ABSTRACT
The concluding chapter sums up the main arguments in the book. It explains how the book used empirical evidence to explore how sampling technologies have also been used as musical instruments, editing tools, compositional tools, and social mediators. Rather than make generalisations about the use of digital technologies, the book emphasises the diversity of musical and technological practices using a sample of semi-professional and professional users. Marc Leclair and Todd Edwards both explained the advantages of using software samplers. For Found, an Akai MPC2000 acted as a meta-device: digital sampler, a sequencer, and a studio. The King Creosote case study was about the low-fidelity (or lo-fi) use of sampling technologies and the final case study about Matthew Herbert focused on a user who moves between the boundaries of different socio-musical worlds and treats sampling as high art. The book ends by discussing two themes that emerged during the writing up of its case studies: (i) accidents and (ii) authenticity, and suggests that by following the instruments, designers, users, and sellers of music technologies, we can try and make sense of the socio-technological processes of music making in the twentieth and early twenty-first century.
