Commercial electronic musical instrument sample packs

Blackburn, Manuella

Abstract

Sample packs have a role in increasing the accessibility to the sounds of hardware synths and other physical electronic musical instruments.

This practice of curating libraries of sounds for global ends users within music production industries affords availability to instruments/hardware previously out-of-reach for many due to costs, rarity of appearance or operation limitations.

This paper considers the process of curation and reductionism in sample pack creation when deriving a collection of sounds from an electronic musical instrument and explores how sample availability can shape our understanding of instrument capability, and how samples can also direct, guide and influence music making.

The paper is formed while contemplating sample pack creation with the Pete Townsend collection of electronic music instruments and questions how a unique offering from this collection can be established and what this process might entail. The sample packs industry is a saturated marketplace offering beats, synths, instruments, vocals and FXs collections that, in some respects, operate as stand-in, representing their physical, real-world entities/equivalents. The movement from the physical world to the digital realm undergoes a process of selection and fixidity, where preferences over what to retain, discard or elevate have implications end-users and the resultant music.

Citation

Blackburn, M. (2024, September). Commercial electronic musical instrument sample packs. Paper presented at Commercial Electronic Musical Instruments in 21st Century Music, University of West London

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: Commercial Electronic Musical Instruments in 21st Century Music
• Start Date: Sep 9, 2024
• End Date: Sep 10, 2024
• Deposit Date: Jan 27, 2025
• Keywords: sample packs, synthesizers, remediation
• Public URL: https://keele-repository.worktribe.com/output/1052358
• Publisher URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vKd8rvjiHo
• Additional Information: YouTube video available of conference presentation