Aphex Twin Launches "Sample Mashing App"

Samplebrain uses the font Comic Sans in its interface

BY Alex HudsonPublished Sep 26, 2022

Aphex Twin has launched his own "sample mashing app" Samplebrain was created with Dave Griffiths and it's available for free now.

In a statement through Warp Records, Aphex Twin (a.k.a. Richard James) explained that he had the idea for the app around 2002, around the time Shazam launched.

He explained the concept for the app like this: "What if you could reconstruct source audio from a selection of other mp3's/audio on your computer? What if you could build a 303 riff from only acapellas or bubbling mud sounds? What if you could sing a silly tune and rebuild it from classical music files?"

See the full statement below, and give the app a whirl right here. The interface uses Comic Sans font.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A post shared by Warp Records (@warprecords)


This idea came about a long time ago, not sure exactly when, 2002 ish, but when mp3's started to become a thing, when for the first time there were a ton of them sitting on my hard drive and the brilliant Shazam had recently launched.

Started thinking hmm all this music sitting there, maybe it can be used for something else other than just playing or dj'ing [hi Atomixmp3 & rudimentary max/msp patches]. I had originally contacted the founders of Shazam to discuss further creative uses of their genius idea but they were busy making an automatic dj program, I still think Shazam could be re-purposed for something incredible but in the meantime we have Samplebrain.

What if you could reconstruct source audio from a selection of other mp3's/audio on your computer? What if you could build a 303 riff from only acapellas or bubbling mud sounds? What if you could sing a silly tune and rebuild it from classical music files?

You can do this with Samplebrain. We soon realised after Dave had started to get things going that with a few cheaty sliders you could actually re-make anything from just one source file, so the options are all there to play with.

Since funding this project I seemed to have found very little time to explore it properly and the time has now come to let you lot have a fiddle with it too.

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