I think something else you havent mentioned is recontextualizing and genre shifting. When i hear DJ Premier's "NY state of mind part 2" it sounds so dark, gritty, and undeniably "new york" But when you listen to the part from the song that was sampled, it sounds like a happy and upbeat little fairy tale song. Its fascinating!
Yeah. You can also say that some samples can be made easily, but when the song has several samples from absolutely different songs it can be difficult to make it sound good altogether. DJ Shadow's Endtroducing.... or the already mentioned NY state of mind as an example, there's just pieces, that would never be together, but producers can merge different eras and genres. Burial's Archangel for instance, R'n'B singer, ambient music from Japanese game and some British dub step drums. And that's beautiful
Sampling also re-birth a lot of forgotten artist careers at the same time introduced new fans . Our parents had some of these artists in their music collection or we learned about them through the sample clearance. It's a fun practice and can be very creative.
Putting different samples together and making it sound like a live recording is what I enjoy most about sampling. It's like creating a new life from segments that weren't made to fit together. It definitely isn't as easy as just looping a single sample and calling it a day 😂
The only people who call it cheap and easy are the people who don't understand it. Like Navie said, for every art form there's the cheap and easy version, and there's also the profound and high skill version. A critic on the outside looking in would most likely be ignorant to the higher levels of the art form
Wasn't hip-hop a genre that started out as the poor mans music? As in, they didn't have expensive equipment, a studio or instruments? Still, they managed to express themselves and used sampling as a bypass. These days, that isn't the case anymore, and you can make quality music for basically free. So, calling the entire genre lazy would be incredibly unjustified. Still, the argument doesn't really hold up these days when it comes to justifying modern artists.
False. Hip Hop already existed before sampling technology. That would also be like saying pop or rock wouldn't exist without sampling since it also utilizes it.
As someone who plays 5 instruments I think I can honestly say that sampling is a very creative way to make new music. Yes….it can be lazy in the WRONG hands but enough creative legends who took it to the next level.
Yeah, the same can be with "instrumental" music, the bass or drums also can be lazy. It's not about the way how to make music, It's about the ones who make it
I think an important thing that people seem to forget is how sampling made music production accessible to so many especially those at the genesis of hip hop. With no traditional music training these “kids” were able to develop a sound and a movement with just their parents vinyls and a beat machine. Not everyone has the musical chops (pun intended) as a Quincy Jones or access to world class orchestras and studios like Abbey Road, yet with so many constraints somehow sampling opened up a wide door of possibilities.
acecsible to anyone lmao? do you know expensive these machines were back in those days? In 2024 we live in a world where that is much more accessible and less expensive
While I am fully sample-based producer with 0 use of any form of midi whatsoever one thing I hate about sampling is how non-challenging it feels sometimes. I avoid both looping and chopping extensively multiple different samples for the very sake of it, that is, to avoid looping. So usually I trash vast majority of my beats ideas and only release those where I feel I flipped things the way where I feel both challenged/accomplished and where I haven't lost essence of the sample that I initially liked in the first place. Then there are cases I may even loop something plain and simple but I may find an idea of looping it classy because no one else would have thought it could have worked, or no one else would dig things like that for sampling. In those cases I look at sampling more as in terms of how deep one is going to dig - which to me sometimes defines the art of sampling even more than very layering, chopping and processing itself. Respect to you, Navie D, what you are committing to beatmaking world is an unironic gift.
Why do you limit yourself?? Get some midi controllers and go nuts. Even if you only want to use samples you will be way more free creatively and have more fun.
I understand coming from the metal/punk scene myself, everything has to be your own riffs and we could never imagine someone taking your art and making it theirs. After years of getting into hip hop, I now understand the art of sampling and how it becomes an original
I think there are levels. Chopping a loop and putting drums behind it is one thing. Chopping parts from all over a song or multiple songs and creating a whole different rhythm with those sounds is completely different and very difficult.
Using a sample can also bring it's context into the new song. I think here it can get very artistic... Kanye West's Yeezus album comes to my mind. Using samples to get into deeper layers of a story 😎👍🏼
@@NavieD I can understand that. I like the samples on Yeezus because they often add depth to the songs... more than only audio. Kanye is very good at telling stories with samples. I respect him a lot for that 😎
I've been playing guitar and writing songs for over 25 years and recently started producing and using chopped samples. A whole new universe of possibilities now opens up to me and I love it. There are musical ideas that I could never explore without using samples, period.
@@paddenstoel95 where did i say that? Ur just putting words in my mouth i didn't say Also u don't even need to know how to play an instrument to make beats anyways😭
People who don't think sampling is an artform probably never really sampled. You can literally take chops from multiple genres of music and make them all fit like they're all supposed to be together.
I think it comes from two different schools. One is the casual listener who recognizes the original sample and think someone just ran it into a machine to remove the vocals. 2. The others are more elitist mindsets whose bread and butter is live instrumentation who looks down on sampling.
@prof3ssor178 It was pretty common in the early days of sampling. Bomb Squad sound was using a bunch of samples to where it became a more unique thing. Early Dre was similar to Bomb Squad productions. That style became more difficult to do because of legal issues though so it kind of went out around the early 90s.
How I view sampling is like making collage art, you take different pieces from different mediums like magazines, brochures etc. and curating it to make a bigger picture, people might find it lazy. Yes you can compile the same exact pictures but no one can recreate the same 1 of 1 collage piece in terms of the angles it is being sticked, the crinkles of certain paper. At the end of the day, it’s all about being tasteful. Ps. sampling is also like a puzzle to me, breaking down sections of a song i like or am interested in, finding its original song which I might have never find before letting me enjoy the best of all music making it diverse in my music catalog
@@RetardsWithSwag That's a good analogy. Also, people reuse chord progressions, drum patterns, themes, etc. all the time in music. With mass exposure today, it's near impossible for any idea to be truly original. Music is no different. Plus, I'ma add if someone doesn't like sampling, stay in their lane of other musics.
without the original artist we couldn’t make our art, so i pay my respect and homage to them too (depending on what you sample). their compositions helps us create ours
A crucial part of the question is how sampling evolved (in Hip Hop) It came from DJing. Grandmaster Flash (and others) began isolating and looping breaks for MCs. Kurtis Blow the first to digital sample a loop with a rap record, he used a Fairlight. Then Marly Marl started chopping samples with his digital delay units triggered with midi. It’s an extension of DJing (playing records)
Awesome video! Fun fact: the drop in System Blower samples Serena William's grunt during a tennis match lol. Also, would love to see you break down some of the production ideas of the new Armand Hammer album (or maybe even some previous albums as well!)
I was thinking about this last week and came up with the fact that for something so hard to do, making it sound right is a mix of, magic, good energy and good luck. It took me 17 to feel like a C grade student. Although sounds are processed and mastered before you use them, doesn't mean you'll make magic. Sampling is like going to a junk yard full of thrown away cars we all once used, and taking parts from selected cars to create a dream car. It can take forever or it can happen overnight. The magic is seeing it come out sounding better than anything you've ever heard prior. The gift is the imperfections becoming Perfect 🌟. The pay of is when people love your work and note you for your contribution to the art 🎨 form. The humility you gain from beats that go wrong is the education you gain for future greatness. Its a love love situation. I am a musician first, but Sampling is my other other instrument. Respect to the Investors, Invention and creators of the art form and technology that gave musicians this special gift. ❤
El-P is one of my favorite producers. What has always struck me about him is that although he heavily uses samples, his beats often have a distinctive sound that I can only pin to him. I highly recommend his Rhythm Roulette episode on TH-cam where he picks 3 records blindfolded and makes a beat by sampling them. It sounds nothing like anything on the records, but is also distinctly El-P
I use to hate sampling because I always wanted to make original music and then I tried to learn piano and that shit was crazy and I ended up being way better at sampling than actually using and instrument, although learning some fundamentals on music theory can NEVER go wrong when creating music even with sampling
@JN-so6wt yea it is much easier that was my point numb nuts and not everyone has daddy as there music teacher so I’m learning this shit straight out the mud but overall I would love to know music theory so I can play “when I was your man” in front of some bad bitches and get some dome
That one Steve Albini interview at the start of the video is very illustrative of why rock ended up stagnating. An inability to incorporate new production techniques and songwriting mechanisms based on new technology, always dismissing new genres or styles of music as "fake" or "lazy", really gets under my skin.
