The art of sampling, or sampling, is pure craftsmanship. The technique, whose first hints can be seen in musique concrete in the 1940s, formalized and expanded starting in the 1980s, becoming a cornerstone of hip hop culture and production. Not a theft, but a noble and popular reuse – it is essential here to remember that those who sampled could not often afford instruments, professional studios and a whole series of technical equipment – which from the African-American community finally spread within the most disparate genres, up to to become the daily activity of producers thanks to the diffusion of laptops and music production programs. Even today, as in the past, however, sampling is a mix of musical culture (and aptitude for ‘digging’, the search for the perfect sample), taste and – above all – technique: only the best producers really know how to master this art.
These are the elements that fascinate artists such as WISM, producer and multi-instrumentalist from Molfetta who over the years has made himself known as Franco126’s session musician. The boy is an admirer of the art of sampling to which, on his debut album, Patience, has made extensive use of recovering obscure passages such as Stroll by Marc4, a group of jazz musicians from the RAI orchestra of the 60s and 70s, or excerpts from the soundtrack of the film The chats & the souris of 1975, written by the Oscar-winning French composer Francis Lai.
Sampling, however, is not only technique, but also and above all a matter of the heart. In this small guide, WISM has collected 8 samples which, in addition to being virtuosic, he particularly loves, trying to highlight the flexibility of this technique, its different nuances and the contribution that the right sample can give to a beat.
“Accordion” Madvillains (2004)
Producer: Madlib
Sample: Daedelus – experience (2002)
Let’s start with a simple but super effective beat on a fundamental record for alternative hip hop. The beat of Accordion is basically super old school but Madlib’s choice to sample the accordion loop contained in experience gives the song a truly unique sound. In addition to the timbre and harmony, the noise of the instrument keys creates a syncopated percussive sound that fits in a fluctuating way with the squantized drum (ie off the grid, ‘crooked’) and a super deep bass that enters in the middle of the piece. Only three elements and the intricate rhymes of MF DOOM are enough to get a real mine. Few ingredients but all of the highest quality.
Madlib sampling starts at 00:40 of the original song.
“Touch The Sky” Kanye West feat. Lupe Fiasco (2005)
Producer: Just Blaze
Sample: Curtis Mayfield – Move On Up (1970)
Soul and funk have always been beatmakers’ favorite genres, along with jazz, to create hip hop instrumentals. There you can find excellent rhythm sections, great vocal performances, rich melodies and harmonies of horns, pianos, guitars and strings. Curtis Mayfield’s song is a real pearl ready to be sampled for a truly incredible beat: Just Blaze perfectly chops the horn section, inserts small vocal incursions and programs a drum set with a lot of groove. The sound of the beat is very much in line with the productions of Kanye’s first era which with his bars completes a real classic.
Here the sample breakdown, or the explanation of how the original song was sampled.
“Crime Pays” Freddie Gibbs & Madlib (2019)
Producer: Madlib
Sample: Walt Barr feat. Julie long – Free Spirit (1979)
The collaborations of Freddie Gibbs and Madlib have always guaranteed quality both in terms of rap and beats and this is the one that excites me the most. Madlib samples Free Spirit by Walt Barr, a song characterized by rhodes pianos, classical guitar and very sober drums to give a lounge touch to the song while Freddie Gibbs raps about crime and drugs; a very interesting contrast. A particular feature is that the entire chorus is not sung by the rapper but is a vocal part of the sampled song.
Here the sample breakdown.
“Nothin2say” Mike (2020)
Producer: DJ Blackpower
Sample: Moraes Moreira – Alegorical chariot (1984)
The New York rapper oversaw the production of this beat under the pseudonym of Dj Blackpower, sampling the song Alegorical chariot by the Brazilian composer Moraes Moreira. The base consists of two loops speeded up and pitched up without any other instrumental addition: the first acts as an intro, the second as the main part of the piece. The monotonous flow of the rapper leaves room to focus well on the sample, a lively vocal section. With this song MIKE shows us how even sounds like samba or bossa nova, if sampled in the right way, can become really interesting hip hop beats, with a unique feel.
The two samples used by Mike are located at 00:10 and 00:50 of the original song.
