Sharooz Raoofi is an electronic music artist, producer and entrepreneur. His work has appeared on a variety of record labels such as Modular and Fool's Gold,. [1] Raoofi is the founder of ventures Sample Magic, [2] Audiaire, Attack Magazine and the Principle Pleasure recording studio in Los Angeles. [3]
He has remixed a range of artists including Moby, Robyn and Craig David. [4]
Sharooz has featured in numerous studio based articles, including Future Music magazine's cover, [5] FACT Magazine's In The Studio and T-Mobile's Electronic Beats video series. [6] Under various guises he has written works for motion pictures including the Palme d'Or nominated Rust and Bone [7] and the Netflix series Baby. Sharooz has worked as a sound designer on Roland's TR8-S drum machine, System-8 synthesiser, Steinberg's Cubase software, [8] Korg's Minilogue synthesiser, Microsampler, Gadget iPad app, Electribe and Kronos workstation, programming patches and loops. [9]
Raoofi was a co-founder of the Sounds to Sample website, which was acquired by US based music download company Beatport. [10]
In October 2017, Raoofi performed live for Red Bull Music Academy working on an improvised composition with several vintage synthesisers for a live Facebook stream. [11]
In October 2018, Billboard announced that New York based VC funded startup Splice had purchased Raoofi's Sample Magic venture for an undisclosed sum. [12]
In February 2019, the software synthesiser Zone, developed by Raoofi under the Audiaire brand was awarded Music Tech magazine's Choice Award. [13]
In July 2020, Variety reported that a publishing company founded by Raoofi had been acquired by music company BMG. [14]
Drum and bass is a genre of electronic dance music characterised by fast breakbeats with heavy bass and sub-bass lines, samples, and synthesizers. The genre grew out of the UK's jungle scene in the 1990s.
A digital synthesizer is a synthesizer that uses digital signal processing (DSP) techniques to make musical sounds. This in contrast to older analog synthesizers, which produce music using analog electronics, and samplers, which play back digital recordings of acoustic, electric, or electronic instruments. Some digital synthesizers emulate analog synthesizers; others include sampling capability in addition to digital synthesis.
A drum machine is an electronic musical instrument that creates percussion sounds, drum beats, and patterns. Drum machines may imitate drum kits or other percussion instruments, or produce unique sounds, such as synthesized electronic tones. A drum machine often has pre-programmed beats and patterns for popular genres and styles, such as pop music, rock music, and dance music. Most modern drum machines made in the 2010s and 2020s also allow users to program their own rhythms and beats. Drum machines may create sounds using analog synthesis or play prerecorded samples.
Digital music technology encompasses digital instruments, computers, electronic effects units, software, or digital audio equipment by a performer, composer, sound engineer, DJ, or record producer to produce, perform or record music. The term refers to electronic devices, instruments, computer hardware, and software used in performance, playback, recording, composition, mixing, analysis, and editing of music.
Yellow Magic Orchestra was a Japanese electronic music band formed in Tokyo in 1978 by Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi and Ryuichi Sakamoto. The group is considered influential and innovative in the field of popular electronic music. They were pioneers in their use of synthesizers, samplers, sequencers, drum machines, computers, and digital recording technology, and effectively anticipated the "electropop boom" of the 1980s. They are credited with playing a key role in the development of several electronic genres, including synthpop, J-pop, electro, and techno, while exploring subversive sociopolitical themes throughout their career.
Vincent John Martin, known professionally as Vince Clarke, is an English synth-pop musician and songwriter. Clarke has been the main composer and musician of the band Erasure since its inception in 1985, and was previously the main songwriter for several groups, including Depeche Mode, Yazoo, and the Assembly. In Erasure, he is known for his deadpan and low-key onstage demeanour, often remaining motionless over his keyboard, in sharp contrast to lead vocalist Andy Bell's animated and hyperactive frontman antics.
A sampler is an electronic musical instrument that records and plays back samples. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, sound effects or longer portions of music.
Cubase is a digital audio workstation (DAW) developed by Steinberg for music and MIDI recording, arranging and editing. The first version, which was originally only a MIDI sequencer and ran on the Atari ST computer, was released in 1989. Cut-down versions of Cubase are included with almost all Yamaha audio and MIDI hardware, as well as hardware from other manufacturers. These versions can be upgraded to a more advanced version at a discount.
Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH is a German musical software and hardware company based in Hamburg. It develops music writing, recording, arranging, and editing software, most notably Cubase, Nuendo, and Dorico. It also designs audio and MIDI hardware interfaces, controllers, and iOS/Android music apps including Cubasis. Steinberg created several industry standard music technologies including the Virtual Studio Technology (VST) format for plug-ins and the ASIO protocol. Steinberg has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Yamaha since 2005.
Programming is a form of music production and performance using electronic devices and computer software, such as sequencers and workstations or hardware synthesizers, sampler and sequencers, to generate sounds of musical instruments. These musical sounds are created through the use of music coding languages. There are many music coding languages of varying complexity. Music programming is also frequently used in modern pop and rock music from various regions of the world, and sometimes in jazz and contemporary classical music. It gained popularity in the 1950s and has been emerging ever since.
Logic Pro is a proprietary digital audio workstation (DAW) and MIDI sequencer software application for the macOS platform developed by Apple Inc. It was originally created in the early 1990s as Notator Logic, or Logic, by German software developer C-Lab which later went by Emagic. Apple acquired Emagic in 2002 and renamed Logic to Logic Pro. It was the second most popular DAW – after Ableton Live – according to a survey conducted in 2015.
Technodelic is the fifth studio album by Yellow Magic Orchestra, released in 1981. The album is notable for its experimental approach and heavy use of digital samplers which were not commonly used until the mid-to-late 1980s, resulting in a more minimalist and avant-garde sound compared to their previous work.
Eloy Fernando Fritsch is an electronic musician, keyboard player and main composer of Brazilian progressive rock band Apocalypse. As a solo artist he creates cosmic new-age music.
Hip hop production is the creation of hip hop music in a recording studio. While the term encompasses all aspects of hip hop music creation, including recording the rapping of an MC, a turntablist or DJ providing a beat, playing samples and "scratching" using record players and the creation of a rhythmic backing track, using a drum machine or sequencer, it is most commonly used to refer to recording the instrumental, non-lyrical and non-vocal aspects of hip hop.
A synthesizer is an electronic musical instrument that generates audio signals. Synthesizers typically create sounds by generating waveforms through methods including subtractive synthesis, additive synthesis and frequency modulation synthesis. These sounds may be altered by components such as filters, which cut or boost frequencies; envelopes, which control articulation, or how notes begin and end; and low-frequency oscillators, which modulate parameters such as pitch, volume, or filter characteristics affecting timbre. Synthesizers are typically played with keyboards or controlled by sequencers, software or other instruments and may be synchronized to other equipment via MIDI.
In sound and music, sampling is the reuse of a portion of a sound recording in another recording. Samples may comprise elements such as rhythm, melody, speech, sound effects or longer portions of music, and may be layered, equalized, sped up or slowed down, repitched, looped, or otherwise manipulated. They are usually integrated using electronic music instruments (samplers) or software such as digital audio workstations.
Monotron is the collective name of a series of miniature monophonic analogue synthesisers produced by Korg, a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments. There are three models in the series: the original Monotron, the Monotron Duo and the Monotron Delay. The models share a minimalist set of synthesis components, consisting only of a voltage-controlled oscillator, voltage-controlled filter, a voltage-controlled amplifier and a low-frequency oscillator.
Sample Magic is a pro-audio company with offices in London and Los Angeles.
LucidSamples is independent English record label based in London, UK. The label has been officially established in 2010 by a group of friends, producers and musicians. LucidSamples releases and publishes DJ sample packs/libraries, construction kits, sound effects, patches and other music production tools. All sample packs provided by LucidSamples are Royalty-Free and downloadable from company website. The company focus is on the development of many popular genres for which they publish sounds collections. Lucidsamples is on the KVR Audio Developers List.
A bedroom producer is an amateur musician who creates, performs, and records their music independently using a home studio, often considered a hobbyist opposed to a professional record producer in the recording industry that works in a traditional studio with clients. Typically bedroom producers use accessible digital technology that costs less than the equipment in a professional studio, such as MIDI controller-based instruments and virtual studio technology, to create music for release to the world. While a professional record producer oversees and guides the recording process, often working alongside multiple people such as studio musicians, singers, engineers, mixers, songwriters, arrangers, and orchestrators, a bedroom producer does everything independently: creating the ideas, recording them and processing them for release. Bedroom producers are often self-taught, learning sound design, mixing and music theory by reading music production blogs and watching tutorials on the internet. As bedroom producers depend on the accessibility of music technology, bedroom production has been made easier with advances in home computing power and digital audio workstations (DAW).