Yeah sampling as we know it came about because poor black kids in the inner cities couldn’t afford most instruments and didn’t have access to traditional music education. I’m sure it was easy for Albini to learn guitar and start bands in his white flight Chicago suburb.
Been talking about this for decades. One of the prime examples that often gets overlooked is scratching; and to take it one step further, scratch music. An entire song can be created using live scratching, where one DJ creates the drums, one plays the bass, one plays the melody, one plays the solo, etc. This can be done live and with the smallest of sound bits being manipulated in real time. Not only does this type of music employ all three elements you speak of in your video (chopping, flipping single notes, flipping contexts), but it also carries the additional requirement of years of musical ability to play it live. Moreover, scratching often manipulates the sound so heavily that the resulting sound is something that CANNOT be created through another medium. The skill barrier is so high that most DJs are never able to create music in this manner. Most of the techniques were created by DJs who had no formal training or blueprint. They created it all by themselves. It would be FAR easier to play traditional music. At the end of the day, its very hard to take people who criticize sample music seriously because 99% of them are playing some tired blues lick on their guitar that we've all heard 1000 times before. They are snobbish about sampling because they are insecure in their own abilities. They have created nothing new, yet they want to criticize an entirely new form of music that sounds vastly different from the music that came before it.
Totally agree, some producer can slice and modify a sample like no one else. Sampling is a way to express yourself and can make a huge difference in your beats. Good work Nave D keep it up!
You're goated for supporting this opinion.I could say the same thing about people who don't make their own drum one shots samples. To be fair. I see samples as one of the most powerful audio resources. More powerful than any VST. They're raw materials to craft from. A lot of people think sampling is just chopping and timewarping but that's the surface level. Good video! Also a few people who take sampling to the next extreme: CamelCaseProject, Brakence, Clarence Clarity, etc
Whenever I hear “Kingdom Come,” I think of how Just Blaze had that beat up on his MySpace page for the longest time (and long before Hov snatched it up) and how ill we all thought it was because he flipped that Rick James sample in such a nasty and unexpected way.
He's cringe af.. Dude literally has about 20 video ideas and just recycles them in different ways with different titles.. I actually cringe a bit when one of his vids pops up in my feed.
I gotta be honest as a kid creating original music was top of the top for me. I also downed folks who sampled. I looked up to Rza,Timbaland,ect and at the time I didnt know they sampled certain things. It pissed me off to know they took from these records but as I got older I began to sample and embrace it. Its nothing like coming up with your own but seems like using samples creates the greatest music.
Why would you get pissed off at the idea of sampling? Music has always taken from other music. To take snippets from a song and turn them into entirely different moods, or feels, or emotions is nothing short of incredible.
As I said I was a kid at the time. My older brother made beats also and it was all original stuff. I also wanted to be the one who created my own sound amd never take from anyone. In the 90s my fav artist used to say dont bite or copy my shit. That saying stuck with me for a long time. So im thinking most the stuff im hearing is original. I found out late that all the stuff i was hearing was sampled so im like damn well maybe I need to start sampling because all the greatest music is sampled.
@@StevieMcC if I had to pick 1 artist it was Method Man but morely loved the Wutang as a whole. They used to talk about people biting. That stuck with me a long time and then when Timbaland came out he was my fav producer and he also said the same about producers biting.
@@StevieMcCbecause most ppl don’t sample properly. Yes sampling is good if u can make it sound unrecognizable or much better. However most new producers just take a sample and mix it a bit and call it fire 🔥
@@kchikweteI was just gonna ask that. Cause one that I use is okay; but it is online & still makes it sound super low quality but I do work with it sometimes
I think the difference maker is whether someone who isn't intimately familiar with the original piece can tell it was used as a sample in the newer work or not. It sounding familiar in some way is not enough to discount the creativity of a musical piece, as there's truly nothing new under the sun. And even if music is discounted creativity because you can easily tell what samples it used, it can still be good and worth making. For instance, there's a few rap songs in the last several years that used video game samples I recognized from RPGs I played as a kid, and I appreciated that some producer made a hip hop version of a song I've always liked, even if they didn't change it significantly enough for me to not recognize the sample. I think it only becomes problematic for the music industry, or annoying for the average listener when a majority of an artists songs (or at least hit singles) feature easily recognizable samples. Then you're basically building your whole catalog and net worth as an artist off other people's work. And if that's the case is it really fair to even call you an artist in the first place? This is how I felt about Puff Daddy beats in the late 90s and early 2000s as an example. Almost all of his singles were only subtly altered original works from decades prior, so it bothered me that his songs were so successful.
As a person that has been sampling for 20 years and is highly advanced at it at this point, the way people downplay the actual skill it takes is pure ignorance... People also seem to not understand how sometimes it's not supposed to be "easy, cheap, or lazy" but to give a certain vibe of the original 💯
@@chokocat9064 Naw what you just said is the bitter boomer outlook of this without even taking computers, DAWs, or quite frankly the last 40 years music evolution into consideration.. If an artist is talented and produces their own music all the time but decides to add a famous vocal or riff to the hook of their song because it's something that personally inspires them as an artist.. would you still be this type of way and call it "theft" without understanding them?.. The artist clearly isn't stealing anything considering we all know where the vocal or riff came from and the fact he perhaps got that sample to sound like an entirely different piece of music while referencing the original with actually more effort and time spent than even the initial riff took to play should be appreciated.. Fact is not only do I and many others sample but also play many different instruments.. it's not like anyone that does this is just a talentless thief that just lazily copies & pastes entire pieces of music and says they played it.. And much of the time I personally sample sounds that aren't even in a song to begin with, which isn't theft in the slightest especially when you engineer the sound yourself instead of some present on your little guitar pedal haha.. I mean isn't it called theft when stealing so many of those riffs that other guitar players made up and have used over the years?.. /s If you think you can just rip off every guitar player that came before you and it not be considered theft then you need some "pure education" son ... See.. we can play that same game too, so ya might wanna know what you're talking about before you try to downplay an actual musical skill set that can be just as advanced or basic as any other musical instrument and compared in exactly the same way 💯
People who samples songs always credit the original song, otherwise there would be lawsuits happening everyday if they didnt, also underground hip hop exists as well.
@@chokocat9064 No IQ is what you have, or you're a very good liar. A famous person gets taken to court because they didn't credit a sample, that means everybody is stealing, very smart person you are. Also rapper's delight was released in 1979, and it is NOT the first rap record, the elements of hip hop have been around for much much longer, listen to some james brown. And sampling has been around for a long time ever heard of musique concrete?
@@chokocat9064this is it. It's has very little to do with the skill itself, but the actual practice of it and most people can't conceptualize their problem into words properly. This is essentially the same problem we just had with ai Art. It scraped the internet for pictures and learned off of them which isn't too dissimilar to raiding your mom and pa' vinyls and made something new out of them. It wasn't the making something new out of them that was the problem. It was the initial unauthorized scraping of the internet to achieve it was the problem. It also sort of reminds me of Grave robbing corpses so you can open them up to learn about the insides for some reason lol. People had a huge problem with that, but we did get something cool out of it. I myself don't have a problem with sampling but I do know where they're coming from and now a days. I don't think sampling actual albums is all that necessary. Every single daw at the moment have ready to go instruments that you can manipulate in anyway you want. The only barrier is musical skill now. Sampling was born out of being to broke to afford actual instruments and well now we can afford the sound of those instruments.
@@TallicaMan1986 "Sampling was born out of being to broke to afford actual instruments" oh boy... There are some sounds that you cannot create easily with instruments and its better to use a sampler. Just the other day I was searching for a metal scraping sound, and I could sit there and waste time trying to recreate it in an instrument, or go to my kitchen and use the sound of sharpening my kitchen knife. Nowadays people that actually knows sampling don't just go and steal someone's music and copy paste it onto their own, we use it to recreate certain sounds without wasting hours of our lives. Also the built-in instruments that come with many DAWs are usually trash and very limited, unless you want to spend hundreds or even thousand to buy premium ones.
theres 2 types of samplers: the "producers" who put a drum beat over something they found of looperman (most drill producers) the producers who use samples to create something new and exciting
Maby its a little easier start making music by sampling as opposed to playing a piano. Just like its probably easier to take a picture than it is to paint a picture. However the painting does not invalidate the picture as an art form as they both bring something unique and valuable to world. What the photographer is to the painter is what the producer is to the instrumentalist.
