sampling
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Resonant Thoughts: Daniel Lanois On Sampling (2016)
“I developed this system of taking samples of already existing components and extracting them from—putting them out of sync with the track and then doctoring them externally through other boxes, maybe changing them to slow them down, and if I hit on something special then I go back in and find a spot for that Continue reading
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Resonant Thoughts: Roy Christopher’s “Dead Precedents” (2019)
“Underneath that odd veneer of mainstream schizophrenia, subgenres were splitting and dividing like brain-tumor cells. Enabled by recording and sampling technologies that eroded any semblance of cultural cohesion, forecasts of the future and pieces of the past were mixing into an unrecognizable new era.” – Roy Christopher, Dead Precedents, p. 18 (2019) Continue reading
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Freestyle: Sampling A Thought
Put an idea into the Grid sampler to hear what happens: Happens….Happens…Happens…Happens… It’s a two-part sound, a high tone followed by a lower one: ha—ppens. The ha sustains a pitch, while the ppens falls off after the plosive with a slight downward pitch bend. Isolate the ha and assign it to a pad. Drum it: Continue reading
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The Sampler
It begins with a sound I want but have not earned the right to use because the sound isn’t from me I didn’t make it it isn’t mine it had a life before I came along to yank it forward in time separate it from its context ignoring its history I just need its potential Continue reading
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Notes On A Sample In A Song By Drake
In 1972 a Miami-based R&B keyboardist and singer-songwriter named Timmy Thomas had a hit song with “Why Can’t We Live Together” which topped the charts and sold several million copies. Two notable things about Thomas’s song are its instrumentation and structure. Alongside Sly and The Family Stone’s “Family Affair”, “Why Can’t We Live Together” was Continue reading
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On Matthew Herbert’s One Pig
Several years ago I read an interview with the English experimental electronic musician Matthew Herbert in Tape Op magazine and I remember him going on about the importance of his audio samples. Herbert didn’t want to use just any old sound sample. He wanted to use sounds that had some meaning for him–sounds that had Continue reading
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On Sonic Persuasion: The Music Of Oneohtrix Point Never
Over the past few months I heard about Oneohtrix Point Never (aka Daniel Lopatin)’s electronic music in at least two disparate places–in Simon Reynolds’ fine book Retromania and in a recent article by Sasha Frere-Jones in The New Yorker–so I decided to buy his most recent recording Replica and check it out. Compelling music sometimes Continue reading
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On The Inner Life Of Sampling
I’m at the computer, headphones on, Ableton Live software open, listening closely to audio sample loops that I’ve made of Wonders, a CD of marimba and vibraphone music I recorded eleven short years ago. (How time flies!) Why am I spending my time like this, mouse-clicking around loops of my musical past? What am I thinking about as Continue reading
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