David hadn't used a sampler before.
David tried one.
David loved them.
After trying a few samplers online, the power behind its core principle became clear: anything can be an instrument.
Design Process
For this week's assignment on sampling, I decided to take a very experimental approach while combining many new concepts and ideas.
So, no user persona was taken into consideration. This time, I wanted to just explore whats possible with the tools we've been working with.
Ideation and Inspiration
At first, the original idea was to create a "City Scrambler" with a bunch of NYC noises. I liked the idea of doing a field trip around the city, but after using a few samplers online, I simply felt like it might turn out to be a bit bland. Sure, percussive sounds could've been recorded from the subway. However, I decided to try something else.
Thom Yorke is one of favorite musicians simply because how strange his music is. I always admired how his sampled voice sounds, so I decided to try something like that myself..
Development Process
Before starting the real thing, I went over the examples and Tone.js docs and created a few simple scripts to understand how the Event, Part, Sequence and Pattern classes fit together.
Tone.Pattern became the winner and I started to create a Sampler that played some repitched notes over a Pattern arpeggiation.
After that, I started messing with some of the 10+ Tone.Effects available, and by using Tone.Frequency, some nice transpositions were accomplished.
The 5 channels and Samplers were then added and after testing everything together with the graphics, it was time to start recording.
I used a Zoom from the E.R, found a quiet spot and began recording my voice. Oh I forgot to say that I'm a terrible singer...
The result is quite interesting...
Key learnings
Noise or inconsistencies between recordings introduce a whole lot of interesting phenomenons.
Samplers are fun