And, a lot of painters happen to be talented photographers and vice versa. (Prolly mainly has to do with space and rule of thirds and stuff.. it becomes kinda intuitive at that point) And I feel like the same is somewhat true for sampling. I have 100s of hours of music made by now, and most of it is a mix of stuff I've gotten to record live, and sample based stuff. In terms of technical skill, I don't really think about it and play for the sake of living music and art, which I think is the important thing to remember at the end of the day
This is a great take on a polarizing topic. I’m a DJ and have been producing music for 20 years… shout out to Akai. The fact that you showed the difference between just looping a track like MC Hammer and how Blaze flipped the same track is the perfect example of why us Hip Hop heads understand this is an art form that should not be taken lightly. Everyone that says sampling is lazy cannot do what just blaze or Primo or alchemist or Pete rock or myself, DJ Y-Not can do. Great vid!!!!
I think the guy is only familiar with songs were like a melody of one song is used as is on the other song. Sampling can be way more difficult to pull of than writing your own melody (as shown on the video). Even when lifting like a melody verbatim, and adding your own bass, drums, etc, I don't see the problem as long as the original creator agreed and is benefiting. I don't think anyone should be embarrassed 😂
Thanks to Navie D for actually bringing up this topic. Sampling when done right is just like creating new melodies from the same twelve notes we have in music theory, and that is not lazy at all. It's the "cut a piece of music and add drums to it" approach that annoys people.
@@siddhartacrowley8759 i said that and everybody else who know or understand that Flipping a sample is an Art form because it is, and everybody else who also know or understand that just copying and pasting a loop just add some drum around it is not an art form, because is not !!
As someone who started learning to make electronic music roughly a year ago I have been and probably always will be pro-sampling. I don't know a whole lot about hip-hop , but i know it isn't the only genre that makes heavy use of sampling. In fact many early hip-hop tracks would go on to become a source of vocal and breakbeat samples for rave music.
My reason for why I started sampling years ago was mostly because of how cost effective it was to make something sound so unique and yet so professional while giving it a sense of nostalgia to past themes on old records. It was like giving new life to either classics or underground treasures I found at record stores. Not to mention I didn't grow up with money, just like many of the hip hop world hasn't either, hence I wasn't able to have a huge studio with a lot of hardware and software, making sampling records an amazing alternative for a professional take on music production.
I agree 100% that sampling is an art form and can be very creative depending on the individual. I'm a producer that started out many years ago sample when sample was in its infancy and short their after was inspired to create original compositions. Think about it every musical sound is just that a sound. Now let's be the devils advocate taking someone else music and looping it welllllll you get it.
The way I've always seen it is that there are levels to sampling, just as there are levels to melody making. Yes, some sampling is easy, but it's also easy to write a generic chord progression.
@@olivercharles2930art is capable of being bad. In fact, I feel like sampling is better at showing your knowledge of music than any other instrument Anyone can learn a song, but can you express yourself in a way that not only represents you, but also calls back to the history related to what inspired you? This is why sampling is so important. Anyone can play chords, they are cheap, lazy, and easy.
@@olivercharles2930 so is literally everything is you are lazy. Sampling, when you make the choice to not be lazy, is an art form. And even then, you'd be surprised how much amazing art is technically "lazy"
Sampling is intricate, complex and tedious. It requires patience, creativity and the right sample to coexist with all the other elements in a production.
If you make music with just a record player, mixer and an mpc, you naturally cut and arrange samples like this. Really can do anything with the inputs once you add a preamp. It actually looks way more complicated in a daw. It's all about frequency manipulation. Not everyone can afford steve albinis gear but they may have a more consistent ear.
Fr lol Not trying to rag in Steve Albini that much, but yeah lmao Steve Albini would use thousands of dollars of tech for a "raw" sound (irony be like) and a lot of rap and hip-hop was able to accomplish that... By actually being RAW lol I am.not saying his technical accomplishments as an engineer aren't amazing, but I do think he is an example of how a lot of "anti sampling" people are kinda just bitter or stupid about the art form in general lol
Original music is by default better than sampling in my opinion. Learning to play instruments and creating melodies from scratch is more impressive than taking melodies, rearranging them and adding drums any day of the week. Originality holds more weight.
This makes no logical sense lol Sampling is an art form, same as any other. In fact, sampling is extremely musical and complex and comes from a legacy of musical knowledge. Claiming that there is a default to representing our ability to create art is sad. Sampling is also responsible for preserving music that most people would never even try and find. Entire record stores exist because people put in the effort through crate digging Sampling and other forms of music go hand in hand together and that is perfectly fine. Music wouldn't be as accessible either if it wasn't for the technology we can take advantage of now No technical ability will ever surpass our ability to express ourselves as people.
@@MulkeyBlueQuartet a lot of the records that people sample were original records. People aren't learning to play instruments anymore. They take samples and arrange in them in a different order. That's a lot easier to do than to actually play an instrument and create something original. Sampling will NEVER be as respected as making original music. I don't care what anyone says.
The problem to me is really this: Just like most of us would not call a person a good guitarist for knowing how to play smoke on the water riff by deep purple, the same goes for beat makers and other creators. If you use a loop/sample without doing anything to it, then you are at a low level of skill. So to me the whole thing is a skill issue and not if sampling is lazy, cheap and easy.
I feel like it neglects the purpose of artistic expression when it is measured by its laziness or skill Madlin is one of the most revered producers ever, and honestly, most.of his beats are lazy AF but are uniquely his. But what makes his beats unique and amazing is his ability to express himself through the music he finds and listens to. He intentionally makes shit simple, cuz he knows how he can and wants to express himself Sampling is about the love you have for music, and how you choose to express it. "What a day" by madlin that Tyler's the creator rapped over is relatively "uncomplex", but you'd be damned and stupid if you thought it wasn't a beautiful, standalone piece of music. Hell, people used to say impressionism was lazy, and now it's part of our artistic standard.
I would say the sampling in the 90’s and early 2000’s is what made it gold. You couldn’t even tell it was sampled because of the chops and flips. Today’s sampling with just 808’s over the instrumental and interpolating choruses is just a slap in the face. Almost like I could’ve did the song more justice, or this song was popular already so let me just flip it and give it a party vibe. It’s missing the soul of what that sample meant to the artist. The last part was about radio producers and artists btw. That’s what I hear when I happen to turn the radio on
It took me 5 months to find a good song to sample. Plus it is gonna be copyrighted. We have to pay it and find it and also making that sample into an actual rap beat is hell. So no. It is not cheap, lazy and definetly not easy.
I always said sampling is one of those things that can go in either direction. 9 out of ten times, it's transformative and is awesome. I've got a friend who makes beats as a hobby, and we made a beat together. I didn't know how to work equipment, but I picked out sounds and helped make patterns. Electric drum pads are no joke, and in the right hands can make incredible things. He gifted the beat to me for my 20th birthday. We were talking about different burgers and so he dubbed it "Burgers Beat".
Fr lol The optics where so good. Then comparing the value of sampling with AI art is fucking stupid lol 1.) sampling takes art and uses it to express a different point of view 2.) ai is inherently anti sampling, it takes art and generates an image based off an algorithm 3.) if your goal was to convince us of the value of an art form, using AI is not going to sell it to the right people It's ironic that he is very rightfully making the argument that sampling isn't lazy, while actively promoting lazy artwork.
