Sampling

Memory as an instrument, and who gets to make a record. Every entry below is filed under the limit that shaped it.

• The Memory Ran Out, So the Break Was Cut Into PiecesTwo and a half seconds holds a fragment, not a performance. The ceiling was set by the price of memory, and it made the recorded bar raw stock.6 min read
• Twelve Bits Was a Price, Not a SoundBit depth as a cost decision that later became an aesthetic. What quantisation actually does to a signal, and why people now pay to reproduce it.5 min read
• A Floppy Per SoundStorage as a working constraint: load times, disk swaps, and how a session was structured around what could be held at once.3 min read
• Tuned by Playback RateEarly samplers pitched by changing playback speed, so pitch and duration moved together. The artefacts that produced, and the techniques built on them.4 min read
• Truncate, Loop, ReverseThree operations that constituted the whole vocabulary for years, and the enormous amount of music made from exactly them.3 min read