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Seinfeld Bass Sound Revealed.

Even when it is sampled -- specially on a rompler the Korg M1 if would have gone through some form of sample based and FM synthesis. You guys are thinking about the classic Moog subractive synthesis which is oscillator, filter envelope generator to VCA and LFO. The really pure sampled playback usually would be like you getting a mike and recording something like someone laughing and then map that to MIDI event and trigger the playback when you play a note, like a looper pedal. But anything sampled goes through synthesis, your sound waves instead of anlaog oscillators would be PCM samples. He use the the modulation and pitch wheel.

Yes he did not use classic oscillator for the source material sine, square, sawtooth, but wavetable or PCM sample synthesis is still synthesis and he even admitted he used a scope to look at waveforms - Hello! any serious synth guy would have a scope. He is just confusing folks. He did not use a default patch but he manipulated the samples. He talked about phasing summing etc, all of those are synthesis activities.

I'd like to see an actual video interview or maybe a zoom session.

Here is what a sample fretless bass that you can play via keyboard synthesis engine look like. You got LFO, envelope generators, LFOs, filters -- all synthesis tools

upload_2023-7-20_22-8-33.png
 
I can play violin with my bass as a midi controller. If the midi file started out as sampled violin it's violin the audience hears.

Even back in the 90s our keyboard player had a polyphonic keyboard with "sounds".
Dude worked hard. One hand was used to play electric piano. The other was used to be the entire "horn section".
Were those horn samples? Sure sounded like them to me.
The audience heard a horn section.
Ask them!
 
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A lot of people hear “Seinfeld was played on keyboard” and don’t realize that includes samplers too.
Marketing of ROMplers got a whole generation of keyboardist and non-keyboardist alike confused about what a synthesizer really is.
If a keyboard has built in samples, sampling capability, and the ability to synthesize basic waveforms, a lot of people just colloquially say “synth”.
For the general public, IMO, if it has keys and it’s not a piano or an organ then it must be a synth, right? Even if it’s a harpsichord, it’s not, it’s just a weird piano.
“Well this one actually uses short recordings of real things and modifies them to create sounds not possible in…” Average person: Yeah yeah, sounds like a synth to me, and I’VE seen (band with a keyboard player).
Good point. I play a lot of synths, and still generally refer to samplers as 'synths', even though they're technically not.
 
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