People who make arguments against ACTUAL sampling (not just looping and adding drums) are usually “music snobs” or can’t sample because it’s not easy and they thought it’d be. In other words: 🧂
A lot of producers these days seem to consider, an entire loop, with horns, guitars, and even a vocal lick, a “beat”, when that is a sample. A drum beat, snaps, claps or any percussive instrument, is a beat. A lot of the artists you are featuring here, are artists, and masters of their craft. When you use a sample in a way that is nearly not recognizable, or completely change the sound or feel, that really is art. I totally understand wanting that certain sound you can only get from that record, or the way they recorded back in the day. I love, and still love, listening to a really good dj in a club or on the radio on a Friday or Saturday night mixing all different kinds of music together, that too is an art
All contextual. Sampling can be way more difficult and creative than just playing an instrument imo. It can also be super cheap and easy. That Rick James MC hammer example is great because not only is it just the copy paste method but it was taken from a massive hit that everybody knew from just a few years prior. No "digging" required
@@Nova_Afterglow It's upsetting to see transforming artwork with intent, which is art, compared to a machine which doesn't have any intent at all doing the same on a larger scale without any credit, no skill, no thoughts just data and math. and trying to use an explanation of why one is ethical and artistic for the other
@@lucidattf navi literally shows the difference between the cheap ai art, and the transformative. beyond that tho, he logically shows the link between what ppl like you say about ai art, and what ppl say about sampling. it is very interesting to me how someone can agree with the points he makes on sampling, but disagree when it comes to ai art. you can choose to see ALL ai art as non-transformative and simply ripping off artists in other mediums, or you can see that there are those who are using the tools of ai to create something that is in fact VERY transformative. if you chose the former, you cant get mad when ppl call you lazy and cheap for sampling.
Sampling is not for losers. Otherwise, Kanye West wouldn’t be where he is today that I am convince gosh I just hear so many people sample and they don’t use these techniques that you explain bro that’s why I have a different outlook on it. Oops, I lied again hey, you know lying is an art form, right? Lmao 😜
That goes for people who think of sampling as just looping. While some tracks are indeed just that, there are others that make great use of various techniques, drum programming, live playing in drum parts, sound engineering, arranging, and even using live instrumentation over the sample. Also maniulating the loops, rearranging melodies, mixing different loops into different tracks, some sampled tracks can end up getting involved.
Awesome Content. To answer your final question to us viewers: I believe there should be a new word that separates the effort of copy and pasting a section of a song with a few edits and chopping up a song to create individual sounds that alone isn't a melody directly copied from the sampled song.
I would love to see a video on how the hell you find some of these obscure samples like the sample of a train. Crazy, bruh! I'm a producer (18 years in) and your vids hit for me, bruv! much love
One of my favourite ones is Busdriver's Imaginary places, which is sampled from Bachs Badinerie in B minor. Its absolutely insane how something like was turned into a fire beat.
As Peggy said multiple times "I can't just loop it and leave it". There's an art to sampling and as much as I avoid it I make sure I truly do flip samples into my own shit. I have such a love for microsampling cause that to me is as impressive as coming up with something from scratch
Something else you didnt mention…sure sometimes producers just hear something randomly and say “I wanna sample that” but alot of producers go through countless hours of listening to old records to find samples…and when you can combine 2 or more completely different samples from completely different records and make them sound good…its something special imo…im not a big sampler myself but I have dabbled and I can appriciate it if done well…and yes I feel like it is its own art form
Samples are one thing, especially when you adjust them in some way... Now, using loops in a finished product? That's where I think there needs to be a line drawn.
When an artist does something new and innovative with a sample, that’s art, if you just loop a sample or just use the chorus of a song and the beat AND the melody…
some producers this applies yes, but most are very creative which can’t be distinguished, besides i like hearing throwback samples. just shows recognition of the original song how great it was 😅
Just say, "My record collection is my instrument." I agree with every point you made except the one about sampling possibly being harder than virtuosity on an instrument. Check out Cateen playing Flight of a Bumble Bee at 200 bpm on a toy piano.
the intelligence of sampling to something different makes it superior, i don't like sampling cuz i want to try to be original by myself but the when samplers do something new and fresh (no copies, throwbacks, etc.), its another level.
You can do this to any medium when comparing it. Using art, pixel art could be called easy because there's no drawing and you can just make blocky things. At the same time really good pixel art exists. Now to flip the perspective, you could easily call digital art lazy by pointing at bad mspaint drawings. Anything can be done expertly or lazily
I like Wu Tang Clans samples because a lot of their stuff is not sampled from other songs, it's mostly from Kung Fu Movie sound clips. They also changed up a repetitive buddhist percussion instruments beat and changed it to very melodic. The methods they used to get those samples were not digital copying either. Today it's so easy to just take something from mp3 or any of the newer digitized formats.
Another great fact and video family. Sampling is an actual art and to do it takes a great skill. This will always be the discussion for the world and those who actually do it and do it well gets the credit. Blessings to you family. 💯
![[DRIP] ‘Love, Maybe’ PREVIEW](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/U7hwHp95m1k/mqdefault.jpg)
I spent 10 years learning how to play the train, and now you're telling me these guys just sampled one?
What do you mean “you guys” 😥💅
olloloooo
😂😂😂🤣
😂😂
Holy shit, I never realized they sampled the Skytrain.
I think something else you havent mentioned is recontextualizing and genre shifting. When i hear DJ Premier's "NY state of mind part 2" it sounds so dark, gritty, and undeniably "new york"
But when you listen to the part from the song that was sampled, it sounds like a happy and upbeat little fairy tale song. Its fascinating!
Ooooh good point. That would have been a cool one to add into the video
Havoc's production of Shook Ones has a similar effect. Great point about genre shifting
Yeah. You can also say that some samples can be made easily, but when the song has several samples from absolutely different songs it can be difficult to make it sound good altogether. DJ Shadow's Endtroducing.... or the already mentioned NY state of mind as an example, there's just pieces, that would never be together, but producers can merge different eras and genres. Burial's Archangel for instance, R'n'B singer, ambient music from Japanese game and some British dub step drums. And that's beautiful
Graveyard Productions - Devil shyt
Isley Brothers Highways of my life
A happy peaceful song sampled to a gloomy horror melody
@@eviljesus6111 love that song man great example
Sampling also re-birth a lot of forgotten artist careers at the same time introduced new fans . Our parents had some of these artists in their music collection or we learned about them through the sample clearance. It's a fun practice and can be very creative.
I agree, I probably wouldn’t like as many artists that were from before my time if it weren’t for hip hop.
J Dilla's Don't Cry is the epitome of sampling to me. How each chop was placed so intricately is pure art. 🙏 rip Dilla
fucking facts
Art
you'd love Saint Pepsi's "I Tried" and History H Illa's "Play This For Your Mother"
Do you like Kingdom Hearts Key by Danny brown and Jpegmafia?
fasho bro i was just playing that not long ago as im figuring out my mpc studio mk2
Putting different samples together and making it sound like a live recording is what I enjoy most about sampling. It's like creating a new life from segments that weren't made to fit together. It definitely isn't as easy as just looping a single sample and calling it a day 😂
I totally agree. I use to be a hater, now I'm a believer 😅.
If you like samples that have been put together you definitely need to listen to DJ Screw. He was a master at it.
Whatever you hard to please 😕💅
Its really fukin not .
I hate loop. Lol.
There wouldnt be hip-hop without sampling. To call a whole genre cheap or lazy is wild! Another banger Navie
The only people who call it cheap and easy are the people who don't understand it. Like Navie said, for every art form there's the cheap and easy version, and there's also the profound and high skill version. A critic on the outside looking in would most likely be ignorant to the higher levels of the art form
Thank you spliff gawd
Wasn't hip-hop a genre that started out as the poor mans music?
As in, they didn't have expensive equipment, a studio or instruments?
Still, they managed to express themselves and used sampling as a bypass.
These days, that isn't the case anymore, and you can make quality music for basically free.
So, calling the entire genre lazy would be incredibly unjustified.
Still, the argument doesn't really hold up these days when it comes to justifying modern artists.
Not Just hip hop, EDM as well. Daft Punk, Basement Jaxx and The Chemical Brothers are some of the best samplers I know.
False. Hip Hop already existed before sampling technology. That would also be like saying pop or rock wouldn't exist without sampling since it also utilizes it.
As someone who plays 5 instruments I think I can honestly say that sampling is a very creative way to make new music. Yes….it can be lazy in the WRONG hands but enough creative legends who took it to the next level.
Yeah, the same can be with "instrumental" music, the bass or drums also can be lazy. It's not about the way how to make music, It's about the ones who make it
@@kxkxsjk2facts
@@kxkxsjk2 exactly
I think an important thing that people seem to forget is how sampling made music production accessible to so many especially those at the genesis of hip hop. With no traditional music training these “kids” were able to develop a sound and a movement with just their parents vinyls and a beat machine. Not everyone has the musical chops (pun intended) as a Quincy Jones or access to world class orchestras and studios like Abbey Road, yet with so many constraints somehow sampling opened up a wide door of possibilities.
