this point by dr. sample (made in the mixtape name poll) has gotten me thinking.

as most people here are primarily sample based producers what are your thoughts on this?

i would like to talk about music production and DJing for a bit just to put things in perspective (from my point of view anyway.

first and foremost i am a scratch DJ. ive been interesting in music production (hip-hop) for years before i actually dived into anything.
in my experience with the world of turntablism, even though it hasn't been that long, i have seen so many things change. from the introduction of CDJs and people cussing them out and calling people who use them "fake" DJs, then the introduction of Digital Vinyl Systems (DVS) and more hate due to the fact that DJs can now just trade hard-drives with each other.

before if you're only playing wax you have to build up your collection and you value every piece of music you have. maybe that doesn't give you as much variety as you would have now but it made every DJ different and unique a little. now everybody can have whatever they want and the individualism is gone. to me this is kind of an undecided point as a beat-maker/turntablist i would be weird to go against this.

why you ask?

because beat-makers and DJs are known for wanting to be "one-man bands" and indeed i am like that a little too. i mean i know people in real life who play better keys than me, who are better at drums but i am hessitant to collab with them. not for fear of being over-shadowed but because i want my music to be totally mine. it's weird and yes it's the ego.
lately ive been trying to get out of this frame of mind in regards to creating music with other people but it is difficult because ideas don't always meld.

anyway im getting off track here...

when i first got interested in beat-making i remember visiting forums and reading thread upon thread of hardware vs. software. general consensus was. hardware was for pros and software was for broke fools going nowhere.

that was only a couple of years ago. now things have changed BIG TIME.

i saw a video of a "top" producer (read has produced for big artists, no really this wasn't even a front or anything i just can't remember his name, im undaground fo lyfe yo!! ) and he was sampling from an internet streaming site right into his MPC. that was it "the new way" to sample and this got me thinking.

the future of music.

DIGI releases and the end of a physical format.

for us aspiring artists this is a good thing as we can get our music out there so much easier. ideally if i were to put out music i would print up super limited ammount of CDs and/or wax and release it on download also.

i speak honestly when i say this. if somebody here released a mixtape to buy via paypal i would be a bit wary to buy it. not because i wouldn't trust anybody here but because i don't order online that often (but i know a lot of people do and would have no problem, this is specific to me) but if anybody here upped their beat-tape to iTunes or any digital download store i would cop it in an instant.

in this new world you have to realise that you are constantly competing for peoples attention with your music. you have to compete with EVERYTHING on the internet when people hear your shit. if somebody stumbles upon your music on myspace and likes your songs and if you have a download link to a store they might cop that shit. but if you need to send them out a physical copy CD or something then people may generally lose interest and forget about you.

instant gratification is what the internet is about.


ok ive gone TOTALLY off point here but i hope this is all relevent to my original point.


in this world where the walls of "realness" are literally collapsing what is your stand-point on sampling?

when i first decided i wanted to make beats i thought about it for months messing around on software before i did anything real. to me the software wasn't real so i had no qualms about sampling from any source, it was just practice to me.

but when i got into hardware my view changed. i started to only sample from wax and got into building tracks from wax and synths. i told myself that it was for "sound quality" purposes but i have been doing tests recently. if you rip a song from youtube and play it on loud speakers that shit will sound wack as hell. but if you take the same sample. take a couple of sounds and tweak and work with these sounds you can get them to sound dope.


the sample resources online is crazy and people would be insane not to take advantage of this. ive a couple of crates full of breaks but on my 404 i have 2 CF cards full of drums breaks that i ripped and downloaded from th net. shit i never had and would never get a hold of.


so anyway just wondering what are peoples thoughts on this?

I sample to make music I want to hear, so I'll use any sample source that I hear and think will sound good in a mix. Sounds are just energy vibrating on certain frequencies so it's all how you use it. Pretty simple in my mind, but I see a lot of people conflicted over this same thing. If you don't want to use digital samples or stuff streamed off the net because you think the quality sucks or it has no soul, that's fine. But if you are reluctant to use such sources because you think vinyl/hip hop purists will disapprove then I'd say don't worry about it, some people have a need for approval and acceptance in their personal groups.

this goes back to DJs -the debate about your vinyl being OG copy or using compilation records.
I always try and stay away from sampling from the computer eventhough I have recycled some drums from battle into my beats. So I cant claim I'm perfect

I use whatever I think would fit... it's funny too, because on one hand a lot of people look for grimey and slightly noisy samples and on the other hand they fear or dislike sampling youtube stuff (just to give an example).

Crazy in my opinion, because most YouTube sounds you could sample are pretty clean or at least decent and grimey enough to fit in a production.

I don't own that many records yet, but I'm totally confident that I will continue to sample from just about everywhere as long as it fits my ideas.



I uuhh sort of disagree with that it would take away individualism. I mean, there really are countless ways of flipping a sample and making a beat.

