For me, I sample from records that I listen to and LIKE/LOVE/RESPECT.
Could be something that I got handed down from my mom's 70s collection. A record I picked up at a yard sale from an old guy that told me a story of how he bought it at a table behind stage of a concert.
And yes, I even use YouTube sometimes to find music that I may have heard in a commercial that attracted my ear - research the group, and go hunt to purchase the vinyl.
I like the notion of making records out of records.
So the recordings I make I like to be made from vinyl that I've collected, listened to, and become attached to. They have some sentiment to the tangible quality of owning that piece of music. I'm intrigued by the tactile feel of handling a record, and the ability to be inventive, perhaps slowing down a hand clap and creating a different snap to it. Or, like
fresh-produce illustrated:
make good hat's from a snare via re-sample
My production is HipHop, based off sampling different musical genres on vinyl. So I'm biased towards that style and the adaptations of it.
Not that I don't like other production techniques.
I
can appreciate the creative aspect of a producer going out and finding some obscure sounds off some "test record", or, for example, De La Soul sampling a French translation vinyl for their "3 Feet High And Rising" album.
That's creative.
Hooking up a video game system into a sampler and pulling 16-bit audio from a cartridge that they used to have to blow into prior to popping in so they could play it.
That's creative.
RZA sampling some foreign martial arts movies off VHS.
That's creative.
Frank Zappa using a kazoo in "Freak Out!".
Creativity.
cartesia posed a question:
do you make beats cos you enjoy making beats, do you make beats because you want someone to revere you for the way you did it?
I think recordings are a success if the methodology of
how the art was made is studied by their fans and used as an ispirational tool to create other music.
Even if the aspects of how the sound came about was already in use prior. A group can "update the formula with the times and everything", to quote the late Guru.
Heck, a slew of people copped 303s and recorded to 4-track tapes based off Madlib's work. And their results are impressive in their own right.
With samples, the music itself already existed, but is manipulated in a new way. Look at the interest Pete Rock gained from his remixes.
It's definitely dope to hear an already used break cut up a new way. Damu the Fudgemunk does this task with excellence in a number of
his tracks.
And beat diggers are always on the hunt:
Went digging today and found this break
That's ill
a.D. that you came across that record. But before you went looking up who used it, you should have just chopped it up and put something together. Doing that in your own context would have naturally resulted in something unique to you.
There is definitely no
one way to produce hip hop.
The progression of music is admireable. I'm inspired by the adaptive styles producers use to influence their sound. And commend the originality in their individual craft.
My apology if I sounded like instruction was given as to a particular way things
should be done. I am no authority. I am as much of an audience as am a purveyor of sound.
There is no denying good music. If it sounds dope, you got to respect it.
But, if a producer chooses to use the method of making a record out of records, I'd respect their efforts more if they were using actual records they used due diligence to hunt down.
Not some batch of
mp3 files archived from the use of others and downloaded into a pirated program.
I'm in agreement with
blavatsky:
I do get sick of ppl wanting everything handed to them ready-to-go in a zip file