“Tropic Of Cancer” Panda Bears (2015)
Producer: Panda Bear
Sample: P.Tchaikovsky – Pas De Deux (1892)
A use of sampling in an experimental context, much more ethereal, without any rhythmic element, quite distant from the typically hip hop approach. Tropic Of Cancer is a really poignant piece in which Noah Lennox (real name of Panda Bear) talks about accepting his father’s death from brain cancer. To support such a tough argument, the artist samples the very delicate harp notes that the Russian composer Tchaikovsky wrote for a passage from The Nutcracker. Panda Bear’s delicate voice and the addition of synthetic and ambient noises color the sample, building a candid and dreamy atmosphere. On several occasions Panda bear and the Animal Collective have sampled classical music for their songs: this is certainly the most significant and exciting episode.
Sampling starts at the beginning of the song.
“Azucar” Earl Sweatshirt (2018)
Producer: Navy Blue
Sample: The Main Ingredient – Girl Blue (1973)
Some rap songs by Earl Sweatshirt is a seminal album for experimental hip hop. Very short songs without refrains, only dark bars that rest on hypnotic beats built on often only hinted rhythms. Azucar is one of my favorite tracks from this work: Navy Blue takes a classic 70s soul piece, breaks it down into many small portions and reassembles it in a disorienting collage full of stops, filters and pitches down an octave. A minute and a half labyrinth that Earl fills with his introspection made up of lopsided metrics.
Sample breakdowns here.
“Touch The Sky” Kanye West feat. Lupe Fiasco (2005)
Producers: Kanye West, Che Pope
Samples: Ponderosa Twins Plus One – bound (1971), Brenda Lee – Sweet Nothin’s (1959)
bound 2 is based almost entirely on a sampling of bound by Ponderosa Twins Plus One (the same song will be sampled in 2019 by Tyler, The Creator in A Boy Is A Gun). Gorgeous bass line, brilliant keyboards, but above all an iconic vocal part. When you find such a beautiful sample there is very little to manipulate: a slight pitch down, set in time with the exact bpm and the beat is ready. The sampled vocals of Brenda Lee mark the beginning of the verses, and the end of the song, while in the chorus/bridge the samples disappear and Charlie Wilson’s vocals remain accompanied only by synthetic bass. Above this beat, Kanye, alternating irony and seriousness, speaks to him in a way of loving him, thus creating a truly peculiar closing track for Yeezus, an overall much rougher record, both in terms of sound and topics covered. When a beat contains samples with strong vocals and the rapper manages to fit well into the instrumental created, it often seems like listening to two pieces at the same time, but in perfect harmony with each other: this is one of my favorite sensations in hip hop songs.
The first sample sampled in Touch The Sky starts at 00:15.
The second at 00:02.
“Face to Face” Daft Punk (2001)
Producer: Daft Punk
Samples:
Electric light orchestra – Evil Woman & Can’t I Get You Out of My Head
Alan Parsons Project – Old and Wise & Silence and I
Kenny Loggins and Jim Messina – House at Pooh Corner & Be Free
Dave Mason – All Along the Watchtower
The Doobie Brothers – South City Midnight Lady
Boz Scaggs – You Got Some Imagination
Firefall – Body and Soul
Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg – Tell Me To My Face & Lahaina Luna
Carrie Lucas – Sometimes a love goes wrong
Steppenwolf – Everybody’s Next One
and other unknown samples
In discovery, Daft Punk’s masterpiece album, practically all the songs are based on samples on which the duo played synths, programmed drum machines and sang through vocoders to build a universe halfway between rock, dance and disco with strong electronic veins. In Face-to-face, penultimate track of the disc, we are faced with a real virtuosity of sampling and musical programming. and the approximately 30 seconds of loop that make up the “drop” of the piece we can find an impressive sound collage with more than 15 micro-samples taken from as many songs. Researching, timing, re-tuning and matching all this material in such a meticulous and fluid way is a very complex operation even today; to think that all this was done in the late 90s is just crazy. Especially considering that some samplings have not yet been identified. New videos still appear on YouTube periodically where it is assumed which songs correspond to the missing portions. A puzzle that has now lasted for more than 20 years. Incredible. One of the highest levels achieved with this technique.
All the samples contained in Face To Face, collected here.
