In many cases, that means permission from more than one person. The upshot of all this is that the best way to legally sample music is to obtain a permit. However, the permitted use of previously erased samples may vary from disc to disc. Don't assume that you can use the sample any way you want.
See the documentation that comes with the CD for license information. Most sample disc manufacturers grant the user a non-exclusive license to use the samples, which means that you and everyone else have permission to use the music. However, with a sample CD, you don't acquire the right to redistribute the samples, only the right to use them in musical works. Will Bradbury explains how to find song samples to be used legally in your own musical production.
A sample can be anything from a short drum hit (e.g., a single kick or a hi-hat sound) to a full drum breakbeat, a soul acapella, or even longer recordings, such as a field sample. They are usually manipulated through several processes: repainted, accelerated or slowed down, layered or looped, making the sample indistinguishable from its original sound. In recent years, sampling has become an incredibly important aspect of music production, since it forms the basis of almost all hip hop, electronic and pop music, where drum sampling tends to be the backbone backbone of most songs. Albums can even be made in their entirety (or almost) using samples.
For more information on how sampling transformed music, you might want to check out Mark Ronson's Ted Talk. Given how easy it is to reuse music in this way, more and more questions are being raised about the ownership of audio recordings. In general, you shouldn't worry about using other samples in the writing process. Short samples and pause rhythms are never going to be a problem.
It could be said that the first use of sampling occurred in the 1940s and with the birth of concrete music, when composers began to use tape loops as part of their performances. That same decade, the first sample-based electromechanical instrument, The Chamberlin, was created, which essentially consisted of a keyboard that activated a recording mechanism when each key was pressed. But the term “sample” was coined much later by Kim Ryrie and Peter Vogel in reference to the Fairlight CMI. Their interest in computers led them to develop this synthesizer, which is one of the first musical workstations with a built-in sampler, capable of capturing short recordings to be played back on a keyboard.
Not only was it widely used by some of the biggest stars of that generation, from Kate Bush to Herbie Hancock, but it precipitated the invention of other sample-based synthesizers, such as the legendary Korg M1, which included integrated effects such as reverberation, delay, chorus and more. Its first inauguration, the MPC60, was a revolutionary innovation, especially in the world of hip hop and dance music, since it allowed users to assign samples to the pads and activate them independently, as if they were playing a keyboard or drums. If you've seen the recent Jeen-yus movie, you might have seen Kanye playing the beat of one of these movies in one of those first improvised studies. Nowadays, with the affordability and ubiquity of computers, most people use samplers integrated into their digital audio workstations (DAW), whether they are Ableton, Logic or Protools.
Most people prefer the speed, ease and control of software, although some, especially those who started working with external instruments, may continue to choose this method to give a more “human” touch to their workflow. Whether you want to upload them to a sampler or simply want to work on a digital application while writing a song, you'll need to get them from somewhere. As mentioned before, turning samples into something unique will not only save you the hassle of having to clean the samples, but it can also produce crazy results. Almost all sampling add-ons, sampling software, or sample VST will allow you to adjust the attack, release, and maintenance of an audio section.
I highly recommend that you watch some online tutorials to familiarize yourself with the theory before you start experimenting with it. It would be absurd not to mention how fun it can be to put together breakbeats. From hip hop to UKG and DnB, this technique is the basis of the drumming of many dance music genres, so learning to quantize, trim, deform transients and layer pauses is a very useful technique to have in your arsenal. If you're a DnB fan, start with the infamous “Think Break”, which you should recognize quite well.
This one is also a lot of fun. As Four Tet revealed in his work “In The Studio With Future Music”, one of its small distinctive tricks is to use a short inverted audio section to present the idea. Finally, just a few words about something you should keep in mind to avoid potential legal problems in the future. The “Amen Break” (the most sampled loop in history), for example, is never erased and is widely accepted as a public domain.
But could The Orb get away with sampling Steve Reich's Electric Counterpoint in Little Fluffy Clouds? Absolutely not. However, if you find yourself in a position where something needs to be clarified, it's definitely not something you can handle yourself. Ask for help from a record label or publisher that really knows what they're doing. They will manage and settle it on your behalf and will agree a percentage of royalties with the rights holder on the profits from that song, possibly in addition to an initial fee. Comments and critiques mean that Billboard and Pitchfork can republish sections of a song when talking about whether a song is good or bad.
Sampling refers to the act of taking a part of a sound recording and reusing it by incorporating it into an audio-only recording of a song new.
