Rainy Mama Snow Dough
By ineff on February 8, 2026 11:46 pm
Chopping some of my favorite 1923 blues records into as many different genres as I can fit in a week: Bessie Smith on vocals + Fletcher Henderson on keys―both recorded over 100 years ago, now public domain thanks to the Music Modernization Act, Title II.
› M8 Nerd Notes
‹ M8 Nerd Notes
The sampling in this project relies heavily on the M8 firmware 6.5's new "microtiming" (MTT) fx command, which can shift steps forward and backward in ⅛-tick increments. Shifting backward is magic in itself, but the ⅛-tick resolution is a precision-timing godsend—it almost completely replaces previous methods, like manually repositioning samples' playheads with painstakingly dialed-in combinations of STA±SLI.
Even with MTT, there's still a lot of STA/SLI/PIT/FIN munging to re-pitch and fine-tune slices of Ms Smith's vocals and Mr Henderson's Piano. Some instances will be obvious, many won't―if you check out the original recordings from the Library of Congress section below, you'll get an idea of how much sample jankery was involved.
› Library of Congress samples used
‹ Library of Congress samples used
› freesound.org samples used
‹ freesound.org samples used
100% made and mixed on a Dirtywave M8 Tracker. All samples used are in the Public Domain/CC0.