Digging through crap

D

DopeFiend

Guest
Do you find you have to dig through a lot of crap just to find a good sample? Maybe I'm not doing my research. I have a very random collection of records. It's not like I'm on the soul or jazz tip. I take whatever records I can get. That is people who give them away...
 
you just keep looking til you find something. some of it is just luck that you'll come across something you can work with.

also sometimes you'll think you found a nice sample, but when going to work with it, you discover that its not as great as you'd have hoped for.
 
Style said:

also sometimes you'll think you found a nice sample, but when going to work with it, you discover that its not as great as you'd have hoped for.

Yeah, you'll go through a lot of crap to find one gem or even anything decent to work with. But thats the whole fun of diggin'.
 
After going through enough crap, you'll generally get good at sizing up a record before you buy it.

Eg.
1950s/1960s romantic movie soundtrack, probably has decent strings
Guys with afros... probably has good drum, bass, or guitar samples
 
you may be coming in with too many preconcetions about what you think samples should sound like.
If you are stuck with the records that people give away, then scour those records for cool sounds. You can make beats out of anything. Get creative. If you can make a dope beat out of those crap records, or even just an interesting or unique beat, then you will set youself apart.
couple of ideas:

-Look for sections where there are isolated sounds, you can usually see those as darker areas on the record.

-try just doing some rythmic needle drops. That sounds good with almost any record.

-filer the hell out of it. low pass will make anything rumble. high pass will isolate will give you ringing percusive sounds.

-slow things way down or way up.

-repeat listens and you will start to hear catchy little snippets you can use.

If you want a particular sound you will have to do some research and digging. But if you have a bunch of records, why not give it a try. you might end up with some cool beats. And you will definitly improve your skills.
 
i dont believe in crap records. i think you can flip anything. i mean you got guys like primo, pete rock, the list goes on, who been doin this for too many years so they must have thousands of beats. and still goin. i dont know if they flippin the same samples, or they must have well over thousands apon thousands or records. and it seems like 9th can flip anything too. if he couldn't, at the rate he's goin, he'd probably run out of songs to sample.
 
that's what happens to some of these producers is they don't flip enuff cus they restrict themselves to a genre.
 
Yeah, since that post, I've been flipping whatever and experimenting like crazy. I feel like my skills and ears are slowly getting better. It's also more fun, more free. Just have to keep moving along.
 
Every time I hear a song no matter what its like I hear pieces I can take from it and make my own sound or track. In math class today I probably heard at least 20 different parts that would have made excelent beats from a movie we were watching on tessilations. To bad I dont have a sampler to put my mind to the test but when I finaly get an MPC 1000 im going ot be diggin through stuff all day.
 
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