Do samples kill the *real* electronic music?

[Winstontaneous]

It's amazing how quickly the tide turns. Sampling was responsible for the single most radical musical movement of the 20th Century

Cool, I had no idea that sampling was responsible for the birth of blues, jazz, and rock & roll from African Americans' painful history; or is that Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" debut? Now I know! How many bits did their samplers use?

[whyterabbyt]

It would appear you have_no_idea what Stockhausen or Cage did.

Pity that the historical evidence from the past ten-plus years here is that cron is one of the rather few people around here who does.

But hey, nobody with a different opinion from you could ever know what they're talking about, right?

[cron]

Granted, saying "the single" was a mistake. I'm not disputing that there weren't other radical movements, but none had the same instantaneous, permanent, transformative cultural impact at anything like the speed of hip-hop which clinches the matter for me. If we consider music by sonics alone, fair enough - I'd put plenty of things above it. However I think its easy to lose sight of hip-hop's conceptual strangeness given the extent to which it runs through nearly all of today's popular music. It was 'out-there' one moment, it was everywhere the next.

[sjm]

Gotta be Rock 'n' Roll. There is a before and after Rock n Roll. I don't think we measure hip-hop the same way. It's like punk. Sure, it changed a lot of things in popular music and had a noticeable impact, but it's not like it absolutely turned everything on its head the way the RnR revolution did. I'm not just talking music, but society as a whole. Compare the crooners of the period before ~55 with Chuck Berry, and how it paved the way for the whole sexual and cultural revolution followed. It transcended music in a way that hip-hop never did.

I'd also posit that second revolution in the mid-60s once again completely transformed the concept of what pop music was in a way that we are still feeling the impact today.

I'm not sure what revolutionary, transformative cultural impact of hip-hop you're referring to though, maybe I'm not seeing the woods for trees. Rock n Roll (and what it spawned) changed cultures across the world; I don't think the same can be said about hip-hop. If today's popular music owes its roots to anything, it's RnR. Lots of songs have absolutely no hip-hop roots. I'm not sure where you get the idea that it permeates popular music everywhere, because that simply isn't true.

I'd also make an argument for jazz having a far greater impact than hip-hop. Hey, I like hip-hop. But a watershed moment in musical history? Grandmaster Flash had more of an impact on pop culture than Elvis? I doubt most people's Grandmas have even heard of him.

There's a reason you don't hear PE/De la Soul mentioned with the same reverence as, say Chuck Berry, The Beatles or Miles Davis. And that reason is legacy and impact. At the end of the day, hip-hop is still just some guy talking over someone else's record, after all... /flippant

[cron]

Great points. I guess I always saw rock and roll as being more of a slow evolution to a point over about 50 years rather than a lightning bolt that came from nowhere (although I'm hardly a rock historian). You've got gospel and blues, Sister Rosetta Tharpe building on that, other people building on her...

At the end of the day, hip-hop is still just some guy talking over someone else's record, after all... /flippant

Hee hee. This is exactly the conceptual strangeness I was talking about! It feels as though, if you'd described that formula to someone in the early 70s, they'd have assumed it was some avant garde development happening in a university that would never have taken off. By the early 80s, there was no need to describe it any more.

[sjm]

Great points. I guess I always saw rock and roll as being more of a slow evolution to a point over about 50 years rather than a lightning bolt that came from nowhere (although I'm hardly a rock historian). You've got gospel and blues, Sister Rosetta Tharpe building on that, other people building on her...

My understanding - not having been around at the time - was that Rock 'n' Roll was a great case of right time, right place.

After the war, much of Europe was in a state of destruction, but the US had been spared any mainland action. Manufacturing switched from war machine to consumer goods. The soldiers slowly began returning home, often after many years away. They'd risked their lives and now just wanted to enjoy the good times. There was cash to burn. Cars to buy. The old order was being overturned. The economy boomed. Those once 19 year-old kids came back from Europe, had money to spend, and weren't going to take kindly to some 45 year old who hadn't seen action telling them how to behave. And with the economy booming, teenagers also started becoming a viable market.

The fact that RnR was so vilified surely only helped assure its ascendency is a climate like this. The overt sexual nature of the music and lyrics that so shocked the elders was so appealing to the young generation. While this is of course true of any generation - and hip-hop's explicit lyrics generated no shortage of controversy - I think the generational differences were a lot more pronounced. And of course things were very different back then; the pill was first approved in the 60s, so sexual encounters could very easily have real world consequences for those involved. We take easy-to-use contraception for granted these days, that we probably can't imagine how its absence would affect everyone's attitude to casual sex.

So RnR was the soundtrack for a profound shift in attitude that IMO continued into the 60s (where is hip-hop's Woodstock?), and much later in many European countries (10-20 years behind the US due to the war).

Of course the seeds of RnR were sown much earlier, and who knows what would have happened without WW2. It ended up putting a lot of things on hold.

At the end of the day, hip-hop is still just some guy talking over someone else's record, after all... /flippant

Hee hee. This is exactly the conceptual strangeness I was talking about! It feels as though, if you'd described that formula to someone in the early 70s, they'd have assumed it was some avant garde development happening in a university that would never have taken off. By the early 80s, there was no need to describe it any more.

I can think of at least one song from 1969 that was more or less that... And that everyone knows.

[cron]

I can think of at least one song from 1969 that was more or less that... And that everyone knows.

Oh, interesting! Racked my brains and the best I've got is William Shatner's first record from around that time. Something else?

[sjm]

John Lennon/plastic ono band. Very fitting, setting as we are talking about revolution, evolution etc... Ring a bell?

