Fight #360: MicroDotCotton vs. PhxAzTracmaster
[Fight Ends: 3 days, 15 hours, 20 minutes left]
Still regarding sampling
- Thread starter attila
- Start date
@attila I'm havin a Great day! so I might as well do my favorite thing in the world while I'm at it. which is complaining.
my buddy n I had this stupid joke when we were 16 where we'd call things "canned shit". the idea came from a short film idea we came up with where this guy goes to the store, buys a can of shit, comes home, empties in the toilet, flushes, smiles and goes to bed.
that's what music can be atp. you download stuff offa splice, mishmash them together, sidechain, basic compression n eq (optional), give it to ozone, tada. if you're so classy and talented, don't get shit offa splice and sample 4 bars offa smokey robinson like a generational talent. I once made like 8 beats in like an hour just like that. "banger" after "banger". pretty sure some of them won battles. honestly I could've went for 20 30 "unique" beats in 1 day but I got bored.
back then at least you had this good feeling deep down like "Yeah, sure, sampling wins here n there, but when it comes to making the real mulah I'll be up there". now that splice n AI n... are out there I miss my sampling folk. at least they loved what they thought they did.
do whatever, nobody cares. nobody cares. worry about yourself, your family, the people that are important to you.
and don't get me wrong I love hip hop. I'll die bumpin lloyd banks. professionally tho, I think I'll pursue film score at the end cause that seems to be the only place they still value shit. I don't think they will in like... 10 years tho. might find me in a bar or something playing banjo n sleepin on the floor for a living later. probably havin the time of my life.
my 2 cents as a friend tho
if you want to learn, sure, go have your sampling phase, hell it'll actually teach you how to arrange shit n how hip hop actually works. if ur always busy "creating" your... "Producing" side of the brain might never wake up. can be a good thing, bad thing, idk. in my case, my sampling phase helped me realize how to put a beat together. how to make shit work, how to... get things to fit without having to edit the melody n... the relation is almost like physics n chemistry in some way.
but keep it a phase. it's addictive. don't be too proud of ur sampled beats. be a lil proud proud (especially if u put effort n soul in, I LOVE a sampled track with soul in it. my favorite producer is kanye west for fucks sake. one of my favorite beats I ever made is only made up of samples. but it's like 6 or 7 samples all used equally. it's... beautiful. I made it 5 years ago and I still like it more than half the shit I make rn. it's called academy or something).
but also be ashamed. imagine chopin looking at you and going "nu-uh", yk?
nu-uh.
he's judgy for a reason. have something to show for yourself when you meet him in hell.
but yeah, nah, if u know what you're doing, cheat as much as they let u get away with. spoiler alert, 80% of the original producers thieves anyway. so much of dre's shit are just "interpolations". steal away. everyone does. the more talented ones do it subconsciously. (I'm not saying all they do is cheat but u get the point).
and enjoy making music.
my buddy n I had this stupid joke when we were 16 where we'd call things "canned shit". the idea came from a short film idea we came up with where this guy goes to the store, buys a can of shit, comes home, empties in the toilet, flushes, smiles and goes to bed.
that's what music can be atp. you download stuff offa splice, mishmash them together, sidechain, basic compression n eq (optional), give it to ozone, tada. if you're so classy and talented, don't get shit offa splice and sample 4 bars offa smokey robinson like a generational talent. I once made like 8 beats in like an hour just like that. "banger" after "banger". pretty sure some of them won battles. honestly I could've went for 20 30 "unique" beats in 1 day but I got bored.
back then at least you had this good feeling deep down like "Yeah, sure, sampling wins here n there, but when it comes to making the real mulah I'll be up there". now that splice n AI n... are out there I miss my sampling folk. at least they loved what they thought they did.
do whatever, nobody cares. nobody cares. worry about yourself, your family, the people that are important to you.
and don't get me wrong I love hip hop. I'll die bumpin lloyd banks. professionally tho, I think I'll pursue film score at the end cause that seems to be the only place they still value shit. I don't think they will in like... 10 years tho. might find me in a bar or something playing banjo n sleepin on the floor for a living later. probably havin the time of my life.
my 2 cents as a friend tho
if you want to learn, sure, go have your sampling phase, hell it'll actually teach you how to arrange shit n how hip hop actually works. if ur always busy "creating" your... "Producing" side of the brain might never wake up. can be a good thing, bad thing, idk. in my case, my sampling phase helped me realize how to put a beat together. how to make shit work, how to... get things to fit without having to edit the melody n... the relation is almost like physics n chemistry in some way.
but keep it a phase. it's addictive. don't be too proud of ur sampled beats. be a lil proud proud (especially if u put effort n soul in, I LOVE a sampled track with soul in it. my favorite producer is kanye west for fucks sake. one of my favorite beats I ever made is only made up of samples. but it's like 6 or 7 samples all used equally. it's... beautiful. I made it 5 years ago and I still like it more than half the shit I make rn. it's called academy or something).
but also be ashamed. imagine chopin looking at you and going "nu-uh", yk?
nu-uh.
he's judgy for a reason. have something to show for yourself when you meet him in hell.
but yeah, nah, if u know what you're doing, cheat as much as they let u get away with. spoiler alert, 80% of the original producers thieves anyway. so much of dre's shit are just "interpolations". steal away. everyone does. the more talented ones do it subconsciously. (I'm not saying all they do is cheat but u get the point).
and enjoy making music.
