GigaStudio Samples

I've been thinking a lot about a new piece of recording equipment that just came in. A friend gave me a computer hard drive full of GigaStudio samples. And when I say full, I mean that a 250 gigabyte hard drive has about 20 GB left, and there's nothing on this drive but samples.

I've been going through the folders today, and I'm just stunned by the sheer number of sounds I now have. Every part of the orchestra that you can imagine. Plus pianos. Organs. Synthesizers. Guitars. Basses. Drums. Percussion. Choral voices. Ambient textures. When I first got it, my first thought was, “My God. There are no limitations”.

One of the main reasons I stopped recording in 1994 and sold all of my equipment was that I realized that I just couldn't do what my ambition reached for. Part of that was recording equipment. I just couldn't afford to make professional quality recordings. And I certainly couldn't do so on the equipment that was available to me.

But another big piece of the puzzle was that I was trying to do orchestral pieces with a Korg M-1. A nice piece of equipment for its time, sure. But I don't think anyone would claim that it had the most realistic orchestral sounds. And there I was trying to record a piece called March of the Ents. That piece is what made me see that what I wanted to do was impossible with the equipment available to me.

Today, over thirteen years later, I realized that very soon March of the Ents will be possible. I don't think there are words that can describe how that makes me feel. There are no limitations.