Tag Archives: sampling

The Great Feedback Loop: Exploring Remix Culture in Performance and Production.

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Recently, I’ve been reverting back to old practices of making art; entirely for fun, just for myself and my friends with my friends, not to be shared with the rest of the world. Within these sessions, my recent influences of my sound have become apparent in the compositions; Coldcut, J Dilla, Pat Thomas, The Underwolves amongst a range of other trip hop and experimental breaks music artists. In underground music genres, it could be argued that sampling is the single most important factor by which the music’s sound is defined. Some people may take issue with this, as it could be dubbed as “unoriginal”, and a theft of previously generated material.

How can this criticsm be right, though, if our entire world is constructed of a sort of remix culture?

It could be argued that no idea created in modernity is original- we are all inspired by pre-existing concepts. It is important to embrace the practice of sampling and remix culture if we are to be honest and authentic within our art, to be able to pay homage to our inspirations. To go against this would be to be inauthentic as an artist.

(soundcloud link to sp-555 experiments)
(second link)

Here, you can hear the experiments myself and my friends have been playing around with on my latest instrument, the SP-555. We worked with sampling and manipulating CDs we’ve found in the street, and using the delay and looping functions on the SP-555 to create soundscapes far away from the material which we’ve found.

To contribute to my portfolio pieces, I can use these experiements to further develop the soundscapes I may use in my performance by resampling them. With my friends, we experiemnted with this by making a rap song that re-sampled these experiments on the SP-555.

(development of SP-55 experiments into rap music)

This is where the idea of ‘The Great Feedback Loop’ becomes apparent. Pre-existing art being regenerated into new art, and that new art can be re-sampled to create even newer material- this process could go on until the end of time. I would argue that even by recording through a microphone we are sampling the ambience of the environemnt in which we are recording in. We live in a world of sampladelia, to argue against that would be to live in a world of delusion.

Sound Objects: Sampling.

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When reading an extract of Thomas Porcello’s The Ethics of Digital Audio-Sampling: Engineers’ Discourse, I was immediately drawn into the topic, as sampling is a technique heavily used by myself. Quite quickly, an example of the sampled artist’s work was discovered in this extract- Jan Hammer’s use of David Earl Johnson’s congas in the Miami Vice theme. Johnson argues that compensation be made to him by Hammer, as, if it is him playing, he should have been in the studio being paid for his time and skill. The sample was taken from an earlier recording session of the two, which, particularly by today’s views on sound production, has allowed the later creation of the Miami Vice theme to be completed with less time, budget and labour consumed. It also allows for the producer to have more creative control of the sample, allowing the previously created sound to exist in multiple corners of the spectrum of sound. Personally, I interpreted Johnson’s argument not as a criticism of the reuse of his work, but rather as an addition to the discourse surrounding the ethics of sampling.

For a long while I was making “abstract rap beats”, which entailed taking a sample, usually an obscure jazz or soul tune, and playing around with it until it was almost, if not completely, unrecognisable. I soon realised how easy it could be for anyone to make music with this method, and even sooner realised how lazy and unskilled my productions became as such. Arguments laid out by rap music engineers in the Porcello paper advocate for the use of sampling similar material to that of which I’ve done, however, ensure the sample is still recognisable. The reasoning behind this could partially be to make sure the piece created is still crediting the sampled material. In the style of production I was partaking in, none of the melodic and harmonic sounds were actually being created by me, but instead just heavily manipulated and deformed so as to cover my theft. When clearly leaving the sample exposed, the producer is forced to organically create elements to surround and re-contextualise it. However, the engineers Porcello himself spoke to took a different stance- they viewed this in the same way I viewed my aforementioned method of production.

The engineers Porcello spoke to viewed sampling more-so as a tool to base ideas around, taking something close to the sound you were originally envisioning, then altering it to be what you want and building around that. To align this view with my understanding of production, I thought about how drum breaks are created in drum and bass. One of the most famous breaks, the Apache break, sampled a long percussion break from Incredible Bongo Band’s cover of Jerry Lordan’s Apache. When used within drum and bass music, the break is mixed and run through samplers and plug-ins to give it a distinctive quality that is more suitable to the hard sounds of that genre. But if the aim is to make is sound dissimilar to the sampled material, why not just record what it is you wish to sample yourself, or pay a musician who can? One of the engineers in Porcello’s paper, Glassie, comments on this, “If you could recreate Phil Colins’ drum sound.. in another studio, with identical mics… then if a sound could be recreated, it would be hard to say that you actually own that sound.” Therefore, if there is no telling if you created that sound yourself or not, then it would evidently be preferable for a producer to take the route that is more cost and time efficient; sampling.

However, something in Glassie’s comments resonates with me in conjunction with David Earl Johnson’s argument for compensation over the use of his sample. Johnson brought forth the fact that the specific way in which he played his congas in that moment in that studio is what gives it its distinctive quality. Whilst you can alter the sound of a sample, there is only so far you can stretch it before it starts sounding distorted and unpleasant. Glassie does acknowledge this in his comments, too. This thought inspired me to attempt a production in a way I usually would, but using absolutely no samples, paving way for the creation of the sound piece which I will be submitting as part of Creative Sound Projects Element 2, working entitled Jungle Concrete.

To create this piece, I decided to create a timeframe to complete this project, using my blog entries to guide and inspire me along the way.

(insert image of plan)

Having now booked the studio to finally create this soundpiece, I feel enthusiastic about this project. I am a little scared, as since my laptop broke around 2 months ago I haven’t been able to create anything, and I now feel like I’m lacking in skill. Hopefully the motivation will override any loss of skill. I look forward to reflecting on my time at the studio.