Artists that have used samplers as a creative compositional tool

i think using the amen break in full is more of an editorial choice than a compositional one. like picking out a piece of carrot cake at a buffet. to be compositional, you'd have to chop it beyond recognition, like mixing that carrot cake with froyo to make some kind of carrot cake smoothie.

You mean like 99% of dnb tracks ever?

if the original artist couldn't successfully sue you for swiping a drum break because you've chopped it beyond all recognition, I'd say you're safely in the compositional zone.

lol @ appealing to legal rulings

i prefer non-creative compositional tools

if there's anyone who knows about making aesthetic judgments, it's lawyers amirite

is this the part where we get to rehash the Englebert Humperdinck vs. Biz Markie

ODB used to stand for old dirty barrister

oh man that old thread, jeezus, memory lane right there:

James may just give up at once. If you are looking for good and actually musically sophisticated hip-hop, then that is not going to happen. And the responses in this thread show why. Hip-hop are doomed to stay shit forever, because the hip-hop audience has got this sick idea that musical sophistication is "white" (=bad).

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Monday, November 17, 2003 8:49 PM (8 years ago)

"to be compositional, you'd have to chop it beyond recognition"

yeah, philip, uhhhhhh, never mind...

to be compositional, you'd have to chop it beyond recognition

But the Amen Break IS chopped; it's a tiny drum break that has been sped up, or slowed down, and recontextualized... and that, in my mind, is a creative compositional tool. I'm not understanding this whole thread.

still think this is one of nate's finest moments:

1) Original poster James picks misleading/provocative thread title and couches what would otherwise be a harmless inquiry about experimental rap in the dangerous area of "rap on the whole is stagnant and I want the newness".
2) The usual suspects mock this. Most of us are all "ok, fine, pfhsgh" because we're familiar with these posters. ddrake initially chimes in with "instruments in rap /= progressive" and gets little if any real hostility.
3) ddrake then mistakes "progressive/experimental" for "white", flings out a "you know that's what you really mean" equivalent ("admit it") and suddenly the tone of Typical ILM Prog-Rap Mockery gets a bit weird
4) Ned sez "because instruments are white! oh wait" and ddrake fires back "U R NOT OF TEH FUNNIE"
5) ddrake: "Seriously though, unless you actually know the hip hop history, which it sounds like you don't, I'd wait to listen to "prog" hip hop. " [emphasis mine]
6) A couple more joke posts, a couple geniune attempts to steer the thread into actual topical coherence ("Dalek?"), J0hn being all "Ned OTM"
7) dd: "Oh give me a break! Dilute, my friends, dilute!" Then he goes onto some snotty "prog is unfun" jibe.
8) Jokes jokes jokes. The nate that is not me says "The twisted part is that some people actually like challenging their brains."
9) dd: "Rush! Yes! Prog stupid! Also read it, motherfuckers!"
10) not me nate: "But Braxton/Cornel/Toni Morrison..."
11) Ned to o. nate: "ddrake will get mad at you now and claim you don't understand hip-hop. You are so burned. *cue ddrake: 'Ha ha, where is your sense of humor, dork, etc.'*"
12) "you're out of your league, donnie."
13) dd shortly later: "Blues People is a more incredible work than anything anyone on ILM has accomplished...a more important work as well. That I can't believe more of you haven't read." [here is where my arrogance alarm goes off.]
14) Ned sums up the crux of the issue: "Remind me again how you've assumed you know what everyone here has read/listened to/thought again? I missed the proof of your omniscience here."
15) Some stupid bullshit ensues
16) Wooster is namedropped
17) Accusations of privacy intrusions fly
18) The thread officially becomes ridiculous
19) Everyone tries to explain to ddrake why they're mad at him
20) ddrake gets mad defensive
21) I forgot to mention, blount has a field day
22) OWNED
23) A failed attempt to return to original discussion in the thread
24) ddrake: "So "whitening" in the case in which I am using it refers to the values inherent in the musicians' musical ideas. White CULTURE rather than white PEOPLE."
25) Oh no
26) nickalicious and scott seward simmer things down somewhat
27) Perry sums everything up neatly
28) Numerous thread-locking requests go out
29) Oh yeah, there's some stuff about Amiri Baraka in here too (c/o J0hn Darn1elle)
30) Someone named "Big Boi" stomps in, says "prog rap is shit!" only in much wordier terms, resorts to name-dropping the Strokes, then eventually disappears
31) "Ned and his ethugs" are mentioned
32) People start backtracking in an attempt to recap this thread
33) This goes on for a while
34) There is a delightful Popeye intermission
35) An ugly goulash of meta-spastic he-said-he-said "no no no I'M RIGHT I WIN" nonsense and arrogant written-in-stone declarations of what various genres TRULY AND REALLY ARE AND AREN'T, DAMN IT
36) This actually goes on for a while
37)
38) more pictures, which ddrake calls "unclever"
39) see #35
40) I post this
41) I feel dirty

― nate detritus (natedetritus)

dan, i wouldn't worry about it. its all crazytalk.

