Samplers

Commonly regarded merely as exercise in "marking" for linens, embroidered samplers might better be considered as escritoires containing a wealth of personal, social and economic information about their makers and their milieus. This paper argues that samplers may be used to located historical cultural changes in the underlying discursive practices affecting the lives of young women. Based on typology, I identify three distinct sampler genres as linked to the historical periods of antiquity through the late Middle Ages, the early Renaissance to the late 16th century, and the 17th to the 19th centuries. This paper concentrates on the last period, examining New England colonial samplers to illustrate their value as visual rhetorical documents that reflect both the underlying Puritan cultural emphasis on universal literacy and the feminine cultural discourse of the period. In the process, I suggest that New England women achieved near-universal situational literacy by 1775, further supporting this contention with evidence from statutes, the book industry, and the rise of women's academies. From a child's first lettering sampler to the complex academy samplers that touted the virtues of Republican motherhood, samplers acted to shape a girl's group identity even as she wrought her own personality into her work. Consequently, I conclude that: (i) as often ubiquitous items of girls' lives, samplers and other embroideries should be regarded as historical documents that are uniquely reflective of cultural mores; and (ii) the methodology for so doing requires a more precise categorization of embroideries according to their discursive functions.

Se a música brasileira em muitas de suas manifestações é reconhecida pela sua excelência, o mesmo não se pode dizer dos instrumentos musicais produzidos em território nacional. Mas a partir dos anos 1960, uma série de protótipos de sintetizadores, theremins, um sampler digital, baterias eletrônicas e vários outros instrumentos musicais surgiram como fruto do trabalho de pessoas interessadas na sua construção e desenvolvimento, mesmo que por um curto período de tempo. Além deles, fabricantes como a Giannini se associaram a empresas estrangeiras num momento onde a globalização ainda era incipiente, num cenário de proteção alfandegária e intensa transformação tecnológica que vinha trazendo o aparelho digital como próximo avanço - e próximo passo a um investimento imenso.  A presente pesquisa busca descrever e refletir sobre algumas dessas histórias, mostrando como a tecnologia sozinha não determina os rumos do desenvolvimento técnico e musical.

In this paper we present a revised and improved version of a recently proposed extended source-filter model for sound synthesis, transformation and hybridization of harmonic instruments. This extension focuses mainly on the application for impulsively excited instruments like piano or guitar, but also improves synthesis results for continuously driven instruments including their hybrids. This technique comprises an extensive analysis of an instruments sound database, followed by the estimation of a generalized instrument model reflecting timbre variations according to selected control parameters. Such an instrument model allows for natural sounding transformations and expressive control of instrument sounds regarding its control parameters.

Sewing samplers function as useful heuristic tools recording a woman’s needlework repertoire, and as texts that allow women to compose and publish their thoughts for friends, family, and visitors to read. In 1848, at the age of fifty-four, Patty Bartlett Sessions (1795-1892), one of the earliest converts to the Mormon church, completed her sewing sampler. Most women finished their samplers while teenagers; Sessions’ case is noteworthy because she packed her unfinished sampler away when she married at seventeen, carried it through seven moves from Maine to the Utah Territory, and completed it in her middle age. Through the symbolic images on her embroidery, Sessions articulates her personality and critiques her problematic polygamous marriage. In this essay, I use the Sessions’ sampler to argue that samplers are discursive texts open to multiple interpretations, and that, as in Sessions’ case of an unhappy but committed domestic life, they enabled circumspect female self-expression.

O presente trabalho objetivou, através da ótica musical focada na utilização das ferramentas
de cunho mais prático, a criação de um banco de sons digitais de samplers de uma viola caipira para
o seu uso através do protocolo MIDI.
Nele é descrito o processo de gravação, edição e organização do material musical da viola
caipira e sua transformação para o uso em um ambiente digital.
O trabalho também contempla uma breve contextualização histórica da evolução fonográfica
que possibilitou o advento do instrumento virtual, uma explanação sobre as características do
instrumento que foi escolhido e sua origem, por final uma explicação dos processos digitais que
envolve a criação do sampler.
Na era dos microcomputadores inúmeras tarefas são feitas em um mesmo ambiente, o digital.
A gravação e o instrumento agora se encontram em um mundo sem barreiras físicas, as quais se
tornavam um problema devido a tamanho, capacidade de armazenamento entre outros, se
interpolam de tal modo que o encontramos todos juntos, ferramentas para gravação, edição do som
e os instrumentos virtuais em um único software. O mundo virtual quebra barreiras e soluciona
problemas a cada passo que a ciência dá.