Exactly!
Now people can buy orchestras on their laptop - sample libraries
acecsible to anyone lmao? do you know expensive these machines were back in those days? In 2024 we live in a world where that is much more accessible and less expensive
Still, the lack of gatekeeping has destroyed the quality and creativity of music
While I am fully sample-based producer with 0 use of any form of midi whatsoever one thing I hate about sampling is how non-challenging it feels sometimes. I avoid both looping and chopping extensively multiple different samples for the very sake of it, that is, to avoid looping. So usually I trash vast majority of my beats ideas and only release those where I feel I flipped things the way where I feel both challenged/accomplished and where I haven't lost essence of the sample that I initially liked in the first place. Then there are cases I may even loop something plain and simple but I may find an idea of looping it classy because no one else would have thought it could have worked, or no one else would dig things like that for sampling. In those cases I look at sampling more as in terms of how deep one is going to dig - which to me sometimes defines the art of sampling even more than very layering, chopping and processing itself.
Respect to you, Navie D, what you are committing to beatmaking world is an unironic gift.
Interesting perspective. A lot of nuance here
Why do you limit yourself?? Get some midi controllers and go nuts. Even if you only want to use samples you will be way more free creatively and have more fun.
Sample producing... What is the point?
I understand coming from the metal/punk scene myself, everything has to be your own riffs and we could never imagine someone taking your art and making it theirs.
After years of getting into hip hop, I now understand the art of sampling and how it becomes an original
I think there are levels. Chopping a loop and putting drums behind it is one thing. Chopping parts from all over a song or multiple songs and creating a whole different rhythm with those sounds is completely different and very difficult.
Or creating multiple different original melodies from the dome and mix it together. I mean there’s an argument for everything.
Using a sample can also bring it's context into the new song. I think here it can get very artistic... Kanye West's Yeezus album comes to my mind. Using samples to get into deeper layers of a story 😎👍🏼
Ayyyy bro i look through your samples from time to time! Good stuff man🔥
hey oleg! funny seeing you here lol
@@user-qh5nm7di2r not bullshit at all
Hm, interesting. When I think sampling, Yeezus doesn't come to mind. But I guess there are a lot of samples on it
@@NavieD I can understand that. I like the samples on Yeezus because they often add depth to the songs... more than only audio. Kanye is very good at telling stories with samples. I respect him a lot for that 😎
I've been playing guitar and writing songs for over 25 years and recently started producing and using chopped samples. A whole new universe of possibilities now opens up to me and I love it. There are musical ideas that I could never explore without using samples, period.
Another 4th one you didn't mention is that finding a song that makes for a good sample is a process in itself that can be a challenge
True, true. I guess it would be hard to find 'evidence' of that though. But you're right, it is an arduous part of the process
No different than trying to find a place to take a great picture
Takes skill to know what works
@@NavieD Yeah it's more of a sidenote than a 4th piece of evidence
Ah yes looking for music is equivalent to learning an instrument, please
@@paddenstoel95 where did i say that? Ur just putting words in my mouth i didn't say
Also u don't even need to know how to play an instrument to make beats anyways😭
People who don't think sampling is an artform probably never really sampled. You can literally take chops from multiple genres of music and make them all fit like they're all supposed to be together.
DR.DRE does that sometimes with his production
@@prof3ssor178tons of legendary rap producers do this alc ye peggy madlib daringer
@@prof3ssor178 every producer does
I think it comes from two different schools.
One is the casual listener who recognizes the original sample and think someone just ran it into a machine to remove the vocals.
2. The others are more elitist mindsets whose bread and butter is live instrumentation who looks down on sampling.
@prof3ssor178
It was pretty common in the early days of sampling. Bomb Squad sound was using a bunch of samples to where it became a more unique thing. Early Dre was similar to Bomb Squad productions. That style became more difficult to do because of legal issues though so it kind of went out around the early 90s.
Sampling is FAR more of an art than 90% of those who play their own 2-3 quantized minor chords and think they're Quincy Jones.
😂😂😂true
now this is pure nonsense
@@stanleyassor3172 What's nonsense?
How I view sampling is like making collage art, you take different pieces from different mediums like magazines, brochures etc. and curating it to make a bigger picture, people might find it lazy. Yes you can compile the same exact pictures but no one can recreate the same 1 of 1 collage piece in terms of the angles it is being sticked, the crinkles of certain paper. At the end of the day, it’s all about being tasteful. Ps. sampling is also like a puzzle to me, breaking down sections of a song i like or am interested in, finding its original song which I might have never find before letting me enjoy the best of all music making it diverse in my music catalog
@@RetardsWithSwag That's a good analogy. Also, people reuse chord progressions, drum patterns, themes, etc. all the time in music. With mass exposure today, it's near impossible for any idea to be truly original. Music is no different. Plus, I'ma add if someone doesn't like sampling, stay in their lane of other musics.
without the original artist we couldn’t make our art, so i pay my respect and homage to them too (depending on what you sample). their compositions helps us create ours
No their compositions are it, you made a version of it, dont get it twisted
@@paddenstoel95thank you! You saved me from saying it ! FOH
@@paddenstoel95the fuck does this even mean? Lol
A crucial part of the question is how sampling evolved (in Hip Hop) It came from DJing. Grandmaster Flash (and others) began isolating and looping breaks for MCs. Kurtis Blow the first to digital sample a loop with a rap record, he used a Fairlight. Then Marly Marl started chopping samples with his digital delay units triggered with midi.
It’s an extension of DJing (playing records)
Awesome video! Fun fact: the drop in System Blower samples Serena William's grunt during a tennis match lol. Also, would love to see you break down some of the production ideas of the new Armand Hammer album (or maybe even some previous albums as well!)
Another awesome sample
It goes so hard, how the fuck did they make that
Havoc proved that sampling is science. The way he created "Shook Ones" & " Survival Of the fittest" is beyond art & creativity.
Also “Hell On Earth”.
The Prodigy & Daft Punk are the ones you refer to when talking about sampling.
first producer and songs I thought of
I was thinking about this last week and came up with the fact that for something so hard to do, making it sound right is a mix of, magic, good energy and good luck. It took me 17 to feel like a C grade student. Although sounds are processed and mastered before you use them, doesn't mean you'll make magic. Sampling is like going to a junk yard full of thrown away cars we all once used, and taking parts from selected cars to create a dream car. It can take forever or it can happen overnight. The magic is seeing it come out sounding better than anything you've ever heard prior. The gift is the imperfections becoming Perfect 🌟. The pay of is when people love your work and note you for your contribution to the art 🎨 form. The humility you gain from beats that go wrong is the education you gain for future greatness. Its a love love situation. I am a musician first, but Sampling is my other other instrument. Respect to the Investors, Invention and creators of the art form and technology that gave musicians this special gift. ❤
El-P is one of my favorite producers. What has always struck me about him is that although he heavily uses samples, his beats often have a distinctive sound that I can only pin to him. I highly recommend his Rhythm Roulette episode on TH-cam where he picks 3 records blindfolded and makes a beat by sampling them. It sounds nothing like anything on the records, but is also distinctly El-P
Thank you for all of your last videos
The value, entertainment and inspiration i get from them is huge
❤
I use to hate sampling because I always wanted to make original music and then I tried to learn piano and that shit was crazy and I ended up being way better at sampling than actually using and instrument, although learning some fundamentals on music theory can NEVER go wrong when creating music even with sampling
@JN-so6wt yea it is much easier that was my point numb nuts and not everyone has daddy as there music teacher so I’m learning this shit straight out the mud but overall I would love to know music theory so I can play “when I was your man” in front of some bad bitches and get some dome
That one Steve Albini interview at the start of the video is very illustrative of why rock ended up stagnating. An inability to incorporate new production techniques and songwriting mechanisms based on new technology, always dismissing new genres or styles of music as "fake" or "lazy", really gets under my skin.
Yeah sampling as we know it came about because poor black kids in the inner cities couldn’t afford most instruments and didn’t have access to traditional music education. I’m sure it was easy for Albini to learn guitar and start bands in his white flight Chicago suburb.
Good job! I’m convinced! I was on the fence, but you really convinced me!
