DRAFT – PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE OR CITE
-5-
have something to work with—as opposed to, ‘Here’s a bunch of plastic, mold it, and then start
building it.’” Echoing this, remix pioneer Steinski says that sampling technologies have allowed
virtually anyone to become a musical producer, even those without musical training. “You don’t
have to learn how to play guitar,” says Steinski. “You don’t have to know nothing. All you have
to do is get a two-track editing program or a four-track editing program for your computer, and
you’re right there. You can make the next big record in the world.”
Miho Hatori—one half of the 1990s duo Cibo Matto, who used numerous samples in
their work—tells us, “We were always buying records, searching, searching, and then
sometimes we find, ‘Oh, a Silver Apples record!’ And then we find this one very short part,
‘There, that bass line!’” This process of searching for sounds is called “crate digging,” and it’s
central to sample-based music. She emphasizes, “To find the right one or two seconds of
sound—that's a lot of work.” Trugoy, a member of De La Soul, explains the haphazard ways he
looks for potential samples: “I could be walking in the mall and I might hear something, or in a
store, something being played in the store, and say, ‘Wow that sounds good.’ Or a sound in an
elevator, you know, elevator music, ‘That sounds good.’ If it sounds good and feels good, then
that’s it. It doesn’t matter if it was something recent or outdated, dusty, obscure, and, you know,
weird.”
Harry Allen provides another motivation for why sample-based artists seek out older
sounds. “Many aficionados look for that sound, the ‘warmth’ of analog equipment,” he says, “to
bring what they call ‘a more human sound’ back. It’s an interesting way of describing
technology: human.” Lawrence Ferrara, a New York University musicologist and sampling
expert, says that hip-hop producers “want to retain the richly analog sound that they really can't
recreate unless they're going to use some kind of device that we don't use anymore in studios. So
they want that particular sound.” Music historian David Sanjek maintains that sampling artists
often are looking for sounds that offer a certain historical resonance. “I think the ways in which
samples get chosen are often because there’s a particular sound that people associate with an
era,” Sanjek says. “So I think, for example, people will hear the whacking of [Sly & the Family
Stone’s] Larry Graham’s slap back bass style. Probably a significant number of people won’t
know Larry Graham from a hole in the ground, but they’ll hear that sound and it conjures up an
earlier period—the 60s, the 70s.” On a similar note, hip-hop producer and MC Aesop Rock tells
us, “That’s what makes it fun. It’s cool to be able to mix different decades together, you know?”
Some critics of sampling believe that if these hip-hop producers were truly creative, they
would bring in session musicians to play a guitar riff, or a flute melody, or a drum break. But that
is kind of missing the point, because many believe that there is aesthetic value in using a
particular sound. “What comes from a dusty old record has a different type of feel to it that
allows you to create a sense of agedness,” says Jeff Chang, emphasizing the aesthetic value of
sampling. “The main reason I still sample is, tonally,” DJ Abilities says. “I want the sound of it.”
Even if one could exactly recreate a guitar riff, it is a moot point for many hip-hop producers,
because they want to access the sonic qualities that can only be found on a particular old record.
They are looking for that certain kind of timbre, a certain kind of aura that signifies, for instance,
an old guitar sound taken from a 1970s funk-rock record. “There’s something about sound
popping on a record,” Mr. Len says. “You can almost smell the smoke in the air and hear, like,
the griminess of a great sample on an ashy-ass record.”