How to Sample Music : Part 1/2

Sampling is a technique used by most music producers covering most genres of music. In this video I’m showing you how to prepare song files for sampling and replicating a few classic dance tracks – but sampling also takes place on a much smaller scale. Do you Ultrabeat/Drum Rack/Groove Agent/ReDrum? In which case you’re probably sampling! Making use of pre-recorded audio and manipulating it to make something new from it.

Some sampling is extremely subtle, the artist will disguise the sample they use so that it is indistinguishable from the original. In the examples I’ve used in the video, the use of samples is so blatant, it’s almost as if the sampling artist is paying homage to the original artist.

There is absolutely no shame in sampling, without it there might not be such genres as hip hop and house today. It brings attention to the original artist, who might have not had any recognition otherwise (depending on how obscure the sample is!) The other great thing about it is that when you sample, you’re using a piece of (usually) professionally mixed and mastered music: this immediately brings a rich texture to your composition and can give you a full sound almost straight away.

Who Sampled?

I can also highly recommend taking a look at whosampled.com : a website painstakingly researched to show you who has sampled who across the years. Type in your favourite artist – if it’s someone like Chic, you’ll get to see all the artists years down the line who have sampled Chic. If it’s someone like Daft Punk, you’ll get to see all the tunes they’ve made where they’ve sampled someone else’s work – hope I don’t spoil Daft Punk for you..

If you like this video, please take a look at the following – it shows just how deep you can go when sampling – also bear in mind this was done in around 1996, because the days of Ableton Live. Genius.