in the lead. Vactrol (talk) 15:04, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

OK, let's start by fixing that. The lead should be a summary of the body, so it shouldn't contain any claims that aren't in the body. Which ones aren't in the body? Popcornfud (talk) 16:17, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Every sentence in both paragraphs has one or more. I certainly do not think that the most interesting or important information should be removed. I’m not sure about how one would reiterating everything in the article. Maybe whole sections would need to be added in order to to meet these criteria, for example, to cover background and history. Vactrol (talk) 17:05, 26 August 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not advocating for removing info from the lead (assuming it's all sourced), I'm advocating for adding it all to the article body. Then we can remove the citations from the lead and tidy it up. The lead should summarise the article body.

See the Roland TR-808 article (a featured article) for an example of how this would look. Popcornfud (talk) 17:12, 26 August 2024 (UTC)