The authors are solely responsible for the content of this technical presentation. The technical presentation does not necessarily reflect the official position of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE), and its printing and distribution does not constitute an endorsement of views which may be expressed. Technical presentations are not subject to the formal peer review process by ASAE editorial committees; therefore, they are not to be presented as refereed publications. Citation of this work should

At the crossroads of sounds of the past and the future. The adoption of synthesizers into Finnish rock and pop in the 1970's and 1980's. (Article in Finnish only)

Abstract in English

In Finnish popular music, the adoption of electronic musical instruments, such as synthesizers, drum machines, sequencers, samplers, computers and musical software progressed slowly and was a complicated process until the early 1990's. Compared with Swedish, German and British pop and rock the electronic instruments remained longer in the margins of rock and pop rock. Regardless of the breakthrough of synths and drum machines in certain styles, such as progressive rock, funk and disco, synth pop and hip hop, the majority of Finnish bands and artists shunned synthesizers until the mid-1980's. Only after the waves of hip hop, house, techno and euro dance in the late 1980's and early 1990's, synthesizers were widely accepted as ‘normal’ and equal rock instruments.

In this article, I focus on the adoption of music technology among Finnish rock and pop musicians of the 1970's and 1980's. I have interviewed three electronic musicians from three different generations. Esa Kotilainen (b. 1946), Pekka Tolonen (b.1957) and Tommi Lindell (b.1966) have all witnessed several turns in the emergence of electronic musical instruments. They have also experienced various changes regarding the accessibility and acceptability of synthesizers. In Finland, they are known as the early adopters and intensive users of the musical electronics.

In the first section of the article I ask, when and how electronic musical instruments became more popular in Finland and how they were adopted and used in progressive rock, new wave, synth pop, goth rock and mainstream pop. I also frame an overview on the adoption of synthesizers in Finnish pop and rock. The section also parallels the developments with Finnish schlager (in Finnish: iskelmä) and disco, where synthesizers were intensively used by a handful of composers and producers in the late 1970's and early 1980's. In this section, I primarily utilized published interviews and magazine articles supplemented with a small selection of musical release reviews and synthesizer advertisements.

The next three sections follow my observations and conclusions which primarily stem from the interviews with three above-mentioned musicians. I also utilize some additional interviews with other musicians. I inquired how the interviewees encountered electronic instruments, how they have used their instruments and how the early adoption of synthesizers has contributed to their understanding of sound and music. Furthermore, we discussed on the impact of the electronic instruments on their musicianship, career and the regeneration of their professional image. Regarding the ‘synthesizer turns’ in the history of Finnish pop and rock I invited the interviewees to recall the response displayed by their fellow musicians, producers and the audience.

In the concluding section, I sum up my observations. One of them is that in Finland electronic musical instruments seem to gain in popularity in jumps which coincide not only with international pop trends but also with some major technological developments and the waves of marketing. This is not unexpected by any means, but it makes an interesting case in Finland. While the more advanced and more affordable synthesizers of the period 1980–83 marked the final breakthrough of electronic instruments in Western pop and rock, in Finland only a couple of tens of musicians adopted synthesizers as their primary instruments. Furthermore, in Finland only a handful of fully or almost fully electronic bands emerged in the early 1980's. All of them remained short-lived. Only some of the most popular teeny pop bands of the early and mid-1980's adopted synthesizers as their main keyboards.

The accelerated marketing cycles of synthesizers provoked suspicion among some Finnish musicians; synthesizers could be left aside as novelty gimmicks and earmarks of a momentary trend. One reason for denouncing the ‘synths’ in the 1980's mainstream rock may have been the developing ‘Suomi-rock’ (Finnish rock), a down-to-earth, nationally and locally rooted style which got a heavy dose of influence from Finnish folk and the long tradition of Finnish schlager. One extra reason for a rocker in keeping off synthesizers was the extensive use of electronic musical instruments in Finnish light pop and schlager in the early 1980's. However, in the late 1980's it became audible that synthesizers had survived and were welcomed in the margins of rock, pop and especially within the emerging new styles of electronic dance music.

This, the first book on the topic, book looks at the samplers made by girls in Scotland between  about 1700 and the 1872 setting them in context of their lives and education.  The aspects that differentiate Scottish from samplers made elsewhere in Britain are discussed, the verses and makers identified where possible. Illustrated in colour with examples from public and private collections.  Published 2014 by The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland.