Do successful producers e-dig?

ThaCarterH

New member
There seems to be an ongoing argument about e-digging and crate digging. I personally enjoy crate digging, sure e-digging is easier and more often than not it's of a higher quality than my relatively cheap turntable. But I enjoy the physical aspect of it, and when I buy the records myself I actually listen closely and find samples I might not originally hear. But who cares what I think? What do the professionals think? As far as I know the producers I like (Dilla, 9th Wonder, Premier, Flying Lotus) are crate diggers. Are there any big producers that e-dig? And if you prefer e-digging... why? :cheers:
 
There are a lot pros out there that choose e-digging over vinyl nowadays...just most won't admit it.
Blockhead, IMO one of the best sample based producers around nowadays, is a pretty big named pro that ONLY e-digs now.
I find Blockhead's outlook on the whole vinyl VS e-digging refreshing --> BLOCKHEAD wrote-- “I was never a fan of buying a record that I only planned on sampling for like 50 bucks. I could give a shit about paying the guy who decided this rare but ultimately half assed record is worth what it was,” says Blockhead, producer of Aesop Rock, Billy Woods, and several instrumental albums for Ninja Tune. “I'm not in the habit of giving money to greedy collectors. So I find shit online. It's enabled me to find samples I would never have been able to afford to even hear otherwise. My record player doesn't even work anymore. The fact I haven't fixed it speaks volumes of how much more simple and rewarding the blog digging has been for me."
If you haven't heard of Blockhead (Produced many Aesop Rock tracks) then pick up an album and prepare to be 'wowed' by the nutty amount of samples used in each song. Doing so without getting clearance to use the samples by using unknown/rare artists most people have not heard.
He is also a producer that spits in the face of the whole silly "hardware VS software" arguments that plagues forums seeing as how he used only an ASR-10 for the longest time and hated the thought of using time stretching but then found ableton and now pretty much uses only Ableton and ZERO f*cks are given to what people think.

I, personally, use both vinyl and digital (blogs, youtube, etc). But I have found myself sifting thru blogs more and more these days. If the sample sounds dope and I haven't heard anyone use it before then I'll totally use it. I too try and stay away from big name
Here is an article by Blockhead "Sampling Dos and Don'ts for Beat Makers" which is funny and has some great tips for sample based producers
Some sampling do’s and don’t for beat makers | Phat Friend
 
Most people that use samples will use digital music files to make beats. If you have a really good record store tho you can find much more rare pressings that may not be on the internet at all. That would be the main advantage these days.
 
I figure most have there own library of what they do and do not generally like. But I wouldn't be suprised if they search online for a record they couldn't grab the vinyl, nowadays atleast.
 
Just a hobbyist myself but I do not understand what makes vinyl the go-to. Cds do 44.1khz, digital files can be recorded as 96khz, sounds can be created in synths and can be bounced to 96-192khz so the timestretching possibilities would be near all possible, if not for the workaround involving simple region cloning.
 
I've been watching the MPC Series (Ringz ov Saturn) on YouTube and the latest one featured Micall Parknsun... I'm a fan... He was saying he gets most of his samples now from YouTube.
its a good series, worth checking.
 
This is territory that will always have an argument. It's like software vs hardware or analog vs digital.

Truth be told, that purist crap is naive in my opinion and you are refusing your imagination access to whole other worlds of possibilities and creation. It's up to the producer as to whether or not they are successful with the tools that they decide to employ.

Set prejudice aside if you don't have a huge budget to work with. There are PLENTY of really rare things (including lossless copies of vinyl) available at your disposal on the internet. It will take some digging, but it's all there (for the most part). True, you are not touching tangible copies of the artwork, but it doesnt bother me because I don't feel like I need to own it. In the past year, I can only remember THREE albums that I wanted to sample something from that I could not find...and I sift through stuff just about every day.

Contrary to popular belief, it does take a lot of time and effort to find some of these songs/albums that aren't on the most popular share sites. In my opinion, digging is digging, and I dig analog and digital sources. Grew up using my big brothers MPC and his record collection BFD, who cares...it didn't tarnish my ability to view great innovations as progressive opportunities to access music I would normally never hear. Mainstream hiphop right now though, is a different story HAHA. One of the pitfalls of digital digging is that, on a computer we have these great organizational tools, so it's easy to place a download in a folder and forget about it.

Try all methods, in the end, choose all you like and use them all; or simply master the heck out of one. It's up to you and don't allow anyone to impose their bullshit theories about the way things should be done on your creative drive or potential.
 
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Sorry i can't answer your question being 100% sure. my guess would be yes.

chances are you won't get the same quality out of e-digging as digging through crates.
though you never know what you might find

dig from anywhere

just my thoughts.
 
I did both crate digging and e-digging in the past.
These days all i use is mp3's for sampling. I haven't sampled a vinyl in 5 years.

I'm actually planning on selling all the records that i can easily download.
But there's very rare records out there from local artists that i would not sell since it's nowhere on the internet usually.
Like records from church choirs in my area and records with commercials on them.
 
I just use freeware one-shot samples sampled from various drum machines. I don't sample anything else. Everything else I compose using VST instruments. I program the percussion in FL Studio's step editor, or I use Poise VSTi sampler to play it in and then edit out the mistakes.

My main point is that you don't have to do phrase sampling if you sample. And you don't have to cut out of vinyl either. Plenty of high-quality dry on-shot drum samples exist on the internet. And if you mix and match them, you can create your own nice custom kits. And if you have a field recorder, you can make some really nice homemade percussion sounds from sampling the real world.

Don't equate sampling with phrase sampling. It's deeper than that.
 
9Th wonder at one point had gotten so busy he had a guy at a record store in Philly who would send him records. It doesn't matter to be honest with you. Change is part of life and not too many producers today experience the thrill of actually going to physical locations and digging through actual vinyl. I was lucky enough to experience that and I was introduced to it by some OG's in the Bay Area while I was attending college. To be honest I get access to better vinyl by shopping online. I'll also preview the song on Youtube sometimes before I make a purchase. When I was limited to digging locally, I seldom found rare soul and hard to find 45's from the 60's and 70's. Eric Vanderslice has his own mobile crate digger who comes to him but I think that is due to being extremely overweight:
 
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I signed up to AppleMusic on my iPad - combined with a cheap UCA222 and the camera connection kit it's a brilliant digging resource!
 
Yes, successful producers E-dig. Me personally, I am just a hobbyist. I crate dig just because it is more enjoyable, for me. Same reason why I bought a TR-8 instead of using the millions of 808 samples online. I'm in it for the fun.
 
Just a hobbyist myself but I do not understand what makes vinyl the go-to. Cds do 44.1khz, digital files can be recorded as 96khz, sounds can be created in synths and can be bounced to 96-192khz so the timestretching possibilities would be near all possible, if not for the workaround involving simple region cloning.

Vinyl digging is the go-to because only 1/3 of vinyl (I read somewhere can't find the article now. sry) is actually digitalized (made into CDs or mp3s). That means two-thirds of it is not available in a digital format. And as you know from hip hop or dance (house) music, the earliest forms of it were based on reinventing r&b, funk, soul, and disco vinyl records. That's why to this day, vinyl digging is the go-to if you want to reinvent the wheel so to speak.

As for e-digging, I think that's the newest yet untapped source of treasure. Especially, youtube for me and my friends because youtube holds a wealth of samples (I guess I just let out my secret recipe :P).
 
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