"But the Amen Break IS chopped; it's a tiny drum break that has been sped up, or slowed down, and recontextualized..."

those are hallmarks of editorials. composition tends to be less dependent on source material. if a song can retain its identity by removing the source material and applying the transformations to something else, that would also be another good test, though it really fails in the case where dr. dre goes out and hires session musicians to recreate the sample because he doesn't want to pay some licensing fee.

where do you get this nonsense

everything is dependent on source material, whether you're composing for brass or a drum machine or on a laptop

"where do you get this nonsense"
probably some lawrence lessig blog

"everything is dependent on source material, whether you're composing for brass or a drum machine or on a laptop"
it's not dependent if you can swap the material without being destructive to the piece. in those cases the samples/instruments/etc are incidental.

define destructive

i'm so confused right now. where is geir, by the way?

destructive meaning the song falls apart. e.g. singing dogs could use any samples of dogs and it would probably still sound like singing dogs. there wasn't a james brown of dogs in there that really made the song shine.

i'm beyond confused now. its like a spiral of confusion. the dogs really lost me.

i dunno if singing dogs is a good example though, since it's really jingle bells. (though jingle bells remains jingle bells whether it's brass horns or dogs singing it)

So when Elisabeth Esselink creates her Solex record from chopped up bits of albums she been unable to sell in her store, what is that? Just "looping sections of music just to sing over?" A creative compositional tool? Editorial? She could swap the drum break she found for this song with the Amen drum break, and then what? I can't follow this at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE8dLFCNfyA&feature=relmfu

i'd argue though, that the fact that the singing dogs author chose jingle bells was also incidental. it would have worked just as well if he chose "we wish you a merry bark-mas"

what if I sample a brass horn imitating a dog singing jingle bells

over the Funky Drummer break

f f f f f f f f f funky
drummer

re: solex, if solex doesn't care where the samples come from, if they are in fact chosen by random process, then it's totally compositional.

you have a lot of rules

Original poster long gone I see lol

this thread gets the
http://www.musikiwi.com/design/images/artistes/15725/477772.jpg

amen

can mods change the thread title to "Nunez on Composition"?

if you care where the elements of your composition come from, then it isn't a composition. got it. i learn something new every day.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_U4Lhuoqw-zI/S_Pt4ptBYwI/AAAAAAAAAVg/mnNV8FcqAu4/s320/warning-brain-explosion-zone.png

lol hurting

Nunez is on some platonic/geirbot shit here

"if you care where the elements of your composition come from, then it isn't a composition."
you can still care, like if you made a recipe for a cake, you'd probably want some really nice, locally sourced samples for the ingredients, but the cake should still work with supermarket grocery samples.

http://covers.openlibrary.org/w/id/590639-L.jpg

i think a bunch of rap guys did this already

like if you made a recipe for a cake, you'd probably want some really nice, locally sourced samples for the ingredients, but the cake should still work with supermarket grocery samples.

you have never baked a cake and I claim my $5

I think a bunch of posters said that already

does cornbread count?

xpost
i think you're a buttface already

so to extend the baking metaphor, hip-hop is like a cake made out of cookie crisp or something. The little cookies are already baked!

btw jiffy still tastes pretty good next to the scratch-built cornbreads. just sayin.

orig poster wld have been better off leaving 'compositional' out of it altogether and saying 'Artists that have used samplers as an interesting tool in a non-groove-oriented way' or something.

or something indeed.

"hip-hop is like a cake made out of cookie crisp or something."

cookie crisp cake sounds amazing!
but dr dre would pay krusteaz to make generic cookie crisp to avoid paying the cookie crisp corporation $...

also he would market bass-heavy, overpriced spoons to eat this cake with.

EATS by Dr. Dre

you're not going to endear your way out of this one with humor