A US. sample collection from a NY 90’s music producer involved in the industry of that era.

How cool is this?  We have here a very legit disk library.  OK it might look scrawled and messy to you, but to samplenerd this collection is as authentic as it gets!

Now, you might think “disks shimisks, so what?!” This isn’t a polished factory library, this is a working collection citing some big hitters…

Ensoniq ASR10, E-MU SP1200, Roland 808, Akai MPC 3000.  To use 80’s Hip Hop parlance, it’s fly.

Unfortunately though the seller didn’t say who they belonged to :/ .

Also, this library embodies completely what I wrote about in the samplenerd article Conserving our history.

We don’t really get that personalised experience when we buy libraries today, as more often than not, they’re downloads, and usually collated rather than hand built.

And Jack Ashford?  Well he is a percussionist who worked in house for Motown Records.  He can be heard on hundreds of their releases.  At 90 he is also the last surviving member of the Funk Brothers.

Perhaps most famous for the tambourine, Jack did however, invent a percussion instrument himself: the Hotel Sheet (!) which consists of a light piece of metal that is snapped back and forth to produce wibbly, wobbly sound waves, reminiscent of a Moog synthesizer. Ashford featured this instrument prominently on his 1977 album “Hotel Sheet,” which includes tracks like “Hotel Sheet” and “Funky Disco Party.”

Give it a try…

I found using physical media in DAW changed how I approached choosing sounds . Its a different methodology. And even though I stated in The Art of the Process I couldn’t work daily using it, this methodology still has its merits.

If you fancy building your own collection – by hand, and writing them to disk it’s still possible! eBay has a whole bunch of USB Floppy Disk drives from newly manufactured to second-hand. Available for MAC and Windows.