The art of sampling by preMise

A short article by preMise about choosing, chopping and eq'ing samples

A little about sampling.....

When it comes to properly sampling a classic to create a complete hip-hop track with all of the elements necessary (drums, instrumentation, bass elements, vocal cuts)-- the first thing to do is sit down in your living room and listen to the piece of music front to back, 2-3 times. As you do this, take notes (notable crescendos and bridges, vocal lines, pace/time/step, etc).

After you have, you are ready to chop...

The first chop should be the hook. Make sure you cue the chop at the downbeat mark, because if you don't then you will have a world of frustration with syncing up your beat to the sample. After you have cued the hook chop and created a new wave clip out of it, you need to open your stretch/resampling tool and experiment with it to get a hip-hop tempo for the track. This step may take time because some pieces will need sped up, and some slowed down. Your musical ear will determine this.

Once you have found a pace and layed some simple hats and snares to frame your work with your MPC or software sequencer, you are ready for the fun. You should spend time making a lot of various chops (refer to your notes from step 1) from which you will eventually pick to use in your composition. I typically make 20-30 chops, of small, medium, and long sizes. There are times when these are easy to recognize and identify, depending on the piece you are chopping, and times when it's not so easy. Some classics are organized chaos and some follow a musical framework. Again, this is something you will learn with experience. *Important to chop drums from the original piece as well, not just instruments and vocals*

The next step involves cooking up your stew, but first you must EQ the samples. It's important to learn about dynamic EQ's, parametric EQ's and FFT Filters. These are a producer/engineers best friend. It's what seperates the men from the boys.

After you EQ your bass elements, vocal elements, and instrumentation from your chops, take a listen through them and place them in diff areas of your beat. Experiment, tweak, add reverses to some samples, and utilize the echo tool, but make sure the echos are on time with your beat. Tweak the time knob for this.

Once you create the best possible loop with your chops, it's highly recommended that you do another loop for an intro. Hiphop fans love a good buildup, especially for the soulful tracks. Plus it makes your music more dynamic.

Do all of this and then make sure you spend even more time mixing down the final product. All of that tediuos work is useless without an industry-quality mix. You don't need high-end tools to get a solid mix, just good monitors and a powerful PC.

This was just a small blurb for you producers who always wanted to do something like this, but were overwhelmed on where to start. It's a long process, which requires patience and vision, but if you have the talent and the tools, nothing's stopping you.

To recap:

**Listen/take notes, Chop Hook/identify tempo, create numerous chops, EQ, Experiment, Finalize format, MIX**

Happy New Year. I wish blessings and good fortune to all of you.

For an example of the method, check "The PA Hustler" at WWW.PREMS-DENN.COM.

If there are any details any of you would like to add, please do. This can be stickied after more detailed replies too.

-Prem