[LAU] Strange aiff files

[Brent Busby]

On Tue, 3 Nov 2009, Paul Coccoli wrote:

> So are you going to release that sample set or what?!

I suppose I could..  It's really nothing anyone couldn't do with some 
good mics and a sampler.  Right now it's online at:

 	http://www.keycorner.org/pub/midi/mpc/

It's not everything in that directory, just the files that end in 
.tar.bz2.  They're about 50MB each.  If you extract those, you end up 
with raw disk images that you can 'dd' onto zip disks, which can be read 
by an MPC2000 with a SCSI zip drive.  Of course the sndfile-info and 
sndfile-convert commands offer the possibility of loopback-mounting them 
as FAT, and then renaming each file according to the real long filename 
stored in its metadata, too.  After that you could convert to WAV and 
use however you like without an Akai.

These files are in this crude format because all they're meant to do is 
provide backups for me when zip disks fail.  I haven't done anything to 
make them particularly easy to use at this point.  Also, I once had the 
Alesis HR16:A and HR16:B drum machine pair, and since those machines 
really offer nothing in the way of sound programming besides detuning, I 
sampled and sold them a long time ago.  Those were the kind of drum 
machines that did not amount to more than the samples in their ROMs.

As for the drums themselves, they're nothing special, other than their 
nostalgic value to me.  The main reason I wanted them in the form of a 
sample set is because, looking at all the sample libraries that I'd ever 
seen, the market was filled with techno drums, studio drums, processed 
drums, hiphop drums, even country drums...but no drums drums.  I got 
sick of all the processing and special EQ in these sample libraries, 
which may or may not actually go with the song you're working on.  It 
seemed absurd that nobody ever seemed to simply offer a drumset, miced, 
unprocessed, and not EQ'ed, as a sample library.  That kind of sound 
treatment is the kind of thing you probably want to do yourself on your 
own mixer for the song you happen to be working on.  (And it's quite 
useful in an apartment!)

So if you're interested, go ahead and download, and please try to 
remember, it's my residential cable connection.  The things in my /pub 
directory are offered for whoever may find an interest in the 
non-private files I've got laying around anyway.

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ UNIX Systems Admin	 +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
+ Physical Sciences Div. +  Shakespeare.  Now, thanks to the Internet,
+ James Franck Institute +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky