Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with sampling

Can you help me find obscure funk mp3s to sample?

thedaniel — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 11:57:55 -0800

Help me find just the right online crate to dig in - I'm working on a hipstery disco record (think Daft Punk, MSTRKRFT) and would love to find some old happy, dancey funk/soul/whatever you want to call it to sample, but I'd like to shy away from anything super mainstream or typical. I have no idea where to start, but I know there are all manner of mp3 blogs for other obscure genres, so I'm hoping you mefites can point me at your favorites that will help me address this particular need.

Has the Akira Soundtrack been Sampled in Hip-hop?

rubyeyo — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:24:53 -0800

I am curious if anyone is familiar with any sampling of the Akira Soundtrack. It seems like it would be ripe for the picking, but I have yet to hear anything sampled?

Is this a Jimi Hendrix song, and if so, which one?

XiBe — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 15:24:17 -0800

Is this a Jimi Hendrix song, and if so, which one? This audio file is a mp3 export of the module titled "Electric Church" (download link) by musician HitHansen.

This musician is known to sampling guitars from records, even tracking covers (such as "Experienced(x)" (dl), which covers Hendrix's "In From The Storm").

Thing is, while Electric Church obviously seems to be a cover (the synth "chorus" reminds me of...something), and a Hendrix one at that (the title being the clue here), I can't put my finger on which one. Listening to a hefty part of Jimi's discography on Deezer didn't help thus far.

Hive mind, will you?

Thank you.

At this point I may just be imagining it...

menace303 — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 01:05:57 -0800

Name That Song: I could have *sworn* that the Staple Singers "Lets do it again" was sampled by someone in Hip Hop a while ago. I'm talking about the string part that starts about 1:50 in this video. I can't for the life of me find it! Any Ideas?

Man that school shit is a joke

moift — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 11:21:04 -0800

Where is the "Why haven't you learned anything?!" sample used in Dead Prez - The Schools and Digital Mystikz - Learn originally from? It's the very first thing in this video: Dead Prez - They Schools.

Sounds like an exasperated Jimmy Stewart, maybe... Any pointers?

Ze ball, if you please

Blazecock Pileon — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:55:49 -0800

Statistics Filter: How to pick a red ball from n buckets, when there could be multiple red balls in one or more of the buckets, and multiple bucket sets? I am looking to calculate the significance of finding a red ball in a generic bucket, when I have n buckets.

Currently, I employ a sampling method to generate a z-score:

1. I go through my n buckets methodically and look for the observed frequency of a red ball in all buckets.

2. I calculate an expected frequency by shuffling or shaking a bucket thousands of times and trying to find a red ball in the bucket. (In reality, these are not red balls but a particular substring of letters. One metaphor is that shaking the bucket might cause a red ball to turn green, or vice versa.) This is sampling without replacement -- i.e., a permutation test.

My z-score = red ball_observed - red ball_expected / s.d. red ball_expected.

I can use this approach to generate z-scores for finding red balls from different sets of buckets (say, bucket set A and bucket set B), with different numbers of buckets.

I would like to compare (rank) z-scores for red balls between bucket-sets A and B, however.

I find that the observed frequency is complicated by situations where more than one red ball is found in bucket, e.g. a bucket in set A may have three red balls, and another bucket may have none. Additionally, I will likely be dealing with different numbers of buckets between two or more sets of buckets.

Are there strategies for correcting the observed and expectations with these complications in mind, so that I can generate comparable significance scores?

What entry-level sampler/sequencer should I look at?

Picklegnome — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 06:49:33 -0800

I'm interested in sampling with hardware. What are some good entry-level samplers with decent sequencers? What are some low-end options for a limited budget? What older models might be worth it for the price? I've just been looking into this for a little while, and I think I'm looking for something along the lines of an MPC. The Yamaha SU10 looked like it might be useful for messing around with, but if I can find something that won't cost a lot, I'd like to be able to use it for more than just toying. Any suggestions whatsoever would be appreciated.

Purely psychosomatic

Bakuun — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 14:09:59 -0800

I fell in love with "Frontier Psychiatrist" by The Avalanches all over again this week. Can you recommend similar songs or artists, particularly with that amusing juxtaposition of voice samples as part of the track? There's a youtube video to that song available here.

What is the process of music making if you are a sample artist?

figTree — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:58:56 -0800

Do all sample based musicians/bands basically have a full time legal staff? I've read on here and many other places how you basically need permission and pay royalties to any music you sample. I am wondering how this actually works in the real world.

Lets say you are someone like DJ Shadow or Orb, or any other musician/band where essentially ALL you do is mix previously made sounds to create new music.

What is the process of making of music for these guys? Do they only ever start dabbling with music they know they already have permission for, or do they first do a mix, then seek all the legal permissions?

That said, is the legal side of this a full time job? How much time and resources are required for this? These days could you even start as a sample artist if you don't have a legal team/lots of money to begin with?

