there are no rules in sampling but should there be guidelines?

dmajor100

dmajor100

Active member
Having only sampled for a few months now i have seen great progress and great ideas from doing sampled beats but there are other people who take too much advantage and let the samples do the work for them which is why im discussing this. I believe a so called beatmaker who loops more than 4 or 8 bars is not a creative producer at all or people who use long one shots. I was told to believe that a great sampler is someone who takes chops and arranges them in a way to be completely unrecognizable to the listener. Ive heard good and very bad sampling but i still dont see good samplers giving advice to new producers to be breative and not slander classic music with drums and say " look i made this sick ass beat and it was easy". i know there are classic songs that looped the hell out of songs espically in the 90's that made killer hits but this is 2011 were creativity is a must to keep the music evolving.
 
I know a TON of people will disagree, and I respect that, but I agree 100% with you. I've never looped and never will loop. If the name Butcher wasn't taken on here, I woulda took it.
 
LOOPS! Hip Hop started with loops. So you don't like DITC? PR? Dilla? Countless more cats?
 
This is the mistake people make, saying theyl only ever chop. I rarely loop a record, but if theres a loop dope enough (and for me usually obscure or rare) il loop it rather than trying to chop it, as long as the fianl result is dope then theres no worries, mcs want tracks they can flow and if that means a dope simple loop then so be it.
 
Well if its a must and ur own instrumentation is on it I guess that would work

---------- Post added at 08:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 08:44 AM ----------

Yes loops may did start hip hop but that was 80s style and even tho cats that loop have a rep for being dope doesnt make them creative. A common listener dnt give a dam about were the music comes from but for a producer im sure hes gotta feel like when he hears loops it was the east way out. Taking something that was completley composed for u with a bass line is just not it in todays sample scene,my opinion. 9th wonder backs these methods up
 
As far as chopping goes.....on the last track I made I chopped a single guitar chord hit into 4 slices....this allowed me to play that chord at different sections of the waveform and gave me a wide variety of expression whereas before I would have sliced it as just one chop.

Another thing I've noticed is that most people want to fill every part of the song with chops....people are constantly hitting the pads. I like to give rest periods and let the track breathe a little especially when laying down chops....this will give you room for other ideas like drum work and maybe synth additions....no need to be constantly hitting the pads all the time as if there is a need to fill every spot with the sample on your pads...at the end of the day the track should sound cohesive but while adding chops I think it's a good Idea to not go overboard all the time.... but don't get me wrong there are times when constant chop playback fits the bill.. ....Just my 2 cents LOL


PS: if it works as a loop....use it. :D
 
Loops are dope, just not creative. I like gettin super creative, and treatin the beat like a puzzle. If the beat's for a dope enough MC, it's a different story. And dilla has RIDICULOUSLY tight basslines and always the sickest drums. So even his looped tracks are dope. But like MF DOOM looped beats are tight when he spits on em. And his samples are so dope, its just on a different level. He'll find a spanish track, or quincy jones track and make it sound tight. I'm not sayin loops are bad, and they wouldnt be dope. I'm just sayin, for me, it's the easy way out. I can't have fun with a loop. Isn't having fun the only "rule"?
 
Last edited:
In my opinion if it sounds good it sounds good. Sometimes it sounds the best to take a loop as is, other times it sounds better to chop it up. If it sounds good it sounds good. I always let my ears be my guide. It's kinda like using presets on your keyboard, synth, etc. Yeah, it's great to make your own custom sounds but sometimes that preset is the sound you need.

I'm not out to impress anybody with my chopping skills. I'm just trying to make good music. Let the music speak for itself. It may be easier to use a loop but I guess I'll just take an F on my producer report card in Creativity when it comes out.
 
There actually used to be a unwritten rules people lived by in the 80s and 90s. Mostly don't bite, don't put niggas samples on blast, don't ask someone what they sampled, don't ask for samples, don't sample hit songs, dig deep for some new shit that nobody else has messed with before or if someone has put your own flavor on it, ect. Most of the rules were about originality, not snitching and working hard to find samples. I think the big issue here is though is that there is a huge generation gap between producers in the 90s and producers in the 2000s/2010s. Outside of maybe Kanye, Pharrell, ?uestlove and a few others that can still do mainstream records most just do not know or respect those rules. And before someone says it yes I know Kanye has sampled smashes before. But he himself said back before he did H to the izzo he wouldn't have but someone asked him for it and he wanted the check. As far as loops loops aren't bad some samples should be looped. I dare you to tell me you can take 2 turntables and a tape machine and pull off what the Bomb Squad used to do. They would take like 7 or 8 loops mash them together and make them work in key and tempo again without all of the fancy shit we have today. They had turntables a recorder and wax. Hell even with all of the fancy tools we have today a lot of cats can't pull off what with loops what the Bomb Squad did. And its hard as hell to take a loop keep it as a loop but give the new song its own character that is not that of the original at all.
For example






I think ive made my point lol a lot of my favorite beats are loops

---------- Post added at 04:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:33 PM ----------

It should also be added that chopping samples didn't come around from creativity but it came from the limitations of gear at the time. You had to chop up records and reconstruct them. After people got sued they started playing with the chops more. Now people just tend to loop something because they don't know about the history of what they are doing most of the time. Either way loops are the shit.
 
in what context are samples uncreative? recreate Bonita Applebum and then try and explain again how loops are uncreative.
 
Of course, it's economically unfeasible to do Bomb Squad type production nowadays. It Takes a Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back would cost like $100 million dollars. LOL
 
Cause like I said if u looped 8 bars with everythin composed piano,bass,strings,percussion then thats audio jacking not sanpling.

---------- Post added at 05:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:38 PM ----------

The principle
 
It's not the effort involved that defines creativity, it's originality.

It might actually require more effort to work with a loop than it would require to chop it up and use the slices, but the slices lend themselves to being used creatively as they are now free from both the original arrangement and tempo.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top