Legendary musician and composer Aphex Twin and engineer Dave Griffiths have launched a new “sample mashing” app known as Samplebrain. The sound design software converts audio files into new sound blocks, which can then be sampled in music or other projects. The concept has been in the works for 20 years after Aphex Twin, aka Richard D. James, “mentioned an idea about something like a giant brain that you could feed samples to… to recreate a new sound you fed it.”
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At the time of ideation, Shazam had just debuted. This got James thinking of “all the music sitting there” that had the potential for “something else other than just playing or dj’ing.” Samplebrain chops samples up into a “brain” of small interconnected sections called blocks. Those blocks then connect into a network by similarity. Aphex Twin further summarized the app’s function in a statement through Warp Records:
“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.”
The tool currently runs on Mac and Windows computers, and is also now free of cost through GitLab. Fair warning, the program does have a bit of a learning curve for novice producers.
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