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What's your approach to sampling? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've been getting in to sampling more over the last couple of years, as I've moved to focus more on hip-hop. Really keen on grungy boom-bap beats, and I'm enjoying the workflow of having samples limit my knob tweaking.

I do find actually finding samples a struggle sometimes, and also knowing how and where to use them. Trial and error works, eventually, but sometimes the error part drags on and gets a bit off-putting. So I'm wondering about approaches or ways of thinking about it that might improve my hit rate.

Any thoughts/tips/questions/rants?

Edit: to be clear, I'm not only interest in hip-hop, or hip-hop suitable sampling approaches. I'm interested in sampling methods for any scenario.

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[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

How I find samples:

Usually I just watch movies/tv shows/ play video games and if it sounds cool I just sample it:

  • From youtube: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp. I can share some CLI commands I've written, if people are interested.
  • If I want to record from my computer, there's Audacity: https://www.audacityteam.org/download/
  • Also, if I like the sounds from some media, I google the sample CD's they used. (for example, that's how I found out Skinny Puppy had an official sample CD, which was used in Rayman 3)

If you want something that's royalty-free:

Where to use them:

Honestly still experimenting myself.

  1. Usually, my process for making music is to focus on structure first, add details later (this includes samples)
  2. While working, I just put time markers where I think a certain TYPE of sample might sound good (e.g. add vocals at 1:28)
  3. Once I get the structure of the song down pat, I come back later and add the samples (among other details).

It helps to have your samples organized, so that you can just search your harddrive for "vocal" or "drum loop" and quickly find what you want.

Edit: One more thing: I usually consider "finding samples + synth presets" to be a separate exercise from making music. So I'll allocate about an hour a week to just finding cool sounds and organizing them for later. The point is, I do not do this while actually making music; in theory the sounds should all be ready for me by that point.

[-] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

Lots of good stuff in here!

The point about separating out sample finding time from making music is really good. I often find myself in the middle of making a track, and think "I really could use a sample of X here", and then go off down a rabbit hole of search (and rarely finding something appropriate).

Actually grabbing and using the samples is much easier than finding them, IMO.. crate-digging style sampling is more miss than hit for me so far. I do get the feeling that I should be trying to slow down, and approach each potential sample-source track more deliberately though..

I did find https://samplette.io/ recently, which is pretty cool. Like an automated youtube crate digger, and you can filter by lots of parameters, like genre, number of views, etc.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

I forgot where I heard that tip about finding samples separately, but once I started doing that I never went back.

TIL about the term, crate-digging. I guess that's what I tried doing fairly recently when I visited a Goodwill for CDs. That said, I didn't buy any CDs when I felt it would take too long to find something useful.

samplette seems like a good resource for this style of sampling, thanks for sharing.

That reminds me, have you listened to the album Endtroducing..... by DJ Shadow? Pretty much the entire album is composed of samples through crate-digging.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Shadow is a favourite, I've been listening to him for nearly 20 years. I went to see him last year. He's fucking next level though, I can't comprehend the patience it would require to do what he does. Blockhead is similar.

If you're in to that stuff, you REALLY should check out Kognitif's Soul Food Album - IMO the most under-rated instrumental hip-hop album ever, I love it so much.

I've been really digging El-P's production lately. It seems a little bit simpler, less going on, but it hits super hard. Still requires years to develop that that taste for what samples should go where, I think.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Alright, I'll check them out. Thanks for the recommendations!

this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
11 points (92.3% liked)

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