[Tj Shredder]

Granted, saying "the single" was a mistake. I'm not disputing that there weren't other radical movements, but none had the same instantaneous, permanent, transformative cultural impact at anything like the speed of hip-hop which clinches the matter for me. If we consider music by sonics alone, fair enough - I'd put plenty of things above it. However I think its easy to lose sight of hip-hop's conceptual strangeness given the extent to which it runs through nearly all of today's popular music. It was 'out-there' one moment, it was everywhere the next.

Strange I must have missed something, until today I can't distinguish HipHop from HopHip, Schlager, Pop or any other mainstream. It had no impact on me at all, I love usually any kind of style, but the word hiphop doesn't ring a bell... If there is a piece of music you would assign to hip-hop and I like it as well, I would most likely assign it to a different style of music...

I think Xenakis was radical. He did not create a movement at all, but had an impact on me...

Music is personal not historical...

To add to this, I can't remember either that any style had any impact on me, but musicians had. Some of them are assosiated with a style...

[elxsound]

Granted, saying "the single" was a mistake. I'm not disputing that there weren't other radical movements, but none had the same instantaneous, permanent, transformative cultural impact at anything like the speed of hip-hop which clinches the matter for me. If we consider music by sonics alone, fair enough - I'd put plenty of things above it. However I think its easy to lose sight of hip-hop's conceptual strangeness given the extent to which it runs through nearly all of today's popular music. It was 'out-there' one moment, it was everywhere the next.

Actually this seems to be a fair assessment comparatively and relatively speaking. Hip Hop/Rap's ascension in popularity and the cultural impact was explosive when compared to every other genre.

Sampling can also be considered a whole other topic that was just explosive in terms of its influence in music (not specific to any genre).

Today's heavily saturated loop and sample market combined with cheaper access to music making tools and easy access to self publication are simply a current issue. The thing to remember is that people have been making terrible music for many years, but time has a way of filtering out the bad music in favor of better or more memorable music.

Twenty years from now, or even 40 years from now will most likely provide the same result.

[UltimateOutsider]

When I hear the word "samples" I think of one-shot drum hits, sound effects, single-note instrument recordings, and 1-to-4-bar drum loops. But that's not what the article linked in the OP was talking about.

They were talking about those "construction kit" things where it's basically an already produced song (I think some even include project files), and the "samples" are just pre-recorded, pre-produced segments of stems. You can hear this shit all over SoundCloud; 15-year-old kids uploading professional sounding tracks, but without any signature sound or sense of cohesion across their work.

[cron]

I think Xenakis was radical. He did not create a movement at all, but had an impact on me...

Music is personal not historical...

In personal terms, Xenakis had a huge impact on me when I first discovered him. I heard La Légende D'Eer diffused through a concert hall in London around a decade back and the sheer violence of the sound was intoxicating. Sheets of pummelling noise from every direction. I'd heard nothing like it in the electroacoustic canon. It reminded me more of seeing Merzbow live than anything else.

[donkey tugger]

I can think of at least one song from 1969 that was more or less that... And that everyone knows.

Oh, interesting! Racked my brains and the best I've got is William Shatner's first record from around that time. Something else?

[soundbylaura]

When I hear the word "samples" I think of one-shot drum hits, sound effects, single-note instrument recordings, and 1-to-4-bar drum loops. But that's not what the article linked in the OP was talking about.

They were talking about those "construction kit" things where it's basically an already produced song (I think some even include project files), and the "samples" are just pre-recorded, pre-produced segments of stems. You can hear this shit all over SoundCloud; 15-year-old kids uploading professional sounding tracks, but without any signature sound or sense of cohesion across their work.

I definitely did not have a signature sound or sense of cohesion across my work at age 15 either aside from "loud and awful".

But I loved it so I took lessons and went to college and learned some stuff and now I write music for a living and a I have a signature sound and a sense of cohesion across my work.

Who cares if someone uses construction kits? Who cares if that 15 year old kid picks up a guitar or violin or oboe and they sound terrible because they're just getting started and that's generally how beginners sound? Or a 50 year old, for that matter? People can create music any way they want. There are no rules. There's room enough in the world for all of it.

[camplo]

Trying to stick with some of the text of the OP
"Is music production *that* easy now? Did what we've been repeating about easiness of music making come true?"

I was really insulted as I watched sampling take its place in music production. I've been playing the drums since 7 and you mean to tell me this asshole can just get a recording of someone else playing and slap his name on it. This guy sampled a measure out of a jazz song with a drummer who's been playing for 40 years and now the Samplers song has the swing that only 40 years of hard life tears and sweat, dedication to a craft could produce? GTFO...lol, nowaday, its the way for so many.

Here's the meat. Its like picking out an outfit, some people are gifted at dressing a person.....or a song, if all the proper ingredients are made readily available. Would you call a chef any other name whether or not he prepared his garlic salt starting at the planting of a garlic plant? If you give a person amazing ingredients is he guaranteed to actually make a dish thats palatable?

Those of us who took the time to produce from an instrument what others seek in a sample have the advantage and always will. A Sampler is limited by its selection, a musician is limited by his or her own ideas...The technicality it takes to play an instrument to a professional level that you would want to actually share and sell it is higher than one who just programs, so basically the musician could easily learn to program but it don't work so well the other way around.

So if not made clear....NO, samples could never kill anything because the real musicians and artist, the ones with real talent will always out perform another less talented person if they both have the same resources. "There are no rules. There's room enough in the world for all of it." I agree with this too, and it is why art is so great its been proven by so many great musicians already. So if a person has a gifted ear to pick out samples and piece together a hiphop beat or dance track that is a hit on the charts even though he can barely play the beat he programmed on a desk with two hands let alone a drumset...more power to him. Not to mention, in a lot of the music, the sample plays a roll by being manipulated. I have sampled myself many times, with great success. Some of my best songs are made from samples of songs that I created without sample...