Unpacking Jazz Sounds Through Flute-isms /w Melanie Charles

Melanie Charles aka D'flower is a multi-talented artist from Brooklyn, New York has teamed up with Splice to create sample pack for the brand new label, Signal Path. Inspired by the sounds of Brooklyn, jazz music, Haitian rhythms and melodies, as well as sampling, Melanie utilizes different instruments and textures to create her unique sound. Splice had the opportunity to sit down with Melanie and talk about her creative process when creating her jazz-inspired, trill flute, sample pack.

I came up as a classical musician, as a flautist, I was singing opera. And slowly but surely, I found myself becoming a producer and sort of people seeking out my sound and the way in which I do things. It's sound of growing up in Brooklyn, New York.

So a lot of the sounds you're going to be hearing is definitely (the) flute. I want to to give people a nice mixture of different textures, different keys, some really cool flute-isms and couple of little stuff that, you know, make me, me!

A flute-ism is like a trill. To me, like, an ism is whatever whatever is very like particular or special about that instrument. So like a trill for the flute, nice swells. You know, all the stuff that you're like, dang I wish I had a flute.

My inspiration behind this pack is from a body of work that I made a few years ago called 'The Girl wit the Green Shoes.' It was really exploratory and dreamy, and I was listening back to it the other day, and I said, you know what? I would love to be able to give people this kind of texture. Also, i'm inspired by my relationship with using Splice. Recently, I've had to do a lot of remixes and produce a lot of stuff. I've been on the road and I've hit a lot of like creative blocks and Splice has been the place where I can go and hear just one little segment of something that really allows my creativity to flow.

Be sure to check out Melanie's pack and tap into her different samples and flute-isms to incorporate into your next track!