“Sampling: the technique of digitally encoding music or sound and reusing it as part of a composition or recording.” – Google. This is the definition but it has received so many other societal implications depending on your social circle. For conservatory musicians it can be met with distain for people who have so little creativity that they are forced to rip off other’s ideas. For producers of hip hop it is the very essence of their music; a corner stone to their art form and creative process that forces them to hear music a fundamentally different way. Conservatory musicians might here a piece of music and think about the harmony or virtuosity of the musicians playing, while a sampling musician is listening for the timbres, the rhythms, and instrumental breaks with one question in mind: “can I sample this?”
Sampling as an art form many would say started in the 1980s with the MPC 60; a machine that could record audio onto 12 preset, touch-sensitive pads, that revolutionized beat production in hip hop. (See
for more info) While I would agree that for hip hop this is certainly true, I would disagree with it being the beginning of sampling. Since the beginning of recorded history there has always been an element of sampling and recycling material. How else would we develop our theories if there was not some level of commonality between pieces of music. This might seem like I’m thinking to macro in my take on sampling. A more concrete example of sampling in classical music would be Bela Bartok, who literally had a recording devise which he used to record different folk musics from around the world to later use for inspiration for his own works. (If your curious about Bartok field recordings check this out!)
How is this not sampling? When talking about sampling, Mark Ronson (Producer of Uptown Funk) said that “In music, we take something we love and we build on it.” Does this quote not apply to all music, not just sampled music? So why then is sampling prerecorded music bad?
I think many would argue that it is one thing to play the notes someone else played, it is another to claim someone else’s work is your own. While that argument does have merit it is assuming that by sampling you mean taking someone’s complete work and projecting it as your own, which is not the case with sampling of hip hop music generally speaking. It is actually a highly creative process, which takes parts of a musical excerpt and reinterprets them into a new piece of music that is separate from yet related to the piece that was sampled. Mark Ronson put’s it like this “You have to take an element of those things and bring something fresh and new to it.” Most sampling is viewed as a way of paying homage to the music that you like best, similar to a jazz musician quoting lines from his favorite soloist to show respect for the tradition. In jazz this is viewed as a cornerstone for being steeped in the tradition, improvisors spend hours transcribing their favorite soloist with the goal of sounding like them. And yet many, esp. older, jazz musicians don’t see how J Dilla sampling his favorite soul records and reinventing them, is the same thing with a different instrument. (If you’re asking yourself, who is J Dilla? How did he sample soul music? check this out! )
To sum up, sampling exist, it has been around for decades and should be respected in the art community. It is ridiculous to me that the Grammy’s won’t let a song that has prerecorded samples in it even be considered for song of the year. To my musician friends, take a look in the mirror, it’s not that your bad too, it’s that sampling is always good*. *Granted the original artist receives credit and compensation for their work.
Lastly I will say, if you are interested in sampling, check out whosampled.com it has great resources to see what your favorite artist sampled to create your favorite beats!
Sources in text: How Sampling Transformed Music – Mark Ronson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3TF-hI7zK
Netflix – Hip-Hop Evolution
Ross- The Rest is Just Noise, Chapter 3.
Suggested Listening: Deltron 3030 (self titled)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6YJjkO7F5A
Madvillain- Madvillainy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWY22Blwouc
J Dilla – Donuts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nO7IA1DeeI&list=PL9dk_xtWpAkKXxzv_TfLWmlJj6G3quWQ2
Hi Blake
I really enjoyed your presentation of the history of sampling and the accompanying technology. I was alway curious how these early hip-hop artists tackled the technical aspect of sampling before modern programs such as cubase.
However I kinda have to disagree with you about what is and is not sampling. By the way this is not a value judgment and sampling and beat making is an art just as nuanced and complex as jazz improvisation and classical music. That being said, what Bela Bartok in his works with folk music was not sampling. He went out and immersed himself in this folk idiom and then was able to compose classical works out of these melodies. Its not that hip-hop artists don’t take elements from other musical genera and make them their own, because they defiantly do that. And what they do is creative and really hip but they don’t necessarily adsorb the idiom in which they sample. For example Madvillain probably isn’t one with Bill Evans’ melodic and harmonic language in the same way that Bill Dobbins has after listening and transcribing him for decades. Once again I am not making a value judgment here, I just believe that in this class we have a tendency to expand definitions until those words don’t mean anything. Everything is a technology. I believe transcription and sampling are distinct entities with distinct goals. For the transcriber, the goal is to know the music in question so thoroughly that it becomes part of him and that he can draw upon this knowledge later. For the Hip Hop artist the goal is to take these musical elements and create something new and expressive via recombination, alteration, curation and other processes I’m probably not even aware of.
In conclusion, Blake, this article was sick and I learned something new about sampling.