Everybody who posts on Craigslist wanting to start a band includes a list of influences. To me those ads all read like wish lists of samples. Whether you end up recreating a sound live or using a sample directly makes little difference in terms of the mental creative process. Every band I’ve ever been in yearned unconsciously for sampling. We’d try for the feeling of Stevie Wonder in Talking Book, or fifties Miles, or Led Zeppelin IV. This idea that sampling is uncreative flies directly in the face of all of my experience. Most sample-based musicians I’ve worked with are more inclined to artistic risk-taking than the ones who exclusively use live instrumentation. Using recognizable samples necessarily means having an emotional conversation with everyone who already has an attachment to the original recording. Music is about connecting with other people. Sampling, like its predecessors quoting and referencing, is a powerful connection method.
Posts Tagged ‘radiohead’
Samples and DNA
Monday, August 3rd, 2009
Mashups as micro-mixtapes
Wednesday, July 1st, 2009Back in 1966, Glenn Gould predicted that recorded music would become an interactive conversation between musician and listener. He described dial twiddling as “an interpretive act.” He was wrong about the dials, but right about the main point, that technology would make listening to music more like making music. Anybody with iTunes instantly becomes a DJ. It doesn’t take much more software than that to produce your own electronica. Some copyright holders and their lawyers are feeling a lot of anguish about this development. For the rest of us, I think it’s an exciting new opportunity, a chance to restore music to its rightful and natural state as shared property, a dynamic conversation anyone can be part of. (more…)