Sampling question (listened to DJ Shadow last night)

[GOT MILK?]

After listening to DJ Shadow I was left wondering how you guys do it.

Do you find a part of the song where there is JUST DRUMS, or JUST BASS? I don't really get how you guys just sample a voice when there is a whole song going on behind it.

I know a lot of producers love digging through old records...how does this work?

[sequoia]

It can work in lots of different ways. Open drum breaks are important, you can use loops, or individual hits to play new patterns and create new combinations of sounds. Other sounds work the same way, you can use a loop, or chop things into smaller pieces and put them back together in creative ways.

Lots of Entroducing is based on chopped up drum loops, with other layers of loops and pieces on top. Removing a vocal from a song doesn't work (for the most part), you have to find samples that are either open, or you're forced to find pieces that work as a whole.

It takes lots of patience to find pieces that fit together, pitch is one of the biggest obstacles. There are some methods available now that weren't available when Entroducing was made, for example, Ableton Live software allows you to stretch sounds without affecting pitch. Personally, I still think that only works for small shifts, anything too extreme sounds unnatural.

The most important thing is having a broad base of source material to draw from, a sampler is only as good as what you put in it. The more material you have to draw from, and the better you know the source material, the more articulate you become. In Shadow's case, the source material is old records, but with a sampler, the skies the limit.

I think the best way to learn how to make music by sampling records is to DJ... mixing skills, and an ear for what works come in very handy. I think of my sampler as an automated turntable. If I had eight arms, I wouldn't need a sampler.

[dussel]

[QUOTE=sequoiaThere are some methods available now that weren't available when Entroducing was made, for example, Ableton Live software allows you to stretch sounds without affecting pitch. [/QUOTE]

Are you talking about time-streching? AFAIK it's quite old and not particular to ableton...

Dussel

[sequoia]

I realize time-stretching isn't particular to Ableton. I was just trying to give a quick example of how one could achieve that end, Live is one of the ways that lots of people are doing it now. Time-stretching isn't anything new, but Shadow didn't use it when the bulk of Entroducing was created in the early-mid 90's.

He was using a roland vp9000 variphrase time-stretching sampler shortly after. Even my old emax SE time-stretches, but I don't have an hour to wait for a 5 second sample to stretch just to find out it sounds like sh*t. I'm still not overly impressed with time-stretching on the whole and I still rarely use it. If I do, it's for subtle changes.

Asr-10s, Akai mpcs, sp1200s don't time stretch very well and a ton of this kind of music was made on these type of units. My bandmate uses the chop and stretch function in the Triton all the time when he's sampling, especially to make drum chops fit in time with other loops. Shadow used Akai MPC series samplers to make this record.

Most sample/sampler based hip-hop, especially the classics didn't utilize time stretching and that's the point. One example where it was used well for an older song is the bassline in Digable's "cool like dat". I'm sure there is a bunch more.

[dussel]

Sorry, I did not want to be a smartass.

best
Dussel

Originally Posted by sequoia

I realize time-stretching isn't particular to Ableton. I was just trying to give a quick example of how one could achieve that end, Live is one of the ways that lots of people are doing it now. Time-stretching isn't anything new, but Shadow didn't use it when the bulk of Entroducing was created in the early-mid 90's.

He was using a roland vp9000 variphrase time-stretching sampler shortly after. Even my old emax SE time-stretches, but I don't have an hour to wait for a 5 second sample to stretch just to find out it sounds like sh*t. I'm still not overly impressed with time-stretching on the whole and I still rarely use it. If I do, it's for subtle changes.

Asr-10s, Akai mpcs, sp1200s don't time stretch very well and a ton of this kind of music was made on these type of units. My bandmate uses the chop and stretch function in the Triton all the time when he's sampling, especially to make drum chops fit in time with other loops. Shadow used Akai MPC series samplers to make this record.

Most sample/sampler based hip-hop, especially the classics didn't utilize time stretching and that's the point. One example where it was used well for an older song is the bassline in Digable's "cool like dat". I'm sure there is a bunch more.

[sequoia]

No offense taken Dussel, I should have been a little more clear in the first place. Sampling records is one of the only things going on in my little world......

[pympwell]

I read an article about how he made the LP. quite interesting!!!! I think it was a Akai MPC 60II he used. He's on pro-tools now tho.....go figg'r.

[Mr Generic]

Don't people just beat-match the vinyl to the sequence with the pitch slider, before they sample it?