Dave Mech Creates Techno By Sampling The Sounds Of London

Join Dave Mech as he uses field recordings in London and Elektron's Digitakt sampler back in the studio to create some unique textures, loops and beats in this video.  

Sampling ambient sounds is a great way to come up with really unique loops, textures and even instruments that nobody else has. The ease and high quality of field recording with modern equipment, and the power of audio editing tools and instruments like Elektron's Digitakt mean that turning sampled sounds into music is easier than it's ever been. In his latest video, Dave Mech visited London and did just this. Here's what he told us about it.

"I went to London and oh my, what an epic city! Definitely going to visit it again sometime. In this video I explore the city to find inspiration and most of all sounds to record. These sounds I use in one of my tracks within my live-set. After the London trip I'll show you via a tutorial just how I use these recorded samples in a track."

As you can see and hear from the video, getting out of the studio to find sounds and then turning them into music using sampling hardware (or software) is both fun and really creative. Check out Dave's channel for more videos, and to learn more about sampling and recording, use the link below to visit the Ask.Audio Academy where you'll find hundreds of video courses to help you sharpen up your production skills.

Hollin Jones was classically trained as a piano player but found the lure of blues and jazz too much to resist. Graduating from bands to composition then production, he relishes the chance to play anything with keys. A sometime lecturer in videographics, music production and photography post production, Hollin has been a freelance w... Read More

Discussion

Papitakt
I have to say this is kind of underwhelming, what's the point of it all? It would be super creative and cool to use the city sounds in a recognizable context and actually make music from that, but when you mangle it until it's something completely different who cares what the source is? Everything that made that a creative choice is gone. Just my two cents.
Actitect
I have to disagree with you on that. I would even consider an approach with keeping the sound recognizable a lot less original, less creative and less technically interesting.

Everybody can record audio and paste it in a sequencer, the result will be funny but more like a curiosity or a collage and not a truly interesting piece of music that stands on its own if you ask me.

While being able to convert these sounds to new ideas takes a lot of effort, time, inspiration and lots of music/audio skills and knowledge, and as a result there is a fully functional end-product, ready to be released and played by deejays all over the world for people to dance on and enjoy.

To me this is sooo much more relevant, cool and interesting!

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