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You talk to me as a producer, and I'm fine with that. I don't even know what Slice is. Here I'm not talking about what I do and how I do it. But about what I love. It's not that I love making music based on samples, it's that I love listening to it. As I mentioned in some comments, take 'Glory Box' by Portishead. It's literally a loop of Isaac Hayes with a voice on top and some guitar hits here and there, and I tolerate having come into this world just to be able to listen to tracks like that. In 'Hell Is Round the Corner', Tricky added some more noise, but it's the same thing, and that too is a masterpiece, and I'm glad they decided to make these songs anyway. If I sampled the same bars, we wouldn't have any masterpieces like that; I'm not talking about myself here. I also like house music. One or half a beat of disco music, a four-on-the-floor pattern, and some effects. There's a piece by Virgin Prunes it's a single sample of strings, it will be less than two seconds. Alone, repeated the same, without variations, for two and a half minutes. It's one of my favorite tracks; I've been listening to it for thirty years. I even sampled it and made it worse.
I think that 'it's too easy and everyone can do it' is a naive illusion; otherwise, we would be overwhelmed with masterpieces, and they continue to be a rare commodity, whether they are made with 4 bars samples or not
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About canned shit, I'm a total big fan of Piero Manzoni. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artist's_Shit
Lmao, happens to the best of us
Coltorki
Member
Battle Points: 5
We have to consider that when the world of sampling started, the memory of the machines was very limited, so beatmakers had to invent different games to compensate for this lack. That's why sample chopping, first of all, helps. Limits feed the genius that is in each of us. Today's machines can record even hours of audio (not to mention computers!) and the Genius disappears.
I remember my enthusiasm when, starting as a DJ in the late 90s, I discovered some shortcuts to get around the limitations of my equipment (like using the line-in/phono selector to have clean cuts instead of using the fader that had kicked the bucket. Or even before, a period in which I had an instrument mixer with knobs, I emulated the fader with my finger between the two knobs so that while I raised a volume I lowered the second and vice versa).
sometimes that cheating is the path that leads us to the result. if a famous person uses the same trick then we approve it while if a random person uses it they are an asshole! I think it's just envy. The important thing is to stimulate imagination and creativity and have fun!
Today I see more and more guys reselling expensive equipment because they don't want to study the workflow. Better for us nerds!…
Personally I love my MPC and any hardware in general. I have fun!
Surely, as @hosie says, even digging to find those 2 seconds is important. Just like the hand has 5 fingers and 4 spaces between them, playing samples is made up of different elements and only when there is cohesion between them and each has its right space things work wonderfully.
Sampling, for me, works the opposite of the 80/20 of the drums! That is: 80% of the effort leads to 20% of the progress
Sometimes it can also be nice to hear that sequence of 4 bars completely rearranged.
I think that giving ourselves rules sometimes makes us lose sight of the goal. Always living the same shit as before is the secret ingredient. It will be forever, because every time is the first time
ENJOY YOUR SOUND
I remember my enthusiasm when, starting as a DJ in the late 90s, I discovered some shortcuts to get around the limitations of my equipment (like using the line-in/phono selector to have clean cuts instead of using the fader that had kicked the bucket. Or even before, a period in which I had an instrument mixer with knobs, I emulated the fader with my finger between the two knobs so that while I raised a volume I lowered the second and vice versa).
sometimes that cheating is the path that leads us to the result. if a famous person uses the same trick then we approve it while if a random person uses it they are an asshole! I think it's just envy. The important thing is to stimulate imagination and creativity and have fun!
Today I see more and more guys reselling expensive equipment because they don't want to study the workflow. Better for us nerds!…
Personally I love my MPC and any hardware in general. I have fun!
Surely, as @hosie says, even digging to find those 2 seconds is important. Just like the hand has 5 fingers and 4 spaces between them, playing samples is made up of different elements and only when there is cohesion between them and each has its right space things work wonderfully.
Sampling, for me, works the opposite of the 80/20 of the drums! That is: 80% of the effort leads to 20% of the progress
Sometimes it can also be nice to hear that sequence of 4 bars completely rearranged.
I think that giving ourselves rules sometimes makes us lose sight of the goal. Always living the same shit as before is the secret ingredient. It will be forever, because every time is the first time
ENJOY YOUR SOUND
Okay, everything is right, especially the idea that having limits helps creativity, and since technology now removes these limits, sometimes it's useful to set them. But once again, we are looking at it from the producer's point of view—what entertains us, what helps us.
From the listener's perspective, all these technical discussions about how difficult or fun it was to make the music and what the producer used interest me up to a certain point. What matters to me is whether what I listen to moves me, and whether a piece succeeds when the producer does little or uses something elementary, if they get bored and can't show how skilled they are, it's not important.