Sampling is essentially the evolution of DJing. Mixing 2 or more existing pieces together. This point is mostly not understood or overlooked.
Been talking about this for decades. One of the prime examples that often gets overlooked is scratching; and to take it one step further, scratch music. An entire song can be created using live scratching, where one DJ creates the drums, one plays the bass, one plays the melody, one plays the solo, etc. This can be done live and with the smallest of sound bits being manipulated in real time. Not only does this type of music employ all three elements you speak of in your video (chopping, flipping single notes, flipping contexts), but it also carries the additional requirement of years of musical ability to play it live. Moreover, scratching often manipulates the sound so heavily that the resulting sound is something that CANNOT be created through another medium. The skill barrier is so high that most DJs are never able to create music in this manner. Most of the techniques were created by DJs who had no formal training or blueprint. They created it all by themselves. It would be FAR easier to play traditional music.
At the end of the day, its very hard to take people who criticize sample music seriously because 99% of them are playing some tired blues lick on their guitar that we've all heard 1000 times before. They are snobbish about sampling because they are insecure in their own abilities. They have created nothing new, yet they want to criticize an entirely new form of music that sounds vastly different from the music that came before it.
Totally agree, some producer can slice and modify a sample like no one else. Sampling is a way to express yourself and can make a huge difference in your beats. Good work Nave D keep it up!
I commented somewhere choose the guitar.. but you do make a great point. And I respect great producers.
You're goated for supporting this opinion.I could say the same thing about people who don't make their own drum one shots samples. To be fair. I see samples as one of the most powerful audio resources. More powerful than any VST. They're raw materials to craft from. A lot of people think sampling is just chopping and timewarping but that's the surface level. Good video!
Also a few people who take sampling to the next extreme: CamelCaseProject, Brakence, Clarence Clarity, etc
It’s not greater than actual synthesis though. Apples and oranges at the end of the day.
Whenever I hear “Kingdom Come,” I think of how Just Blaze had that beat up on his MySpace page for the longest time (and long before Hov snatched it up) and how ill we all thought it was because he flipped that Rick James sample in such a nasty and unexpected way.
careful with these negative thumbnails, busy works beats is gonna come for ya again 😂
😂Busy own them too, remember he also taught both of you.
Hahah that guy still makes videos?
@@idesel i learned reason from boyinaband sir
@@Weaverbeatsr u joking
He's cringe af.. Dude literally has about 20 video ideas and just recycles them in different ways with different titles.. I actually cringe a bit when one of his vids pops up in my feed.
I gotta be honest as a kid creating original music was top of the top for me. I also downed folks who sampled. I looked up to Rza,Timbaland,ect and at the time I didnt know they sampled certain things. It pissed me off to know they took from these records but as I got older I began to sample and embrace it. Its nothing like coming up with your own but seems like using samples creates the greatest music.
Why would you get pissed off at the idea of sampling? Music has always taken from other music. To take snippets from a song and turn them into entirely different moods, or feels, or emotions is nothing short of incredible.
As I said I was a kid at the time. My older brother made beats also and it was all original stuff. I also wanted to be the one who created my own sound amd never take from anyone. In the 90s my fav artist used to say dont bite or copy my shit. That saying stuck with me for a long time. So im thinking most the stuff im hearing is original. I found out late that all the stuff i was hearing was sampled so im like damn well maybe I need to start sampling because all the greatest music is sampled.
@@beataddict5475 Who was your favourite artist of the 90’s?
@@StevieMcC if I had to pick 1 artist it was Method Man but morely loved the Wutang as a whole. They used to talk about people biting. That stuck with me a long time and then when Timbaland came out he was my fav producer and he also said the same about producers biting.
@@StevieMcCbecause most ppl don’t sample properly. Yes sampling is good if u can make it sound unrecognizable or much better. However most new producers just take a sample and mix it a bit and call it fire 🔥
Glad to see the J Dilla Poster not falling off once in the background
Hahah I had to bring back the thumbtacks
lots of love for your dedication navie -love your content keep it up
It's not about just sampling, it's the art to know what and how to create a vibe about 4-8 second of samples
The sample provides THE VIBE …….!!
Loved this video!!!!! never heard the best wording on this topic!!! been a fan for a longg time love💯
Art is like beauty. It's all in one's perception.
I'll tell you one thing, that beard of yours is beautiful
Beauty is universal art is to minus the politics
@@NavieD LOL Thank You Brother
The train sample was dope. The next time you’re starting your gas oven and you hear that TicTic TicTic tick tick. That has been sampled also.
Modern stem seperation allows for futher chopping! You can seriously change the entire song if you're good enough 😉
True. Stem separation is a godsend
What are u using to separate stems?
@@kchikweteI was just gonna ask that.
Cause one that I use is okay; but it is online & still makes it sound super low quality but I do work with it sometimes
@@kchikwete the ones in the video he listed! ripx and serato can be useful if you eliminate the bad sounds around them.
fl studio has it now too
I think the difference maker is whether someone who isn't intimately familiar with the original piece can tell it was used as a sample in the newer work or not. It sounding familiar in some way is not enough to discount the creativity of a musical piece, as there's truly nothing new under the sun. And even if music is discounted creativity because you can easily tell what samples it used, it can still be good and worth making. For instance, there's a few rap songs in the last several years that used video game samples I recognized from RPGs I played as a kid, and I appreciated that some producer made a hip hop version of a song I've always liked, even if they didn't change it significantly enough for me to not recognize the sample.
I think it only becomes problematic for the music industry, or annoying for the average listener when a majority of an artists songs (or at least hit singles) feature easily recognizable samples. Then you're basically building your whole catalog and net worth as an artist off other people's work. And if that's the case is it really fair to even call you an artist in the first place? This is how I felt about Puff Daddy beats in the late 90s and early 2000s as an example. Almost all of his singles were only subtly altered original works from decades prior, so it bothered me that his songs were so successful.
Funny how Hip hop started with sampling
Your videos are always a good watch bro thank you
As a person that has been sampling for 20 years and is highly advanced at it at this point, the way people downplay the actual skill it takes is pure ignorance... People also seem to not understand how sometimes it's not supposed to be "easy, cheap, or lazy" but to give a certain vibe of the original 💯
@@chokocat9064 Naw what you just said is the bitter boomer outlook of this without even taking computers, DAWs, or quite frankly the last 40 years music evolution into consideration.. If an artist is talented and produces their own music all the time but decides to add a famous vocal or riff to the hook of their song because it's something that personally inspires them as an artist.. would you still be this type of way and call it "theft" without understanding them?.. The artist clearly isn't stealing anything considering we all know where the vocal or riff came from and the fact he perhaps got that sample to sound like an entirely different piece of music while referencing the original with actually more effort and time spent than even the initial riff took to play should be appreciated..
Fact is not only do I and many others sample but also play many different instruments.. it's not like anyone that does this is just a talentless thief that just lazily copies & pastes entire pieces of music and says they played it.. And much of the time I personally sample sounds that aren't even in a song to begin with, which isn't theft in the slightest especially when you engineer the sound yourself instead of some present on your little guitar pedal haha.. I mean isn't it called theft when stealing so many of those riffs that other guitar players made up and have used over the years?.. /s If you think you can just rip off every guitar player that came before you and it not be considered theft then you need some "pure education" son ... See.. we can play that same game too, so ya might wanna know what you're talking about before you try to downplay an actual musical skill set that can be just as advanced or basic as any other musical instrument and compared in exactly the same way 💯
People who samples songs always credit the original song, otherwise there would be lawsuits happening everyday if they didnt, also underground hip hop exists as well.
@@chokocat9064 No IQ is what you have, or you're a very good liar. A famous person gets taken to court because they didn't credit a sample, that means everybody is stealing, very smart person you are. Also rapper's delight was released in 1979, and it is NOT the first rap record, the elements of hip hop have been around for much much longer, listen to some james brown. And sampling has been around for a long time ever heard of musique concrete?
@@chokocat9064this is it. It's has very little to do with the skill itself, but the actual practice of it and most people can't conceptualize their problem into words properly.
This is essentially the same problem we just had with ai Art. It scraped the internet for pictures and learned off of them which isn't too dissimilar to raiding your mom and pa' vinyls and made something new out of them. It wasn't the making something new out of them that was the problem. It was the initial unauthorized scraping of the internet to achieve it was the problem.
