Music Trade Magazine

How to make sample based music.

 

 The art of sampling uses sounds from various sources and brings them together in sort of a collage of organized sound. Even now in 2012 its still a controversial subject among musicians as to whether or not "serious musicians" should use these techniques in their music. It's been said that sampling is stealing other people's music ,well sometimes it just might be ,but all musicians borrow sound  from other musicians. They say " its my performance your ripping off".  Well  lots of serious musicians borrow technique from other musicians. Especially in jazz " serious music". I could go on but if you really care about this controversy look into it. I'm just going to focus on how and why.

Ok let's get started.When sampling  the first thing we do is select the sample. This can be done in a number of ways. The "legal" way is to either use CDs that are made specifically for sampling or, to make your own.when using CDs you need to be careful that the CDs state that all material is free to use or it states you have a license to use the material on the  cd to make original music.  This is very important if you are concerned about copyright infringement. There are a lot of people putting out compilations on the underground used for djing that can be used for live djing but can't be used in recordings without getting permission from the owner of the copywrighted material. These compilations are ok for djing  but should be avoided for serious production without permission. ,for those in the know this could sound like a bunch of hooey because most sample based music comes off of old records which 99 times out of 100 are copyrighted material. These artists are paying these people to use their copyrighted music.  This, sampling phonograghs, is not the first method used to make sample based music that did not predate Hip-hop.

With that said, the question is what can you use? Well ,  you can use any sound you want to make sample based music. The reason you should avoid the popular underground cd sets are because when used to make productions or "Beats" for music that will be used commercially you run the risk of infringing on someone's copyrighted works. kinda long winded I know. All this is necessary in order to make sure you achieve success from day one.

PICKING THE RIGHT SAMPLER.

Well this is really a personal choice like most things in life. You want to decide based on the type of music you are going to want to make .
If you want to make music that is strictly samples then you have to decide if they are going to be sample hits or phrase samples. Sample hits are usually short clips of sound .an example would be pressing the C note on a piano for one second and recording that sound. That would be considered a sound Hit. A phrase sample is when you play a cd or record and take a whole measure or musical phrase and record it . A good example of. This is the song ICE ICE BABY  by VANILLA ICE. The beat maker took a short phrase from Queens :Under Pressure song and sampled it.  Another example would be MC HAMMER  CAN'T TOUCH THIS. Taken from Rick James : Super Freak  this is an example of a long phrase. Check these songs out and compare them you will easily be able to pull out the  phrase samples. The truth is you will probably work with both types of samples at some point. The best sampler to suit your style will be based on  if you will add original music to your samples like keyboards piano synthesizer sounds...of you do you may want a keyboard style sampler like a KORG TRITON OR ROLAND FANTOM. If you are mostly interested in adding sounds to drum samples you will want a drum machine style sampler like a AKAI MPC 1000. There are plenty to choose from. Most of the new school beat makers don't even bother with the hardware the just use their computers and a cheap program like FRUITY LOOPS.I think this is a mistake to just use computer programs to make songs. Where  this can be incredibly frugal in terms of how much money is spent on the  equiptment, it can take away from the hands on development for live application ie..making beats live on stage in front of a crowd if your djing. This can help develop your ear for hearing when there are mistakes in your music that would be noticeable after a few plays..

One thing I will mention its better decide how serious you are going to be and how much time you will dedicate. This should be your first thought when de hiding which way to go on hour journey to Making Beats. 

 

Next time we will talk about how and where to get samples.