Day 6 - Sampling By: Eli C.

The main subject for today’s class was sampling. Sampling is a critical technique in the music industry, in which a clip from a sound recording is reused in a new song. This could involve taking the isolated beat, melody, or vocal of a song and using it in a new song, typically by first augmenting it. I arrived at school today, and we began watching a documentary on people’s differing perspectives on the morality of sampling. There were two extreme perspectives displayed in the documentary:

  1. First, was that sampling is morally or legally wrong because it is stealing people’s hard work as a shortcut to producing a song. It is said to be wrong because people are typically not credited or don’t have a royalty when their work is used. This means that even though the artist’s work might be popular when sampled in other songs, the artist could be struggling.


  1. The second perspective is that sampling is morally right and that people shouldn’t be sued for it, because it gives those who are not financially well-off a chance to preserve culture and satisfy a creative interest. 



We learned that sampling first gained popularity in the 1970s in hip-hop due to its affordability during a financial crisis. It became ingrained in the culture of many poor black communities, providing an outlet for creative expression and a cheap alternative to learning an instrument. Music programs had been taken out of poor schools, making it difficult for access to instruments. However, many people had readily available records, which facilitated sampling. We also learned that sampling was used as a form of protest, sometimes incorporating samples from Dr. Martin Luther King’s speeches.


We had a small seminar after the documentary, where we answered questions such as: What are some of the reasons why artists sample? What are your thoughts about sampling? Or Is sampling a creative art form, is it stealing, or both? 


The rest of the day was practically free work time for our own music projects. Half of the day I worked on mixing two different songs together a few times, typically by using the vocals from one song and the music from the other song. For the other half of the day, I attempted to record audio of myself playing an instrument called the “Kalimba.”

In between these two projects, our DJ teacher showed us how to scratch on a DJ set. Scratching is the practice of rewinding an audio clip while DJing to add to the song live.

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