It also sort of reminds me of Grave robbing corpses so you can open them up to learn about the insides for some reason lol. People had a huge problem with that, but we did get something cool out of it.
I myself don't have a problem with sampling but I do know where they're coming from and now a days. I don't think sampling actual albums is all that necessary. Every single daw at the moment have ready to go instruments that you can manipulate in anyway you want. The only barrier is musical skill now. Sampling was born out of being to broke to afford actual instruments and well now we can afford the sound of those instruments.
@@TallicaMan1986 "Sampling was born out of being to broke to afford actual instruments" oh boy... There are some sounds that you cannot create easily with instruments and its better to use a sampler. Just the other day I was searching for a metal scraping sound, and I could sit there and waste time trying to recreate it in an instrument, or go to my kitchen and use the sound of sharpening my kitchen knife. Nowadays people that actually knows sampling don't just go and steal someone's music and copy paste it onto their own, we use it to recreate certain sounds without wasting hours of our lives.
Also the built-in instruments that come with many DAWs are usually trash and very limited, unless you want to spend hundreds or even thousand to buy premium ones.
theres 2 types of samplers:
the "producers" who put a drum beat over something they found of looperman (most drill producers)
the producers who use samples to create something new and exciting
Maby its a little easier start making music by sampling as opposed to playing a piano. Just like its probably easier to take a picture than it is to paint a picture. However the painting does not invalidate the picture as an art form as they both bring something unique and valuable to world.
What the photographer is to the painter is what the producer is to the instrumentalist.
And, a lot of painters happen to be talented photographers and vice versa. (Prolly mainly has to do with space and rule of thirds and stuff.. it becomes kinda intuitive at that point)
And I feel like the same is somewhat true for sampling.
I have 100s of hours of music made by now, and most of it is a mix of stuff I've gotten to record live, and sample based stuff. In terms of technical skill, I don't really think about it and play for the sake of living music and art, which I think is the important thing to remember at the end of the day
This is a great take on a polarizing topic. I’m a DJ and have been producing music for 20 years… shout out to Akai. The fact that you showed the difference between just looping a track like MC Hammer and how Blaze flipped the same track is the perfect example of why us Hip Hop heads understand this is an art form that should not be taken lightly. Everyone that says sampling is lazy cannot do what just blaze or Primo or alchemist or Pete rock or myself, DJ Y-Not can do. Great vid!!!!
I think the guy is only familiar with songs were like a melody of one song is used as is on the other song. Sampling can be way more difficult to pull of than writing your own melody (as shown on the video). Even when lifting like a melody verbatim, and adding your own bass, drums, etc, I don't see the problem as long as the original creator agreed and is benefiting. I don't think anyone should be embarrassed 😂
Yeah, it's like taking the worst case example and applying it to everything else
Thanks to Navie D for actually bringing up this topic. Sampling when done right is just like creating new melodies from the same twelve notes we have in music theory, and that is not lazy at all. It's the "cut a piece of music and add drums to it" approach that annoys people.
flipping a sample is the actual Art form, but looping a sample is definitely not an Art Form !
Who said that?
Madlib says hello.
@@siddhartacrowley8759 i said that and everybody else who know or understand that Flipping a sample is an Art form because it is, and everybody else who also know or understand that just copying and pasting a loop just add some drum around it is not an art form, because is not !!
@@SLPGroundSoundMusic Why is copy and pasting not an artform? Stop gatekeeping.
@@siddhartacrowley8759 basically looping a loop just to add some drums is call remixing or you can also call it a cover
As someone who started learning to make electronic music roughly a year ago I have been and probably always will be pro-sampling. I don't know a whole lot about hip-hop , but i know it isn't the only genre that makes heavy use of sampling. In fact many early hip-hop tracks would go on to become a source of vocal and breakbeat samples for rave music.
My reason for why I started sampling years ago was mostly because of how cost effective it was to make something sound so unique and yet so professional while giving it a sense of nostalgia to past themes on old records. It was like giving new life to either classics or underground treasures I found at record stores. Not to mention I didn't grow up with money, just like many of the hip hop world hasn't either, hence I wasn't able to have a huge studio with a lot of hardware and software, making sampling records an amazing alternative for a professional take on music production.
I agree 100% that sampling is an art form and can be very creative depending on the individual. I'm a producer that started out many years ago sample when sample was in its infancy and short their after was inspired to create original compositions. Think about it every musical sound is just that a sound. Now let's be the devils advocate taking someone else music and looping it welllllll you get it.
The way I've always seen it is that there are levels to sampling, just as there are levels to melody making. Yes, some sampling is easy, but it's also easy to write a generic chord progression.
Long story short, sampling is art.
@@johnvamvassometimes
@@olivercharles2930art is capable of being bad.
In fact, I feel like sampling is better at showing your knowledge of music than any other instrument
Anyone can learn a song, but can you express yourself in a way that not only represents you, but also calls back to the history related to what inspired you? This is why sampling is so important.
Anyone can play chords, they are cheap, lazy, and easy.
@@MulkeyBlueQuartet sampling is lazy.
@@olivercharles2930 so is literally everything is you are lazy.
Sampling, when you make the choice to not be lazy, is an art form.
And even then, you'd be surprised how much amazing art is technically "lazy"
Sampling is intricate, complex and tedious. It requires patience, creativity and the right sample to coexist with all the other elements in a production.
Real producers learn to code first then make their own DAWs. Not like these cheap producers nowadays that use premade everything
??
@@DoneDeal2right over your head huh
You're special eds if you think that analogy makes sense or was deep
@@Doggo505 right over your head too huh
@@1flashstep yes. Your stupidity boggles my mind
Couldn’t have worded it better myself, you really hit the nail on the head with this one
You didn't convince me.
If you make music with just a record player, mixer and an mpc, you naturally cut and arrange samples like this. Really can do anything with the inputs once you add a preamp. It actually looks way more complicated in a daw. It's all about frequency manipulation. Not everyone can afford steve albinis gear but they may have a more consistent ear.
Fr lol
Not trying to rag in Steve Albini that much, but yeah lmao
Steve Albini would use thousands of dollars of tech for a "raw" sound (irony be like) and a lot of rap and hip-hop was able to accomplish that... By actually being RAW lol
I am.not saying his technical accomplishments as an engineer aren't amazing, but I do think he is an example of how a lot of "anti sampling" people are kinda just bitter or stupid about the art form in general lol
Original music is by default better than sampling in my opinion. Learning to play instruments and creating melodies from scratch is more impressive than taking melodies, rearranging them and adding drums any day of the week. Originality holds more weight.
This makes no logical sense lol
Sampling is an art form, same as any other.
In fact, sampling is extremely musical and complex and comes from a legacy of musical knowledge.
Claiming that there is a default to representing our ability to create art is sad.
Sampling is also responsible for preserving music that most people would never even try and find.
Entire record stores exist because people put in the effort through crate digging
Sampling and other forms of music go hand in hand together and that is perfectly fine.
Music wouldn't be as accessible either if it wasn't for the technology we can take advantage of now
No technical ability will ever surpass our ability to express ourselves as people.
@@MulkeyBlueQuartet a lot of the records that people sample were original records. People aren't learning to play instruments anymore. They take samples and arrange in them in a different order. That's a lot easier to do than to actually play an instrument and create something original. Sampling will NEVER be as respected as making original music. I don't care what anyone says.
It's transformative.I really appreciate what you are doing bro.I learn a lot.
The problem to me is really this: Just like most of us would not call a person a good guitarist for knowing how to play smoke on the water riff by deep purple, the same goes for beat makers and other creators. If you use a loop/sample without doing anything to it, then you are at a low level of skill. So to me the whole thing is a skill issue and not if sampling is lazy, cheap and easy.
I feel like it neglects the purpose of artistic expression when it is measured by its laziness or skill
Madlin is one of the most revered producers ever, and honestly, most.of his beats are lazy AF but are uniquely his. But what makes his beats unique and amazing is his ability to express himself through the music he finds and listens to. He intentionally makes shit simple, cuz he knows how he can and wants to express himself
Sampling is about the love you have for music, and how you choose to express it.
