I’ve been getting in to sampling more over the last couple of years, as I’ve moved to focus more on hip-hop. Really keen on grungy boom-bap beats, and I’m enjoying the workflow of having samples limit my knob tweaking.

I do find actually finding samples a struggle sometimes, and also knowing how and where to use them. Trial and error works, eventually, but sometimes the error part drags on and gets a bit off-putting. So I’m wondering about approaches or ways of thinking about it that might improve my hit rate.

Any thoughts/tips/questions/rants?

Edit: to be clear, I’m not only interest in hip-hop, or hip-hop suitable sampling approaches. I’m interested in sampling methods for any scenario.

  • naught101@lemmy.worldOP
    2·
    29 days ago

    Lots of good stuff in here!

    The point about separating out sample finding time from making music is really good. I often find myself in the middle of making a track, and think “I really could use a sample of X here”, and then go off down a rabbit hole of search (and rarely finding something appropriate).

    Actually grabbing and using the samples is much easier than finding them, IMO… crate-digging style sampling is more miss than hit for me so far. I do get the feeling that I should be trying to slow down, and approach each potential sample-source track more deliberately though…

    I did find https://samplette.io/ recently, which is pretty cool. Like an automated youtube crate digger, and you can filter by lots of parameters, like genre, number of views, etc.

    • speed_skirmish@sh.itjust.works
      1·
      28 days ago

      I forgot where I heard that tip about finding samples separately, but once I started doing that I never went back.

      TIL about the term, crate-digging. I guess that’s what I tried doing fairly recently when I visited a Goodwill for CDs. That said, I didn’t buy any CDs when I felt it would take too long to find something useful.

      samplette seems like a good resource for this style of sampling, thanks for sharing.

      That reminds me, have you listened to the album Endtroducing… by DJ Shadow? Pretty much the entire album is composed of samples through crate-digging.

      • naught101@lemmy.worldOP
        1·
        28 days ago

        Shadow is a favourite, I’ve been listening to him for nearly 20 years. I went to see him last year. He’s fucking next level though, I can’t comprehend the patience it would require to do what he does. Blockhead is similar.

        If you’re in to that stuff, you REALLY should check out Kognitif’s Soul Food Album - IMO the most under-rated instrumental hip-hop album ever, I love it so much.

        I’ve been really digging El-P’s production lately. It seems a little bit simpler, less going on, but it hits super hard. Still requires years to develop that that taste for what samples should go where, I think.