We are making changes…
Kirsten + Thomas / Dec 11,2024 / 5 Min Read
Big Changes at Inlet: Revamping our libraries, creating emotion-driven sounds, exploring inspiring spaces, and sharing our journey as we reimagine what we want our sample libraries to be.
Silent Zoo Studio in Los Angeles, CA
What’s changing?
Well, kind of everything. If you know Inlet Audio, you know that we love making textural sample libraries. You also know that we love to tell you about the musicians we work with, and we love creating libraries that are designed to blend and bend.
The fundamentals of Inlet are not changing; in fact, we are going to lean into them even more. What does that mean… well…
We believe that simplicity and creativity go hand in hand. This is why we are streamlining visually, rethinking the functionality, and shifting the underlying concept of our instruments—all with the intention of helping you get more out of the sounds we record. These changes are going to be crucial to the places we want to take Inlet and the libraries we want to develop going forward. You will see changes across the board, from our libraries to our website and this new blog. Everything that is changing will allow us to realize our plans for Inlet. So…
Why are we doing all of this?
It is simple, really: we want to make libraries that reflect a specific mood, not just a digital replica of an instrument.
It’s more about what you can do with the sound rather than how it’s supposed to be used. For example, we don’t want to make a harp library just for the sake of digitally recreating a harp. We want to capture sounds with a harpist in an inspiring, dynamic space to create a dreamy, pensive library that happens to be best realized through the harp. We aim to make music in the moment, with a musician who paints the picture of the mood we want to invoke, in a setting that emotionally impacts their playing.
Basically, you aren’t loading a glissando into an orchestral mockup; you’re building a sweeping ambiance to underpin your music. You aren’t adding a harp melody to your score; you’re creating undulating textures that convey the mood you’re going for. We want to prioritize gestures over melodies and textures over chords.
The resulting sound might not always resemble a harp exactly, but that’s kind of the point. It’s designed to support a mood, narrative, concept, or idea by utilizing the sonic qualities of the sound and the mood they project. It’s meant to tie into your music as one element among many.
We feel there’s room to explore this approach to sample libraries and redefine, just a little, where and how they are used.
So, what does that mean for the future?
The future of Inlet will see all the libraries we’ve created so far revamped, alongside a new range of mood-based libraries. Our growing collection of instruments will branch out into different ensembles and backgrounds, continuing to focus on getting the most out of the textural sounds we include.
After founding Inlet in California, we are moving back across the world to Europe, where we (Thomas and Kirsten—the founders) grew up. We’re excited to develop new ways of curating our instruments to truly focus on our mood-based libraries. The spaces we record in will become as important as the musicians we work with. Our time will be spent in a mix of studios and some unexpected places—anywhere that sounds amazing.
What you can expect is a carefully curated selection of libraries with clearly defined emotional use cases. We aren’t aiming to create libraries that are genre-specific but ones that are emotion-specific. With each library we create, the range of moods we explore will grow, offering a fresh take on each mood every time.
“How do I stay up-to-date?”
We want to bring you into our process and take you along to our recording sessions and the incredible places we’ll be exploring. There are two ways to stay up-to-date with everything:
Whenever you want to dive deeper into what we’re up to, check out our blog on our website (here).
If you want to be the first to hear about new libraries and get perks exclusive to email members, sign up here.
We’re so excited about what’s ahead and can’t wait to share it all with you. See you at the relaunch in 2025!
Happy music making,
Kirsten + Thomas
