Audio sam­pling in con­tem­po­rary music is a form of bud­ding inno­va­tion that proves not only the evo­lu­tion of the indus­try, but a method to build on cre­ative works that inspire us.  The prac­tice of sam­pling is com­mon in most cre­ative indus­tries, but often less obvi­ous than it is in music.  Music sam­pling hap­pens to receive a poor, dis­taste­ful rep­u­ta­tion sim­ply because of how it’s per­ceived in pop­u­lar cul­ture, rather than under­stand­ing why it is a cre­ative tool.  The crit­ics and intel­lec­tu­als bash the sam­ple for its lack of orig­i­nal­ity. I praise it for its inspi­ra­tional tangibility.

My unique argu­ment is that we all, espe­cially those in cre­ative fields, sam­ple like music pro­duc­ers.  Sam­pling, as it’s embraced in music, just hap­pens to be a more con­crete cita­tion of inspi­ra­tion.  It’s a nod, an ode or respect­ful glance to those that did it before we did.  The sam­ple is why we do what we do.

The sam­ple is observed in a vari­ety of shapes, forms and fre­quen­cies.  Typ­i­cally, a snip­pet of another song is cut out, sped up, slowed down or looped, and finally mashed, forced or ham­mered into new, orig­i­nal sound bite.  Occa­sion­ally, the sam­ple is obvi­ous, even iden­ti­fi­able at first lis­ten.  Other times, the sam­ple is indis­tin­guish­able, tak­ing on a new cre­ative life form of its own.

The hip-hop music indus­try has embraced the audio sam­ple, and has sub­se­quently become an easy tar­get for the so-called crit­ics.  The crit­ics yell that it’s steal­ing.  My response is that it’s shar­ing.  The crit­ics cry that it’s not cre­ative.  I respond that it’s a new type of cre­ative.  Sam­pling is sim­ply fair use of the avail­able tech­nol­ogy to build and advance pre­vi­ous works of art, dis­play­ing lit­tle dif­fer­ence to how we embrace the same tech­nolo­gies in other industries.

My only per­sonal, and admit­tedly obnox­ious issue with sam­pling is the expected pub­lic igno­rance it pro­motes.  For instance, Kanye West (who sam­ples in nearly every one of his songs, some­times dis­taste­fully) rapped on the mon­ster, Just Blaze pro­duced, smash hit “Touch the Sky,” which bor­rowed nearly the entire back­ground instru­men­ta­tion of Cur­tis Mayfield’s “Move on Up.”  Like­wise, the Grammy nom­i­nated song “Paper Planes” by M.I.A. pulled the retro punk-rock intro­duc­tion from the Clash’s “Straight to Hell,” while adding styl­is­tic gun­shots and heavy drums for fla­vor.  Over­all, this is healthy for the indus­try.  But, while these songs have become main­stream hits, the ref­er­ences are ignored by most listeners.

Sam­pling has and con­tin­ues to expand past hip-hop.  Led Zep­pelin, arguably the most inno­v­a­tive rock out­fit in blues rock and heavy metal his­tory, were actu­ally sam­plers of their time.  They bor­rowed rifts, cov­ered jams and even trans­ferred lyrics into their own orig­i­nal music for the record­ing of their sec­ond album.  And, twenty-five years later, the Beastie Boys sam­pled the brave drum intro­duc­tion from “When the Levee Breaks” into a aggres­sive, break beat for their song “Rhymin’ and Stealin.”  Led Zep­pelin, the inno­va­tors, have been re-innovated.  The old folks scream blas­phemy.  To me, it is a slight con­fir­ma­tion that the Beastie Boys have good taste in rock ‘n roll.

Sam­pling is promi­nent every­where.  The Blue Note has a com­pi­la­tion of heav­ily sam­pled jazz tunes, most of which you will rec­og­nize.  Girl Talk devel­oped his entire album, Feed the Ani­mals, around snip­pets of sam­ples, pro­duc­ing entirely new songs from pieces of oth­ers.  When you watch a Quentin Taran­tino film, notice his sam­ples of clas­sic Kung Fu flicks.  Or, when you observe a paint­ing by Sal­vador Dali, attempt to under­stand his influ­ence from Sig­mund Freud.  The sam­ple is rel­a­tive in all forms of art and science.

My expe­ri­ence as an entre­pre­neur, specif­i­cally in man­ag­ing soft­ware devel­op­ment, has been sam­ple dri­ven.  Although I do more react­ing than plan­ning, large aspects of my job are sam­pling what has worked in the past with hopes that it will work again in the future.  The team I work with began our design process by review­ing numer­ous soft­ware dash­boards that had pieces rel­e­vant to our vision.  We then pulled and sam­pled these ele­ments into our sketches, and finally imple­mented the puz­zle pieces into an orig­i­nal design.

The goal of rec­og­niz­ing sam­ples in any form is to have an open, but defen­sive mind, and ques­tion not only the music, but how it is con­sumed.  Who are the artist’s influ­ences?  Who is sam­pled, delib­er­ately or uncon­sciously?  Rec­og­niz­ing sam­pled inspi­ra­tion is more than being aware or knowl­edge­able of his­tory.  It allows you to be a true, crit­i­cal observer of artis­tic foundation.

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This is a guest post from Alex J. Mann.  You can sub­scribe to his blog here and fol­low him on Twit­ter here.