I think our battles here really prove that too as I haven't heard one beat being "too similar" to another yet.

Of course, I'm not talking about the countless amount of clowns out there that try to imitate Timbaland.... and usually fail miserably at it producing yet another unimpressive and incredibly standard beat. You might be talking about exactly that here though and in that case yes I agree. Blame the Fruity Loops generation hahah. Needless to say, I'm really not against software, but dang so much uninspiring sht gets made with FL Studio, that sht ain't even funny no more.



I agree, but sampling with good EQ settings, a nice reverb effect and fiddling with isolator and so on can get you really dope stuff almost straight from youtube.

By the way, if it doesn't sound right coming from loud speakers, that's probably more a mastering issue if the beat itself does sound coherent and nicely merged sound-wise at lower volume.

I agree with using "whatever fits", maybe because I'm not of the generation that grew up buying vinyl, i ended up with a huge CD collection because that's the format I grew up listening to. So I'm all for CDJ's, still seek out rare cd's, still BUY cd's (something that appears to be slowly but surely dying out, but thats a different topic entirely). Anyway, these days guys have huge MP3 collections, etc. because thats the format of the time! The internet has opened up all these new sources, you just don't have to go outside your house to seek them out anymore thats all. Kinda sad, but its all the same damn thing in the end it's all just music, sounds, and so on, isn't it? Sure CD is crappier quality than vinyl, Mp3 is crappier than CD, blah blah blah

I don't worry about the "source" bit at all, I cud care less where the sounds people use in their music come from, but what I do worry about is the whole not- having- to- leave- your- house thing. With the ease and cheapness now of recording ur own stuff, it means there's so much crap being made now by people who are lazy with their creativity. Thats the main problem, nowdays if your stuff is original nobody really gives too much of a shit, so many people seem to be setting out to recreate this bygone music, not bring it forward. You can hear it every day in the charts, u can see it when you go out to see a band at night. It's just a bunch of people playing the same music that was around decades ago, and nobody seems to mind.

Not that I'm perfect, I draw inspiration from all over the place, I listen to music and I think "I wanna sound just like that!" but I also have this thing at the back of my mind "I don't want to sound like anything you've ever heard, I want to blow your mind with the shit I'm producing" And i think that is what's missing from a lot of producers/bands/musicians today. And it's sad because we live in a time when there are more possibilities for making music than ever before.

I sometimes can't even THINK because of the things I could do, even with the stuff I already own, the things I haven't even explored that I have barely even scratched the surface on! Sometimes I don't even know where to START, but I think its important to try and be original and do something that is truly your own in this world of like "retro" posing and "the oldies are the best" mentality, in my opinion people are sleeping on the immense possibilities offered by the technology thats already sitting in front of us. So many people are putting up a front to make up for their complete lack of ideas.

But hey, this could just about be the longest rant ever and I'll bore you no more.

as far as sampling from youtube, dailymotion, etc...
i say catch it before it's gone, at least with live unknown shit and also people just ranting can spice things up.
i admire turntablists, i wish i had the money/time/space to do that. on the other hand, i was watching deep crates two the other day and there were a few artists bashing on those of us who are sample pirates(whatever it is, take it if you need it). this saddens me. twenty-five years ago they were the pioneers and now some of them actin' like we did it first. i still love that era, but times change and so do styles.

I haven't seen Deep Crates 2 yet, but it usually always goes like this; hate on the new generation by older pioneers.

I'm not saying it's better or worse, but it's a bit sad that people complain either way... at least in a way. I mean, those people in deep crates 2 for sure don't really have a right to protest here, especially because they aren't the original creators of the samples we find in 'other places' than they did, right?

By the way, something slightly related; how many of you guys try to 'clear' samples? I'm sure everyone is familiar with the term, but in case someone isn't, it simply means asking permission from the original creator you sampled music from.

I uuhh sort of disagree with that it would take away individualism. I mean, there really are countless ways of flipping a sample and making a beat.

I think our battles here really prove that too as I haven't heard one beat being "too similar" to another yet.

Of course, I'm not talking about the countless amount of clowns out there that try to imitate Timbaland.... and usually fail miserably at it producing yet another unimpressive and incredibly standard beat. You might be talking about exactly that here though and in that case yes I agree. Blame the Fruity Loops generation hahah. Needless to say, I'm really not against software, but dang so much uninspiring sht gets made with FL Studio, that sht ain't even funny no more.

