Meet Kirsten Evans | Co-Owner of Sample Library Company INLETAUDIO

We had the good fortune of connecting with Kirsten Evans and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Kirsten, every day, we about how much execution matters, but we think ideas matter as well. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Thomas and I met while we were studying composition at university in the UK. Since then we have not only become business partners but also partner, living together in LA! As a composer of music for media you inevitably use a wide variety of music software to create your music and so everyday we are using sample libraries to create sounds for our soundtracks. We both love to use manipulated recorded sounds within our music, and creating sample libraries with the recordings we create makes tis process smooth and far more creative. So, after developing a workflow where creating sample libraries became an integral part of our creativity, Thomas and I decided to share our sample libraries with the world.

Thomas developed his knowledge of creating sample libraries while studying at Columbia College Chicago, and I taught myself to code and create sample libraries while living in Sweden and working for a film music composer. We had a clear understanding of what it meant to create an effective and innovative sample library and knew this knowledge and experience could help us to create better and better libraries for the composer community. But we didn’t simply want to make just any old sample libraries and put them out there simply to try and make a profit. We had observed that often sample library companies will not mention the musicians involved in creating the libraries for a number of reasons. While some of these reasons are perfectly logical, we believe that as the creator of the sample libraries, we should do everything we can to make sure that everyone knows who the musicians are that helped create the sounds that make the sample libraries what they are.

Finally, after developing this ethos, we had our idea! We wanted to make musician-focused, textural sample libraries. We took our idea of showcasing musicians to the next level… today, we offer each musician we work with sizable royalties from the sale of their library, we credit them and display their skills wherever we can, and we create sample libraries that DO NOT aim to replace live musicians in the composition process. We mean to create sample libraries that extend the range of sounds a musician can offer a composer, and we offer composers a wide range of tools within our sample libraries to create something that is completely unique. We record sounds that focus on improvisation and performance to convey the true character of a musician with each individual note we record. The musicians are able to offer extended pallets of sounds to the composers they work with and the composers can bring their music to life through the performances within our sample libraries. Another benefit is that composers know which musician to contact should they need to record a live musician for their tracks.

We hope to continue to support as many musicians as we can and help composers find the sounds they need.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
Simply put, INLETAUDIO is a sample library company. It’s run by two composers, myself and Thomas Eggensberger, and our sample libraries help support the musicians involved in making them. We create textural sample libraries for film , TV and media music composers. The libraries are not your typical sample libraries designed to sound exactly like the live instruments used to create the library, but are extensions of the sounds one player can create for a composer.

We feel that the difference between INLETAUDIO and other sample library companies, creating textural sample libraries, are the details we capture and add to our sounds. On the whole we aim to leave the sounds as they were recorded as much as possible, to preserve the performances the musicians give during their recordings. However, we transform these recordings into our “Shapeshift” sounds; which are creatively manipulated versions of the original recordings that draw on the intricate character of each of the sounds. We spend hours upon hours crafting each individual sound that goes into our libraries. Every sound is assessed and evaluated by both of us. We only ever include sounds that we truly feel could add to someones music, even if that means discarding half of the sounds we spent weeks making. As cheesy as it is to say, we are composers making sounds for other composers and we feel that that is the biggest asset we have. We work with incredible musicians to record incredible sounds, and then we create yet more sounds from these so that the final sample libraries we create sound completely cohesive and can perform multiple functions within a soundtrack.

While all of our instruments follow similar designs to one another, we make improvements to every instrument we create. Every time we make another library, we find a new way to improve the sounds we record; adjust the tone of the recordings, find a new technique to create more emotive “Shapeshift” sounds, and smooth out the designs we have for our interfaces. Our wish for the future is to work with as many musicians as we possibly can to create a vast reaching catalogue of sounds for media music composer. In order to do this we simply need to spread the word about our libraries and our musicians. We want to give composers the chance to work with the amazing sounds of these musicians and to be able to reach out to these musicians directly to collaborate with them on their music. We believe that INLETAUDIO can be a network for composers to work with their favorite musicians and vice versa. So, our next step is to start reaching out to the composer community here in LA and start inviting them to our recording sessions. We are going to run events and get people together to meet our musicians. We’ll be holding concerts and panels to introduce everyone to our musicians and to one another. We want INLETAUDIO to become more than a sample library company, and this is the way to do it.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
If it’s the right season, you have to check out the Hollywood Bowl! We love to sit right at the back, which might be an unpopular opinion, but you get so much space, and it’s super easy to get in and out of the venue. The best part about sitting at the back (and we mean the VERY back) you can see the Hollywood sign while you watch a concert at the Hollywood Bowl… It doesn’t get much better than that!

And for food, well you have to go to Hoy Kay opposite Netflix on Sunset! They have amazing food, lovely and chatty staff and you can see all of Netflix’s Emmys shine through the window while you eat! It’s completely surreal!

The final thing we would always recommend to do would be to get up to a vantage point overlooking the entire city! There are two spots where we really love to do this: Universal City Overlook and the Griffith Observatory! There are tones of great hikes around Griffith park that enable you to see all the way out to the ocean on a clear day, and the view of the valley from the Universal City Overlook is always a great place to gain some perspective and really start to take in just how enormous LA really is.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
For me, I know I have to shout our my co-owner Thomas Eggensberger! It’s not only that Thomas supports me as an individual but that he’s so ready to share his knowledge and experience. As a gifted composer himself, Thomas works on a variety of music for companies such as Warner Chappell Production Music and West One Music Group. He writes in this brilliantly emotional style with nuance, and color in every texture within his music. I believe the his talents at writing music make him a better sample library developer; he knows exactly what type of sounds will be useful when paired together, he knows what a sound might become when it’s creatively modified, and he has such a knowledge of compositional workflows that he can discern the effectiveness of a control or effect within a library instantly which helps to improve the playability of our libraries.

As a company we have to shoutout all of the musicians we have, and are currently working with! Each musician is a fantastic person and fantastic musician. Kayvon Sesar, Hailey Walterman, Brandon Stanley, Marvin McMahon, Altamira Sound with James Riotto and Isobelle Austin deserve more attention than we could ever possibly shine on them! Our eventual goal is to turn every composer using our libraries into a super-fan of each of our musicians. So, we completely recommend checking out all of their work and following them on social media! They all do so much and they are so incredibly talented. Without them we would be nowhere!

Website: https://www.inletaudio.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inletaudio/

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxyoRwkfOjD0zPxkCT5m_FA