Re:sampling

After writing that post a few day ago about experimenting with the EPS-16+ sampler, I listened to a friend’s podcast which happened to be about sampling as an art form. It got me thinking: there’s definitely something about the overall sound of the early sampling era that is both distinct and difficult to replicate (authentically, IMO) using modern production techniques.

As I mentioned in my post, early samplers could only record a few seconds of audio; you had to build a groove out of many layers of sonic fragments. If you wanted to record longer passages of music (or simply a greater number of different sounds) you had had to lower the sample rate (record at a lower quality setting) to get the best mileage out of the sampler’s limited memory (~1 megabyte in the case of the EPS-16+).  At the same time, recording at a lower sample rate obscured the sounds, making them darker, grainy, distorted.

But as “better” samplers became available for less money, higher fidelity meant samples weren’t necessarily obscured by the act of sampling itself.  Larger storage capacities meant it was possible to assemble entire libraries of crystal-clear samples and long phrases. Both factors would have meant that samples were easier to recognize within a mix unless a producer went out of the way to edit and intentionally obscure them.  Moreover, having long, clear phrases makes it a lot easier to build a solid (though potentially more “derivative”) groove from pre-fabricated parts of other songs.

It makes me wonder what kind of correlation might have existed between the rise of sampling-related lawsuits and improvements in the technology.