To me this sounds more like plunderphonics. Samples are too long for microsampling…
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!!!
If you want to microsample, you will need a very tiny sampler.
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Is this micro sampling ?
Perhaps smaller selection of samples but it’s quite old , sounds amazing
In the early 00s it would have been fairly trivial to use a computer for this sort of work. There are earlier examples from John Oswald and Carl Stone which I think were done by manually splicing tape.
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I love that whole Akufen album and also wonder about his process. One of the critical albums missing from Spotify, along with Wally Badarou’s Echoes.
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He was using Fruity Loops (FL Studio), which was particularly well suited for being able to load dozens and dozens of samples info the sequencer.
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Even on a pretty modest home PC you could do intricate multitrack audio edits by the end of the 90s.
As a reference, Sonic Foundry Acid Pro came out in 1998, with realtime time stretching and pitch shifting of loops, on as many audio tracks your computer could handle. I remember working on 12-16 track projects, audio only, at the time.
Cubase VST was launched in 1997, introducing virtual instruments and up to 32 audio tracks at 44.1/16.
P.S. So many memories… https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/steinberg-cubase-vst-v35
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Great interview, he said it all. Thanks for sharing
That Yamaha Pro Mix 01 (in the background) was one of the most brittle, digital sounding things ever… 
Not sure it’s related to the original topic, but I have great fun doing the following:
- Turning on my MPC One and set max recording/sampling time to 1 minute.
- Opening http://ytroulette.com and press Play.
- Press Rec on the MPC.
- Switch thru as many random videos as you want during that minute.
- The random sounds you get are the only samples you’re allowed to use to make a full track.
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…record longer random radio snippets …then load it in a sampler…modulate the playhead position…pretty easy task these days…back then, ooooof, what a piece of truu handcrafting art…
such microsnippetery are not the result of singled out hyperdetailed sample mappings…no worries…such micro snippet magic happens while surfing on a good chunk of l"onger"audio…
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A lot of the stuff in the footnotes to that article and the book it was published in are pretty good - Musical Rhythm in the Age of Digital Reproduction - and tbh most things Anne Danielsen was involved in. I also like Mark Butler’s stuff, especially Playing Something that Runs. Ethan Hein’s blog is more about pop music in general but has a lot of good relevant stuff re drum programming and sampling, picked up a lot of stuff through that, e.g. Philip Tagg. Probably enough there without getting too OT. Re this thread, probably Curtis Roads Microsound is a big one, but I’ve only ever skimmed it and it seems more relevant granular than this exactly.
Obviously enough you learn more about sampling/technique in an hour of actually doing it than you’d get from weeks of reading, but I like trying to pick up ideas from this kind of stuff.
Edit: oh yeah, getting back on topic if you use Ableton/Max, one of the things Dillon Bastan’s Coalescence is good for is chopping long samples into small fragments and arranging them by similarity, can be a short cut for this kind of stuff.
10 minutes
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Nowadays I’d look at concatenative synthesis. That allows way less random, more controlled composition.
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Any other tips aside from Coalescence? Seem to be a lot of new plugins / devices coming out in the past couple of months.
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(Sidenote: Akufen’s Fabric offering is excellent too.)
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I am more interested in it not for the sake of technique learning which is fine if blended in, but I am much more into the cultural, social aspects of such academic works that dive into House music and electronic music in general from that lense. If you ot any suggestions, please share. Thanks again, angry cat.