Sample School (how much do you care about what you sample?)

The Lounge General Discussion
#1

I have a question for the samplers among you. What I’m interested in is how you approach sampling in terms of your investment in what you’re sampling. I’ve heard a couple of different approaches here.

One approach is to choose songs by artists that you know and love because that comes from your story and your music. The benefit here is that this you’ll know that song inside out, and because it comes from your own collection you’ll be putting a lot of yourself and your musical story into it. Another approach is to be less precious about it and sample from anything and anywhere. The benefit here is that your samples might be more diverse potentially, and if you’re less precious about the song you might feel more comfortable twisting it to your needs.

I’d be interested to hear any views on how you think about this. Maybe the answer is “yes” to both, as so often in life, but I wondered if anyone came down on one way of working specifically out of interest.

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#2

I pretty much only sample myself and I wouldn’t say I was particularly precious about it. I might sample some strange noises or snatches of spoken word but never other people’s music. It’s not a moral thing, I just prefer not to.

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#3

I just sample stuff that sounds cool and that’s all there is to it to me.

Not sure why anyone would overthink the process unless it’s for a paid assignment or someone else.

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#4

Turntable, a bunch of vinyles & a sampler, the original way

#5

Just myself playing and drum/synth sounds, I might use some spoken word but no one else’s music.

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#6

it’s not what you sample, it’s how you sample

#7

No real rules for me. I like vinyl, youtube and even splice as well. Good sounds are good sounds. I have been making a lot of my own samples as well which is incredibly fun.

The biggest challenge is finding vocals that fit the track. That’s usually my production bottleneck and takes me the most time to get right. A great vocal sample really can make a house tune.

#8

I sampled a track from the Powerslave Exhumed videogame soundtrack last night. Then today I sampled some guy off a documentary about British synthpop. Really couldn’t care less where a sound comes from, just making music and enjoying the process.

#9

I only sample from Pornhub.

Edit - it takes hours, and hours, and hours, and hours of research to find the perfect clip. I mean sample.

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#10

Ha. Slow clap :clap:

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#11

Care to elaborate?

Please do not elaborate :joy:

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#12

I mainly sample “older” stuff from the 60s, 70s and sometimes 80s. Mostly vinyl. Just because i like the sound of the instruments and the texture of the recording. A bit of noise and crackle sounds great to me. I pitch it up or down, filter it, reverse it, cut it up, loop it, put it through fx boxes… to transform it into something different.
Sampling from movies is cool too.

I don’t like sample download sites. Of course you can get creative stuff out of it but i don’t like the feeling that thousands of other people used the same sample before. I come from the time of digging for rare or weird samples. But that’s just me. I’m not against sample sites. I love what people do with samples, new or old and no matter where these samples come from.

#13

if it’s in the audible range it’s worth sampling not to be confused with Sample Worthy.

#14

I pretty much only sample from my record collection or synth stuff that I recorded myself. I think if you would have asked me back in the day I probably would have told you that it’s somehow breaking some hip-hop rules to use sample services or YouTube. Because tradition, I guess.

While my outlook had changed, my habits really haven’t. But I think that really has more to do with the fact that I already have a large record collection. And I find sampling a physical record to be probably the easiest way to sample. I think about things specially so it’s sometimes easier for me to remember approximately where a record is in my crates than to remember the name of the record to search it online. So it’s just more convenient. If I were starting from scratch, I’d probably approach things differently.

Also, my music will also never be popular. So services like Tracklib are cool in that they streamline the sample clearing process. But it’s completely irrelevant to me since I won’t have any reason to clear anything.

As far as what I like to sample, I gravitate towards R&B from the late 70s and early 80s. There was a cool period where synths had more or less taken over horn sections but drum machines hadn’t come to dominate quite yet. And I find that era really appealing. It doesn’t hurt that this was the kind of music that my parents used to play around the house.

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#15

Yup. I sample more or less what I feel like sampling when I feel like it, no further thought on my part. Usually I sample vocal clips from movies or video games, and drum loops or single hits.

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#16

I sample sounds I make myself, or feild recordings. I’m not invested in any of it. Sampling other peoples music doesnt really interest me.

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#17

Some uses i can think of:

  1. Challenge to make music from an alien/specific source of material.
  2. Ownership when making own sounds, including selling them as patches and to avoid copyright issues.
  3. Proxy way to obtain sounds that user wants even if you don’t own or wanna spend on the actual equipment.
  4. Practical way to slice into chops for pad creation of music.
  5. Full digital synths are also samples “in a way” once recorded. The OSC, LFO and other manipulation parts can also apply even though it works at various stages of the signal chain. Using audio source to modulate as an example.
  6. Samples roxx. Example of Nord sound library to sample and transfer to device - is a great feature set that every modern digital synth should possess.
#18

Sounds very dogmatic to sample from specific artist ans songs.

To quote my cat “when I fits I sits”.

I sample what I feel can be turned into something cool and new.

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This interview with The Field