Spreading a tuned kick sample across a sampler's keys lets you play the kick itself as a melodic bassline

Dynamix II played the TR-808 kick as a melodic bassline by exploiting the EMU SP-1200’s ‘multi-pitch’ function, which spreads one sample across eight keys, each tuned to a different pitch. Loading the 808 kick and enabling multi-pitch let them play the kick at varying pitches to form a bassline rather than just a rhythmic thud, the technique that became a signature of the Miami bass sound. They took the idea of tuning the 808 kick from Sweet T & Jazzy Joyce’s ‘It’s My Beat’. The general procedure transfers to any sampler with pitched playback: sample a low percussive sound, map it chromatically, and play a bass melody with it.

Examples

David Noller: ‘We created the song on an EMU sampling drum machine called the SP1200. It had a function called multi-pitch which, when enabled, would spread a sound across eight keys that you could tune.’ Their track ‘Just Give the DJ a Break’ went gold.

Assessment

Describe, step by step, how to play a kick-drum sample as a melodic bassline using a sampler’s multi-pitch/keymap feature. What made this novel for bass music in the late 1980s?