This is a photo of Pierre Schaeffer, the "Godfather of Sampling" with one of those tape machines, the Phonogene (ca 1963):
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And here is a pair of machines, to create feedback:
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This is ‘Etude pathétique’ from Schaeffer's first album, 'Cinq études de bruits' in 1948, the world's first sample-based music:
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWqq__EzyvI
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Compare this with DJ Shadow's legendary 'Endtroducing,' almost 50 years later!
The Updated GRM Player download (below) includes two pdf articles about the INA-GRM development process in French. Here are some of my background notes based on those articles:
BACKGROUND ON GRM PLAYER
A DAW is based on a computer emulation of a recording studio, with musicians, an engineer, etc but GRM Player is inspired by Schaffer's studio at GRM where musicians played with those modded tape recorders and their magical magnetic strips, where one needs to make something first to then hear it, so it is more playful than a DAW. It is intended to be experimental, allow imperfections, and enable discoveries.
GRM Player is sample-based, hosts plugins, but does not use midi. The GUI is rendered by the graphics card, which provides smooth animation and frees the CPU. It is designed for medium and large touch screens placed horizontally, where each user can interact with sounds. Multiple musicians can use the same screen, or be connected remotely.
The audio engine is based on the idea of ‘virtual editing.’ This means multi-channel sound sources are loaded into memory and treated as ‘aliases’. This allows non-destructive editing and mixing, the ability to duplicate sound regions without increasing memory load, and enables other types of flexibility, including infinite undo/redo. You can play several segments of the same loop sound, with a fixed or moving playhead.
Performing multiple simultaneous playings of a single loop, fixed or moving, allows for many sound effects, such as when you play the same or multiple sounds at different speeds or select different lengths of the loop from long to extremely short.
An internal database (in this case a tree structure) in synchrony with the audio engine lets you execute commands (new, cut, copy, paste, duplicate, undo, redo, etc.) without interrupting audio playing. In this new paradigm, editing becomes a game.
On-the-fly resampling adapts to the playing speed, so the slower a sound is played, the more accurately it is resampled. This allows very high quality listening at speeds as low as one-hundredth or one-thousandth.
44 audio formats are supported, sounds can be opened or closed without audible clicks, and with infinite undo/redo. GRM Player can be controlled with OSC and Javascript classes, and link to Max patches.
GUIDELINES FOR LEARNING GRM PLAYER
I helped GRM translate the pdf User Guide from French to English for the first version, but it was not published and instead they added Tooltips in English which are more useful, with only the Online Documentation in French.
Here are some guidelines on ways to learn this program in English:
1. Get the latest GRM Player - Updated 7 December 2023: https://inagrm.com/fr/showcase/news/372/grm-player
2. In the upper right of the Work Area, open the big ? popup and click Show Tooltips. Go through the Tooltips first, because GRM has their own vocabulary and you will need to learn it before Step 4.
3. Open the Tutorial in the GRM Player Goodies folder and mess around with it using the Tooltips.
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4. Click the Help menu, go to Online Documentation, and paste that URL into the main Google Translate page (the 'Websites' option). This gives a pretty good translation of the Documentation, but some GRM terms are translated differently, which is why you need to first read the Tooltips. [ BTW, Google Translate is terrible with the pdf background articles ]
5. Watch Adrien's video on the Introduction page of the Online Documentation. It is in French, but will give you a good feeling for the playful approach of this program in expert hands!
5. Read the rest of the Online Documentation.
I do not provide any tech support and neither do they AFAIK, but I am sharing this just FYI.
Have fun!
