Tools for Listening, Research, and Sampling

Check out some great music-related resources from the Internet Archive.

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I love the Internet Archive. The archive first started in 1996 as an effort to archive the internet. Since then, they’ve grown massively in scope and size.

Now the archive boasts 866 billion web pages, 41 million books and texts, 14 million audio recordings, 12.5 million videos (this includes millions of TV news recordings), 4.8 million images, and over 1 million software programs.

I wanted to highlight some stuff for Micro-Chop folks that might be of interest for listening, research, sampling, and general inspiration.

1. Former Kmart employee Mark Davis' collection of Kmart in-store cassette tapes from the early 1990s. These feature an interesting cross-section of muzak, store advertisements, and other goodies.

   

   The original collection was a sample goldmine and it has expanded considerably since it was first uploaded in 2015. Some of you might recognize this collection because of Juicy The Emissary’s excellent Attention Kmart Choppers album from 2017.

2. Another fascinating collection is simply labeled Various Cassette Tapes. It features a juicing tutorial, the original demo from the Foo Fighters' self-titled debut (which was really just Dave Grohl), and a Mario Bros and Twin Peaks tape. All my producers who read Micro-Chop, the Juiceman and Mario/Twin Peaks tapes definitely have samples to run through. You could probably spend a year just going through these two collections and they represent a tiny fraction of the total material on the Internet Archive.

3. There are tons of vinyl rips too, ranging from very well-known and popular to extremely obscure. Here's one interesting collection titled The Vinyl Box with some nice variety.

4. Their archive of music magazines is also remarkable and essential for any avid music fan or music journalist conducting research for a new piece.

5. As if that’s not enough, there’s a collection of audio/gaming/radio/film/TV/etc. magazines to dig through. So many magazines for reading and research.

6. If you want to take a break from all the previously mentioned features and collections and play come vintage coin-operated arcade games, they have those too.

7. One more thing - Super Mario 64 on cassette tape.

Explore, enjoy, and be sure to let me know what you think.

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