Cape Disappointment

Note: This post was written in 2025 and backdated to appear on the day I wrote and published the track.

Since 2020, I’ve made serious investment into sample libraries. It started mostly with orchestral libraries, then started branching into hybrid orchestra or processed orchestra – the kind of stuff you’d hear in a trailer or action film. Bombastic Hans Zimmerish sounds.

Speaking bluntly, I think most of this money hasn’t been a good investment. Unfortunately, few sample companies have customer-focused licensing agreements. It’s rare to get a trial period, and similarly rare to have the ability to resell the product if it doesn’t work for you. Just imagine if you went to buy a car and they told you that you can only look at it and watch the promo video before deciding to buy, and if you do buy it, you can’t sell it to anyone else. That money’s just gone.

Cape Disappointment Ray Toler 4:33

Most industries would die a quick and deserved death if they took that approach, yet we just happily accept it as a fact of life for software. And with each disappointment, the search for that next library that will finally solve the problem intensifies and the process begins anew. I have a tragically short memory and am, ironically, apparently very susceptible to certain types of marketing, even when I’m fully aware that it’s primarily the superficial stuff that I’m falling for.

Diamonds on the Beach

Every so often, though, I find a unicorn: a library¹ that lives up to the hype. It does is exactly what I wanted it to do. Or it doesn’t, but I find that what it does do is also wonderful. Some of my favorite libraries from the past five years have come from a vendor named Slate + Ash. Now, their marketing is a tad pretentious and their UI / UX is borderline psychotic, comprising the worst of modern negative space and minimalism. Am I really supposed to remember what all of these single letters are supposed to do, which panel hides the critical function I need… even basic tasks are clumsy. It’s the opposite of elegant design that stays out of your way. S+A basically create an easter egg hunt with every product. Once you figure a few things out, it’s not so bad, but it never feels natural.²

But the sounds and, more importantly, the inspiration I derive from them make it worth the effort. S+A libraries have been a big part of my sound for the last few years, especially in my ambient and electronic work.

Or Maybe Just Sand

Not every S+A library has been an instant hit for me. While I will sing praises from the mountaintop for Cycles and Choreographs, I’ve been slower to warm to some of their other output. Sometimes, as is the case with Landforms, it’s because I didn’t fully “get” what it was supposed to be when I bought it. Other times, as with the newest library, Spectres, it’s because there’s something missing that I really wish it could do. In the case of Spectres, that’s the ability to bring in my own samples. It’s an amazing sample mangling environment, but they locked it all to the included samples, comprised mostly of sounds from experimental composer and sound designers who I’m supposed to be impressed by³ but have, honestly, never heard of.

Now, that doesn’t mean that the sample library is bad. It is not, and these composers and sound designers have captured some really interesting things. But some of it reminds me of “weird for weird’s sake” stuff, or things I’d expect to find as one of PDQ Bach’s⁴ musical inventions⁵ rather than something I’m supposed to take seriously. I wish that I could import my own samples, but barring some massive surprise, that’s not in the cards.

Or Dust in the Wind

I sound super negative on Spectres and, while I think I have some justification in my disappointment, wanted to force myself to use it. I also haven’t really used Landforms, and that seems a shame because it’s held in high regard by people I hold in high regard.

Well, I have to write something today, so why should it be something that uses these two underutilized tools? Maybe I’ll find that they’re truly diamonds I didn’t understand, or maybe they’ll be the paste glass I fear they might be.

I spent a lot of time exploring factory patches, but never really did any kind of composition until late in the evening. Once I did stop puttering, though, this piece came together quite quickly. It’s also deceptively simple for sounding as full and involved as it does. There are only three patches here, but they do so much that anything more would have made it too cluttered.

I love the lilting quality, as well as the somewhat off-kilter timing and tuning. It actually fits nicely with the “quirky” ethos from the last few days. I think it could legitimately have been one of the Mares,⁶ but I also like that it stands apart. It’s ambient, but more in the Brian Eno sense than the Steve Roach sense.

And if you’re ever in the area, be sure to visit the actual Cape Disappointment, just across the Columbia River from Astoria, Oregon. It’s a truly beautiful place.

Colophon

Instruments & Samples

S+A Spectres and Landforms

Effects, Mixing, & Mastering

FabFilter, Gullfoss

Image Credit: Dave Sizer (CC-BY 2.0)

Notes

1
Or even better, a vendor
2
The power of what these instruments can do, though, is astounding.
3
At least according to the PR
4
Sadly, Peter Schickele, AKA PDQ Bach, died just a few weeks ago on January 16, 2024
5
Such as the tromboon, pastaphone, and left-handed sewer flute.
6
The ambient series I discussed in yesterday’s post.