Music

Aphex Twin Launches Free “Sample Mashing” App, an Idea Decades In the Making

Music Critic

Sep 27, 2022 • 4 years ago • 2 min read • 103 views

Aphex Twin Launches Free “Sample Mashing” App, an Idea Decades In the Making

Aphex Twin's Samplebrain is free, open-source and available to try now.

Aphex Twin's secret sauce is certainly difficult to decode, but the fabled electronic music producer is shedding a light on his creative process with the development of a new creative production app, Samplebrain.

The free, open source software effectively turns any given sample into a neural network of possibilities. Aphex Twin teamed up with Dave Griffiths on the app's engineering.

A statement by Aphex Twin via Warp Records outlays Samplebrain's possibilities.

"What if you could reconstruct source audio from a selection of other mp3's / audio on your computer?" he said. "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."

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Intriguingly, Aphex Twin's idea of feeding programmatic software one sample to generate another has been on his mind for nearly 20 years, according to Pitchfork.

The advent of Shazam particularly piqued his interest, as he saw in it the possibility to revolutionize music creation with their core technology. Unfortunately, the creators of Shazam did not earnestly share the same vision. So Aphex Twin has since taken matters into his own hands.

Music producers can now delve into the full Samplebrain app via Gitlab.