Beat Making: Sampling

Beat Making: Sampling

When making a beat, you definitely have to lay down a melody on top of your drums, but where are you going to get this melody for your beat? The first beat makers of hip hop started out by sampling both their drums and melodies, and putting them together into a beat. To this day, the best of the best producers are heavy samplers.

Sampling is basically taking a part or section of an audio or song and using it in your beat. Some might start out by taking a 1 or 2 bar section from a song and using it for their beat. Some might get more creative by taking this loop and chopping it into pieces and rearranging these pieces. Some might take a really really small section of a song and use it as a background sound effect or for ambiance in their beat. The creativity is almost endless; the sample and its quality is the only limit here.

Why sample in your beat making process? For your beat, you'll want the best sounding sounds. Most of the time, your sound library will not sound authentic, because many sounds are synthesized or compressed, reducing the overall quality. You do NOT want these cheap sounds on your beats right? Sampling comes in handy because if you look in the right places, you'll find sounds that you'll never achieve with your own sound library, or even with your own skills. Lets face it: there has been decades of beautiful, quality music that just sounds amazing. Sampling allows you to add that hint of amazingness to your beats.

For beat makers, sampling is an art. Some people do look at sampling like stealing because the melody composition is not your work, but there is a huge creative process that goes into the idea of sampling. Chopping, pitch changing, mixing, ect is a very complicated process that many won't understand; some producers manipulate the sample to the point that you can't recognize the sample at all. Every producer should get involved in some sampling at one point of their beat making journey; not only is it a direction to take your beats, but it also enriches your knowledge of past music. This gives you an education of all the music you may have missed in your lifetime, and this education is important to your skill level in music.

Sampling is important to everyone's beat making process, whether it's in the overall sound of the beat, or in the education process that comes with sampling. Consider sampling in your journey as a beat maker.