Sampling (music) - Unconventional Sounds

Unconventional Sounds

These are not musical in the conventional sense - that is, neither percussive nor melodic - but which are musically useful for their interesting timbres or emotional associations, in the spirit of musique concrète. Some common examples include sirens and klaxons, locomotive whistles, natural sounds such as whale song, and cooing babies. It is common in theatrical sound design to use this type of sampling to store sound effects that can then be triggered from a musical keyboard or other software. This is very useful for high precision or nonlinear requirements. For example, the English composer Jonathan Harvey sampled a thunderclap for use in his opera, Wagner Dream.

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Famous quotes containing the word sounds:

    While we were thus engaged in the twilight, we heard faintly, from far down the stream, what sounded like two strokes of a woodchopper’s axe, echoing dully through the grim solitude.... When we told Joe of this, he exclaimed, “By George, I’ll bet that was a moose! They make a noise like that.” These sounds affected us strangely, and by their very resemblance to a familiar one, where they probably had so different an origin, enhanced the impression of solitude and wildness.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)