Sampling Utrecht With Digitakt

Sunday Synth Jam: Reader Dave Mech shared this video, capturing his sampling walk through Utrecht and subsequent travelogue jam.

Here’s what he has to say about the video:

In this video I take you with me on a trip through a city I love: Utrecht. During the walk I record anything that crosses my path, from screaming children, to sculpture builders, air mascots and what not. I then edit the samples to create an entire techno track from them withing the Elektron Digitakt.

You can use any sample to create music. That’s why it’s so much fun to record your own. Enjoy!

The resulting track is available as a free download via Bandcamp. He shared the samples as a free download also.

18 thoughts on “Sampling Utrecht With Digitakt

    1. Dave,
      I had the opportunity to study in Utrecht for several weeks during the summer after my second year of college. Living in an apartment and walking the streets made me feel fully alive, and I’ve returned to those memories frequently as I’ve gotten older. Your video was like a shot of adrenaline; it instantly placed me back in my favorite places: in front of the Dom tower, inside the cathedral, and inside the small Greek food stand where I would get sausages and chat with the proprietors. These memories have many embedded sounds–small dogs barking, people chatting on cafe terraces, feet shuffling through the gravel. Thank you so much for your work with this project and for reminding me of a very important time in my life. I avidly look forward to more of your work. Cheers.

  1. Nice work Dave! Utrecht is a busy city, with lots of noises in a huge variety (thinking water, trains, voetbal, people, hulpdiensten etc). So you may have some future work there, and hope you’ll share it.

    Just thought you, and maybe some other readers out there, would like to be informed that Tobor Experiment (Giorgio Sancristoforo) did something similar a few years ago in Milano, but then resulting in a 1 hour ambient journey. In the exhibition it was possible to click on the Milano map, and then hear the samples recorded at that location.
    A similar thing is now possible with Freesound, which lets you add geographical tags to samples that you upload.

  2. Hi JD,

    Lovely to see such a beautifully detailed post on how the video got you back to those memories. Glad it did and I’m glad you enjoyed it so much. Utrecht is a city that is close to my heart. I grew up in a town near Utrecht so it’s not surprising I feel so at home here, but apart from that it’s just a beautiful little city with very friendly down-to-earth atmosphere. The small inner gardens spread across the old inner city are a delight to walk through in the summer. I hope to do a video next year where I go through these little gems and record some subtle sounds.

    Again thank you for your beautifully written reply, I sincerely enjoyed reading such a positive memory triggered by my video 🙂

    Take care

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