It’s been a little while since I’ve done an Akai s950 post, but never fear, I had some time to fire mine up yesterday and run some recently acquired vinyl through it! Just like in the last post I did back at the bitter end of August, I’m going to go ahead and post 7 different samples here that span a wide gamut of music. There’s a couple of funk loop here, a beatbox loop from a b-side off an obscure 45, some baltimore club and some battle breaks. All in 12-bit monophonic glory.

Just like the last time, and similar to how I plan to move forward with these posts, not only are the original WAV files included, but also a REX version, each individual hit (sliced in ReCycle), and a fully contained Ableton Live set (compatible with version 8) that has the loop sliced to a MIDI channel.

If you are ever interested in getting serious with the s950 and are looking to interface it with an Emu SP-1200 drum machine (easily one of the most desirable pieces of vintage gear for hip hop and rap musicians), check out this video below by producer DXA. It’s pretty clear from watching this that he knows this machine inside and out and he offers up some helpful tips with achieving an efficient workflow with two legendary pieces of hardware!

 

And without further ado, here are your samples:
s950 :: Florida Break 02
s950 :: Baltimore Club Break 03
s950 :: Beatbox 01
s950 :: Funk Break 01 (includes a version timestretched to 200%)
s950 :: Funk Break 02
s950 :: Bongo Break 04
s950 :: Hip Hop Drums 01