Showing posts with label sample. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sample. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 26, 2019

Baby Blues

Cover as future sample.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

Smokestack Lightnins

More from Seattle... nice version of Howlin' Wolf made extra SFTD with the Sonic Youth sample at the end.


Thursday, April 29, 2010

Sample Maps



Blogger/author/musician Ethan Hein has created some sample maps, graphically illustrating the paths of artists and the music they create or sample. Here is one he made for the music of Beyonce, by which I learned of this Betty Wright sample on "Upgrade U".

Many other sample maps can be found on Ethan's Flickr page here. Including a map of all the sample RZA uses on the GZA album "Liquid Swords"—I never would've heard the Frank Zappa in there without this.


Thursday, April 22, 2010

Bar-rels

Jay-Z has history of using other rappers lyrics, especially Notorious B.I.G., in his own rhymes, leading to accusations of theft, Nas using it against him during their feud on the song Ether. Jay-Z defends himself on "What More Can I Say". He claims when he uses one of Biggie's lyrics he is only honoring his fellow Brooklynite, rapping "I'm not a biter/ I'm a writer/ For myself and others/ I say a B.I.G. verse I'm only biggin' up my brother". The line that follows is one of B.I.G.'s from the song "Rap Phenomenon". "What More Can I Say" also uses the same MFSB sample as "Keep Your Hands High", by Tracey Lee and Biggie.

The B.I.G lyric Jay-Z borrows is "The rings and things you sing about, bring 'em out. It's hard to yell when the bar-rel's in your mouth." A few years later, that lifted lyric was sampled as the chorus for T.I.'s hit "Bring 'Em Out", no obvious reference made to Biggie's original line.


Wednesday, April 21, 2010

Reps

R.I.P Guru. It's sad that he apparently made a deathbed renunciation of his Gang Starr partner, DJ Premier, as they have this inspired bit of sampling as a highlight of their legacy.


Monday, April 19, 2010

Caverns

I saw last week that Liquid Liquid is back together and played on Jimmy Fallon. [via stereogum]

The song is now best known for being "sampled" for Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines (Don't Do It)". The bassline was in fact replayed by Sugar Hill houseband bassist Doug Wimbish.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Get Moneys

On the new Erykah Badu album, "New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh", there is a song called "Turn Me Away (Get MuNNy)". She more-than-half-half covers the Sylvia Striplin song "You Can't Turn Me Away" (slightly different lyrics), but she also lifts the chorus call-out from one of the many songs that samples Striplin, in this case the Junior M.A.F.I.A./Biggie song, "Get Money".

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Dillas

Covers of samples of covers of...

The Roots - Dilla Joints (Mixtape)

SFTD reader Mark passed along this gem—the Roots covering the sample-based tracks of the late J Dilla—pointing out that Roots love to work with "acoustic instrumental imitations of synthesized or computer created sounds." He had first brought this to my attention when the Roots played as Jay-Z's band for his MTV Unplugged, replaying the sample-heavy production of Kanye West, Timbaland, etc. Here is the the acoustic-electronic-acoustic life cycle of a Timbaland sample.



Friday, April 9, 2010

Get Up Offas

In a recent paper, I compare the Roman poet Virgil with James Brown—that is, they both become for those who follow an extremely common source of imitation and sampling. Today's post, like Wednesday's, is a listen-on-demand source list for one of the most heavily used James Brown samples, the horn strikes in "Get Up Offa That Thing", here compiled by cross-referencing the whosampled.com page and Lala. One thing I love about this particular sample is how ridiculously short it is, while still retaining its original character, and how it has become a part of the DJ vernacular, referring both to JB and the sample's long tradition.

The source...



The products (by no means a complete list)...





Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Smash Your Heads

In a paper I'm presenting Friday at Rutgers—a comparison of "sampling" techniques in Latin patchwork poems called centos and mashups—I use Girl Talk's "Smash Your Head" as an example of the mashup aesthetic. I decided to put together a complete listen-on-demand source list for the song by cross-referencing the the wikipedia article and the Lala catalog. More paper-related info to follow.

The product...


The sources...











Passin' Me By - The Pharcyde
[For a sample trail of the "Passin' Me By," see this post.]




Saturday, April 3, 2010

Aspectacles

I spotted this Tuesday in Jon Savage's Guardian review of the upcoming Krautrock sampler, Elektronische Musik. Q-Tip is no stranger to a well-turned sample, but the decision to slow down this Can sample is truly inspired. (Slowed down, and still not slow!)


Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Volumes

Sampling samples has been a recent interest of mine. What I love about this one is that Girl Talk seems to have latched on to M|A|R|R|S as a precursor of his style of mashups and possibly entering into a game of sampling one-upsmanship. Here is Girl Talk's sample of M|A|R|R|S' sample of Eric B and Rakim.



Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Idioteques

Radiohead's Kid A, and "Idioteque" specifically, pushed the band decisively in its avantish, electronica-soundplay direction. What I didn't realize until recently (after following up a song blog comments from the Willens post earlier on Monday) that "Idioteque" was sample-based.

Part of the story is here on Paul Lansky's site. A sample from his composition, "Mild und Leise", based itself on a theme from Wagner's (in)famous Tristan chord, forms the harmonic center of Radiohead's song.

Mild und Leise - Paul Lansky

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Twos

So much of what's great about this sample is how it takes a transition from one song and makes it the core of the second.


Sunday, February 21, 2010

Robotses

Samplers, synthesizers and drum machines sampling samplers, synthesizers and drum machines.


Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Lonelys

A lot of dubstep washes over me with little effect... here's a track that is shadowy and disorienting, an example of everything that does work in the genre. The vocal sample works hard here, disembodying Diana Ross and leaving her lonely with no hope of resolution...


Thursday, January 7, 2010

Friday, December 25, 2009

Top Samples '00s, #1

Kanye West at his best. Not just samples but a slowly unfolding collage of an entire deconstructed song, a bassline, the variations on a Morrison grunt, a guitar. The unlikely match of source and destination is so strange at first and make so much sense less than five minutes later.


Thursday, December 24, 2009

Top Samples '00s, #2

The Field took the scalpel to Lionel Richie here, chopping "Hello" into CD-skip length microsamples and turning it into sublime dance music.