A sampling of older and non-film related musical endeavors

Birth of a Nation - Tommy Udo

This was the first song I wrote after purchasing my first real sampler (an E-mu ESI-32) in 1997. Originally, it was a practice piece to learn how far I could get with just a sampler, a Mac Quadra 800, and an early version of Cubase.

Recording to hard drive was out of the question at the time, so everything was loaded into the ESI-32’s memory – a whopping 32MB, fully loaded – and played back via midi. Mixed through a Mackie 16-channel board, the results were tepid. There were just too many little parts in the song that I needed a little more control over to make it work. As a result, I shelved it.

A few years later, the piece came out of retirement to serve the same purpose with my newly purchased Pro Tools Digi-001 system. All the parts were recorded into a new Mac G4 and mixed within ProTools. I added a guitar part for kicks, but eventually got bored with it and moved onto other projects.

Recently, I decided to dust it off once again and see what I could do with it. There was always plenty of ear candy, but some judicious editing and mixing now makes it all work. The next step will probably be a surround mix…

Ian D. Thomas - drums, guitar, keyboards & samples