"What a day" by madlin that Tyler's the creator rapped over is relatively "uncomplex", but you'd be damned and stupid if you thought it wasn't a beautiful, standalone piece of music.
Hell, people used to say impressionism was lazy, and now it's part of our artistic standard.
I would say the sampling in the 90’s and early 2000’s is what made it gold. You couldn’t even tell it was sampled because of the chops and flips. Today’s sampling with just 808’s over the instrumental and interpolating choruses is just a slap in the face. Almost like I could’ve did the song more justice, or this song was popular already so let me just flip it and give it a party vibe. It’s missing the soul of what that sample meant to the artist.
The last part was about radio producers and artists btw. That’s what I hear when I happen to turn the radio on
the same lazy stuff was going on back then even dre dre just literalyl tempo changed a song and pitched it u and called ait a day
It took me 5 months to find a good song to sample. Plus it is gonna be copyrighted. We have to pay it and find it and also making that sample into an actual rap beat is hell. So no. It is not cheap, lazy and definetly not easy.
I always said sampling is one of those things that can go in either direction. 9 out of ten times, it's transformative and is awesome. I've got a friend who makes beats as a hobby, and we made a beat together. I didn't know how to work equipment, but I picked out sounds and helped make patterns. Electric drum pads are no joke, and in the right hands can make incredible things. He gifted the beat to me for my 20th birthday. We were talking about different burgers and so he dubbed it "Burgers Beat".
That's fucking awesome lol
Making beats and shit is always fun with a collaboration, so for it to be (seemingly) light hearted fun is cool AF lol
lost me when you brought up AI art as valid, but cool vid nonetheless!
Fr lol
The optics where so good. Then comparing the value of sampling with AI art is fucking stupid lol
1.) sampling takes art and uses it to express a different point of view
2.) ai is inherently anti sampling, it takes art and generates an image based off an algorithm
3.) if your goal was to convince us of the value of an art form, using AI is not going to sell it to the right people
It's ironic that he is very rightfully making the argument that sampling isn't lazy, while actively promoting lazy artwork.
Sampling is easier than making your own stuff, but you still have to put in a lot of efford and make it all sound good.
Everything takes skills.
People who make arguments against ACTUAL sampling (not just looping and adding drums) are usually “music snobs” or can’t sample because it’s not easy and they thought it’d be.
In other words: 🧂
A lot of producers these days seem to consider, an entire loop, with horns, guitars, and even a vocal lick, a “beat”, when that is a sample. A drum beat, snaps, claps or any percussive instrument, is a beat. A lot of the artists you are featuring here, are artists, and masters of their craft. When you use a sample in a way that is nearly not recognizable, or completely change the sound or feel, that really is art. I totally understand wanting that certain sound you can only get from that record, or the way they recorded back in the day. I love, and still love, listening to a really good dj in a club or on the radio on a Friday or Saturday night mixing all different kinds of music together, that too is an art
It's truly an art form. I use to be a hater now I'm a believer.
All contextual. Sampling can be way more difficult and creative than just playing an instrument imo. It can also be super cheap and easy. That Rick James MC hammer example is great because not only is it just the copy paste method but it was taken from a massive hit that everybody knew from just a few years prior. No "digging" required
Just going through someone’s recipe books and pinching all their ideas
lost me at defending ai "art", a shame
it IS a shame you got lost there. he made a really good point on it.
Let me guess, you make digital art?
@@NavieD I'm a software developer actually but I've got a lot of friends who do digital art and it used to be something I was interested in
@@Nova_Afterglow It's upsetting to see transforming artwork with intent, which is art, compared to a machine which doesn't have any intent at all doing the same on a larger scale without any credit, no skill, no thoughts just data and math. and trying to use an explanation of why one is ethical and artistic for the other
@@lucidattf navi literally shows the difference between the cheap ai art, and the transformative. beyond that tho, he logically shows the link between what ppl like you say about ai art, and what ppl say about sampling. it is very interesting to me how someone can agree with the points he makes on sampling, but disagree when it comes to ai art. you can choose to see ALL ai art as non-transformative and simply ripping off artists in other mediums, or you can see that there are those who are using the tools of ai to create something that is in fact VERY transformative. if you chose the former, you cant get mad when ppl call you lazy and cheap for sampling.
Almost cried when you showed kingdom come & little brother . Two of the greatest chops in hip hop ever
Hahah most definitely. I hope you're feeling better now :')
You had me until your AI "art' take lmao
Sampling is not for losers. Otherwise, Kanye West wouldn’t be where he is today that I am convince gosh I just hear so many people sample and they don’t use these techniques that you explain bro that’s why I have a different outlook on it. Oops, I lied again hey, you know lying is an art form, right? Lmao 😜
Careful, you can go to jail for lying in the TH-cam comment section
@@NavieD 😅😮💨
That goes for people who think of sampling as just looping.
While some tracks are indeed just that, there are others that make great use of various techniques, drum programming, live playing in drum parts, sound engineering, arranging, and even using live instrumentation over the sample. Also maniulating the loops, rearranging melodies, mixing different loops into different tracks, some sampled tracks can end up getting involved.
Awesome Content. To answer your final question to us viewers: I believe there should be a new word that separates the effort of copy and pasting a section of a song with a few edits and chopping up a song to create individual sounds that alone isn't a melody directly copied from the sampled song.
The percussion loop in plain jane is also a sample of the subway tracks shaking under the train
I would love to see a video on how the hell you find some of these obscure samples like the sample of a train. Crazy, bruh! I'm a producer (18 years in) and your vids hit for me, bruv! much love
One of my favourite ones is Busdriver's Imaginary places, which is sampled from Bachs Badinerie in B minor. Its absolutely insane how something like was turned into a fire beat.
As Peggy said multiple times "I can't just loop it and leave it". There's an art to sampling and as much as I avoid it I make sure I truly do flip samples into my own shit. I have such a love for microsampling cause that to me is as impressive as coming up with something from scratch
Something else you didnt mention…sure sometimes producers just hear something randomly and say “I wanna sample that” but alot of producers go through countless hours of listening to old records to find samples…and when you can combine 2 or more completely different samples from completely different records and make them sound good…its something special imo…im not a big sampler myself but I have dabbled and I can appriciate it if done well…and yes I feel like it is its own art form
Thanks Hip Hop for the artform sampling
This is crazy, I learned something new today and it's interesting how people can create something from a small sample
Samples are one thing, especially when you adjust them in some way... Now, using loops in a finished product? That's where I think there needs to be a line drawn.
When an artist does something new and innovative with a sample, that’s art, if you just loop a sample or just use the chorus of a song and the beat AND the melody…
some producers this applies yes, but most are very creative which can’t be distinguished, besides i like hearing throwback samples. just shows recognition of the original song how great it was 😅
well spoken bro
Just say, "My record collection is my instrument." I agree with every point you made except the one about sampling possibly being harder than virtuosity on an instrument. Check out Cateen playing Flight of a Bumble Bee at 200 bpm on a toy piano.
the intelligence of sampling to something different makes it superior, i don't like sampling cuz i want to try to be original by myself but the when samplers do something new and fresh (no copies, throwbacks, etc.), its another level.
You can do this to any medium when comparing it. Using art, pixel art could be called easy because there's no drawing and you can just make blocky things. At the same time really good pixel art exists. Now to flip the perspective, you could easily call digital art lazy by pointing at bad mspaint drawings. Anything can be done expertly or lazily
I think what’s important here is giving credit to one’s sources
I completely agree with Steve. This will be interesting. Change my mind!
This is the best explanation for an argument that I’ve had with folks for 15+ years.
I like Wu Tang Clans samples because a lot of their stuff is not sampled from other songs, it's mostly from Kung Fu Movie sound clips. They also changed up a repetitive buddhist percussion instruments beat and changed it to very melodic. The methods they used to get those samples were not digital copying either. Today it's so easy to just take something from mp3 or any of the newer digitized formats.
Sampling can be an art imho as long as you can manipulate the sample in to something totally new.
Another great fact and video family. Sampling is an actual art and to do it takes a great skill. This will always be the discussion for the world and those who actually do it and do it well gets the credit. Blessings to you family. 💯
I think you hit the nail on the head 3 mins in w/ my opinion! Its an art form of itself when done right!
Had a fight with the guys about this last weekend, appreciate you dropping wisdom