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i get your point but i guess what i mean applies to my own experience in the turntablist/DJ realm.

before you would come across a DJ who had a style of music that they were heavy into. they would have mad records from this genre and their set would obviously show this. this would make them unique, they had a stlye. their record buying would shine through in their performances.

but now with DVSs people can just trade hard-drives.

if i have a dope collection of bossa nova and you have mad 70s funk records then our producing styles and DJ sets would be different. they would show our personality. but now we can just trade our hard-drives with one another and maybe a little bit of the individualism is lost?

i don't know.


im not talking about this forum but im sure a lot of you are aware of other forums and myspace pages where people seem to be making beats just to make beats if you know what i mean.

eg. people on more commericial orientated forums (eg. futureproducers) have a sound that is more mainstream and people tend to talk like it's a business. i know the emphasis on that site is for PRODUCERS as a career but i believe that a lot of kids are looking at producing and going "yeah i can make money doing that" there is not wrong with that thought but as a lover of music i guess i'd like more people to be like "i want to creative cool sounds".


on people giving out to pirates i have mixed feelings too.
im not going to lie i download a lot of material. you can find MAD shit on the internet, from audio clips to old recordings. there is a lot of shit out there but there is also some pure gold.


when i load up something into my sampler im past the point of caring wheter or not it came from wax, CD, tape or the internet. i just want to have fun and make some noise. and i guess that's what it's all about.


the only part of my production where im a "purist" is in scratching. still won't get a DVS or a CDJ. i believe scratching on wax is where it's at and i have records so to use an inferior emulation is kind of pointless.


on getting samples cleared.

i haven't personally but i have looked into it. if you're releasing music commericially but are selling below i think 5,000 then they can't touch you. even if you sell more than that it won't really be a problem unless your moving MASSIVE units and it comes to the attention of the big record companies.

i don't think there is anyone here who can be affording to clear samples as well. as you see with mainstream music (eg. hip-hop) sampling is becoming less common place with players being brought in to re-create the sample. way less hastle. there is also a shift towards more sound-module based music (some people call it more synthy hip-hop although most modern workstations merely are sound-modules with a sequencer and sampler and don't have any synthesis facility). this is the trend at the moment and i don't see it stopping.


for me personally when i use samples i tweak the hell out of them and chop to the maximum. i think dr. sample said here before that when something goes into his sampler he always changes it before it comes out and i think a lot of us work like that.


(PS sorry for my stupidly long rants at the moment )

ditto.
one cool thing about that movie i mentioned is that not all of 'em were negative. one dude said it's evolution or summin' like that. and one dude said that when we get a snippet the whole feel changes and it's not like the original at all. i feel like that's true. i can't remember who said what and that's why i'm not giving names.
i say if your doin' it for fun, the money may come and it may not but who cares. if you get sued for not clearing a sample: BAM you're famous.
just have fun.

I see, very interesting points.

I love to get sued, phuck clearance..

realisticly though if you're moving enough units to get sued then you should just pay the artist. i, by no means, am saying screw the sampled artist. that's how they get paid. i feel respect should be given. i'm just saying that if you sell (at most) 4-5000 songs online and madonna sues you cuz ya threw in her saying lucky star and it was identifiable, then who's gonna look stupid if she sue's somebody who has two kids, a '89 dodge family car, two bedroom house(rented), with 30 grand in college loan debt?

wouldn't she basicly be giving her publicity to the person who enjoyed her music enough to give her added publicity.
cuz when you hear lucky star, you subliminally think 'hey, i remember that song.' thus providing a few more downloads to the madonna link, yeah.

Shit, I'd sample the whole song and just chop it to pieces. That's a great 80's beat, it reminds of stuff like the Goonies when I was a kid.

i get one shot drum sounds from sites offering free kits no loops tho. i feel like dope loop are reserved for crate diggers. the excitement behind finding that shyt is enough to cream yaself silly. mainstream beats are sterile and do involve that "synth" sound mentioned eariler. that really didnt come into affect til 95 or so as more southen and western music overtook the east which dominated sample usage.

ive gotta say this tho...KANYE didnt do shyt!!!! samples are were still popularly used by cats like pete rock large pro, salam remi tons of cats. kanye jus blatantly used billboard bangers...

i do wish that things werent aseasy at times. cuz cats like us work hard @ what we do where as mainstream cats recycle eachother and still get PAID!!!!

a few ppl here have been going nuts to some of my shyt cuz it aint like other cats here. they may not wanna admit it until some else does but when they do i get emails n shyt for request.

[quote="DR.Sample303"]I sample to make music I want to hear, so I'll use any sample source that I hear and think will sound good in a mix. Sounds are just energy vibrating on certain frequencies so it's all how you use it. Pretty simple in my mind, but I see a lot of people conflicted over this same thing. If you don't want to use digital samples or stuff streamed off the net because you think the quality sucks or it has no soul, that's fine. But if you are reluctant to use such sources because you think vinyl/hip hop purists will disapprove then I'd say don't worry about it, some people have a need for approval and acceptance in their personal groups.[/quote]

word... and doesn't it all come down to the end result no matter what the individual used to make the track? is'nt it all about creativity(chopping, sound design, mixing)?