Jump to content
Why become a member? ×

Sampling.. but is it proper music making etc?


Barking Spiders

Recommended Posts

The thread on Radiohead vs Lana del Ray got me thinking about sampling in general and where you peeps stand on this. At one end of the spectrum you've got wholesale unimaginative steals e.g. that krap P Diddy lifting of Every Breath You Take. Even if this was approved by Sting the track shows hip hop at it's least creative and most commercially cynical. On the other hand there are the likes of DJ Shadow and the Bomb Squad (early Public Enemy  and Ice Cube albums) who use samples but in such a way you can't identify the sources. To me this is every bit as creative as putting together tunes using guitars, etc. Others say sampling is still lazy, talent free etc way of making music.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sampling, when done well is hard and very good. It is no less making music than any other way, in our own way we are all sampling the guitar and amp manufacturers products and all the keyboards are sampling something.

I wouldn't really consider it related to the Lana del wossit case, that isn't sampling, that is copying. Although at some level, we all do that a bit too

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good to see differences of opinion. I guess a lot depends on how stuff's being sampled, whether the 'artist' is a crate digger or  just using digital techniques.  Back in them dark days of the 1990s before it all went digital summat like DJ Shadow's Entroducing and The Avalanches Since I Met You were put together using 1,000s of micro samples from largely obscure LPs. Not easy to do well by any stretch, and these albums have been done very well

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Sampling is more than just lifting bars from previous recordings and creatively chopping them up. Sampling is also recording traditional Instruments chromatically, mapping the notes across a keyboard, then playing/recording/painting in those sampled patches. Midi mockups using Samples is big business these days, some of the works are so good that they can make it onto the final product/Film/TV etc, or mixed in with real Instruments in the final mix.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, bazzbass said:

artists that only use samples have no artistic talent, all they are are arrangers of pre-existing music, created by others.

 

not even imho or ymmv !

Using that same 'logic', all Australians are Fosters-swilling, cork-hat-wearing, culture-less surfing loafers. Slightly reductionist, no..? :|

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, PaulWarning said:

isn't sampling a way of copying someone else's idea when you aren't good enough to play it yourself? I copy other people's ideas when songwriting, but at least I play them myself thereby put my on interpretation, style, on it

Reinterpretation is exactly what sampling is too. You take a thing, change the context, and it becomes something new. (Sometimes it's creative and interesting, sometimes it's a load of rip off sh!te).

Same as collage and painting, collage artists make art by cutting up photos and changing the context - most famous example is probably Sgt Peppers album cover, which is an iconic image, even though it's all sampled. Sir Peter Blake at work.

Sgt._Pepper's_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band.jp

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lots of people write original songs, but some have more talent at it and reach a wider audience with their songs than others as a result..

IMO, the same is true of sampling; lots of people do it as a way to create music, but some do it with far more invention, imagination and skill than others and consequently, reach a wider audience.

On a personal note, I think sampling is a totally valid artistic method for creating a new piece of work and is often used in different art forms as a creative tool.. Someone referred to collage for example and the Sgt. Pepper's album sleeve by Peter Blake, which is a great example.

On a musical front, Massive Attack's 'Mezzanine' album from the late 90s has samples on it but is, in my opinion, a stunningly original piece of music.

Just my 2p worth...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Almost always, probably really always, my bass lines are things I have 'sampled', 'recycled', 're-used', 'heard before', 'reinterpreted', etc., and sometimes I don't even know where they came from, but they came from somewhere.

And musicians have always copied, always sampled ... it's only the copying technology changing that allows new forms of sampling.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Anyone who says using samples to create new tracks doesn't take skill and massive amounts of talent are pretty clueless really. 

 

They need to sit down and listen to stuff created by The Bomb Squad, The Dust Brothers, Pop Will Eat Itself,  vast chunks of The Prodigy are manipulated samples. Whether you like it or not it takes a lot of skill to piece together tracks like they do...

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

48 minutes ago, EssentialTension said:

Almost always, probably really always, my bass lines are things I have 'sampled', 'recycled', 're-used', 'heard before', 'reinterpreted', etc., and sometimes I don't even know where they came from, but they came from somewhere.

And musicians have always copied, always sampled ... it's only the copying technology changing that allows new forms of sampling.

We used to do it pre-digital with tape loops. Had an old reel to reel tape recorder on it's back with spliced tape (there's a lost art!!) stretching across the studio around various mic stands. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As far as I'm concerned any piece of equipment that can used to create music is a bona fide musical instrument in it's own right.

There's a fair bit of snobbery about DJ decks, sampling software and the like from 'proper' musicians, but then apparently 'proper' musicians used to look down on electric guitars and keyboards, in the erroneous belief that those instruments somehow did most of the creative work by themselves, with minimal user input.

I suspect that something similar is going on with the newest generation of instruments, but it will pass.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, project_c said:

...Same as collage and painting, collage artists make art by cutting up photos and changing the context - most famous example is probably Sgt Peppers album cover, which is an iconic image, even though it's all sampled. Sir Peter Blake at work.

Sgt._Pepper's_Lonely_Hearts_Club_Band.jp

That album also featured cut-ups of recordings of fairground music, steam calliopes etc. And other ground-breaking tape effects.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Beastie Boys first album,  License to Ill,  samples Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, The Clash, Steve Miller Band, Kool and the Gang, Barry White, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Joan Jetty and the Blackhearts among others and completely changes the style the sampled music. Arguably changed the face of hip hop and is a bona-fide classic in its own right. I'd hope that people who don't like hip hop would agree that The Beastie Boys were not talentless oiks stealing other peoples music. 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Maude said:

The Beastie Boys first album,  License to Ill,  samples Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, AC/DC, The Clash, Steve Miller Band, Kool and the Gang, Barry White, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Joan Jetty and the Blackhearts among others and completely changes the style the sampled music. Arguably changed the face of hip hop and is a bona-fide classic in its own right. I'd hope that people who don't like hip hop would agree that The Beastie Boys were not talentless oiks stealing other peoples music. 

And Led Zeppelin had their own methods for sampling other people's work.

  • Haha 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...