Perhaps someone could break down what they think/know a balance sheet would look like for such a music production. If you use lets say 30 samples in an album, what is the average "cost" of this, and how much could it range? On average, how much time would it take to get these rights (both in process and in human hours)? Is there a central agency that one could deal with rather than going to all the separate labels?

Basically any sort of info along the lines of "how would you actually do this from start to finish" type of answers would be greatly appreciated!

(I dont know how much geography would come into the mix with this, but I am most interested with how this would apply to Canada and also for U.S. or England)

What is a good sample size for determining whether dice are truly random?

Bugbread — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:41:41 -0800

How many times would I have to roll a standard 6-sided die to get a statistically representative view of whether it was truly random or not? I have a bunch of dice that I haven't used in years. The other day, I was playing with one, and I noticed that the 5 came up fairly often. I started rolling the die and writing down the results, to see if it was just a short term statistical fluke, or observer bias, or if the die really favored the 5.

I think I ended up rolling it around 200 times, and 5 definitely had a significant edge.

Now, I'd like to check my other dice. However, I'm not a statistician. I understand that, obviously, the larger your data set (the more times you roll each die and write down the results), the better your analysis of non-randomness will be. However, I know that it isn't necessary to roll the die 1 billion times to check for randomness, that there is some generally accepted statistical minimum, below which the margin of error is too large, and above which the margin of error is generally considered acceptable.

How many die rolls is that point?

Who originally said: I live for drugs. It's great. Just lately I freaked out on acid. I freaked out very very badly.

elvissinatra — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 10:54:32 -0800

What is the source of the "I freaked out very, very badly -- I freaked out on acid" sample used by Thrill Kill Kult and Meat Beat Manifesto? This question came up a few years ago, and was answered. Unfortunately, the answer was incorrect. That thread is now closed. I eventually found the Capitol LSD album on ebay, paid $40 for it, and listened to the damn thing. It's pretty cool and all, but it does not contain that dialog snippet. Boo.

So I am still looking. I've been trying to find this for about 15 years. Someone must know!

Meat Beat Manifesto's "Acid Again" contains the following:

Question: Are you really happy?

Answer: I'm happier than I've ever been. I'm not happy. I'm not happy at all, really. Or I'm very sad. I'm not happy. I'm still fat. I don't feel very pretty, I really don't.

Question: You know a lot about drugs...

Answer: Oh, I live for drugs. It's great. Just lately I freaked out on acid. I freaked out very very badly. Now I don't think I'll ever taken acid again and before I thought that was the best thing in the world. I never want it again. Never acid again.

My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult's "Daisy Chain for Satan" contains a few additional snippets from the interviewee such as "I'm the white rabbit," "My friends turn me on," and "I could never afford it, I would never buy drugs."

Google does not have the answer to this question. Trust me on that. So this is going to require someone who knows the answer but has not yet entered it into any of the tubes on the internets.

I don't think the people in the band even know. But someone does... Are you out there?

Songs with dogs in them?

hifiparasol — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 04:00:55 -0800

Woof, woof. Woof woof woof. Woof. I need songs with dogs in 'em. Not about dogs, mind you. So I was listening to Tom Waits' "Buzz Fledderjohn" during a run this week and was struck by how awesome it is that he's got a barking dog sampled in the front end of the song (right after the words "rottweiler, doberman," natch). It perfectly matches the grime and general grittiness of the song.

I tried to think of other songs that sample dog barks, and came up with Le Tigre's "What's Yr Take on Cassavetes" and Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealing," which are also uniformly badass.

Can anyone else come up with songs that use dog barking to similar effect? Please do not mention "Jingle Dogs." I know about "Jingle Dogs." "Jingle Dogs" is not badass. Also, those are not actually dogs in "Who Let the Dogs Out?" They are the Baja Men, making fools of themselves.

No time like the present

Blazecock Pileon — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 23:24:33 -0800

I'm interested in aspects of benchmarking with the help of UNIX's time, specifically, what user, system and elapsed times correspond to, within the functional context of the system and the tested application. I have a very rough idea what the results of time point to in terms of CPU contention, with respect to the result of elapsed time, if elapsed is greater than the sum of user and system times.

• What does it mean that user makes non-system calls (what are those calls?)

• Likewise, what does it mean specifically that system makes system calls (what are those calls?)

Would I use user and system mean times to establish how to guide function profiling, within an application?

• What benchmarking results should I use as criteria for comparing one test result with another, all else the same?

For example, let's say I run sed -e 's/+/-/' inputdata on the same system, where different builds of sed have been compiled with different optimization flags and compilers.

• In this case, why would I choose the mean user time over mean system time as the criterium for comparing against like measurements of a "baseline" stock build of sed?

• Likewise, what are the caveats with choosing one measurement class over the other? (What are the downsides of using user time? system time? I suspect the answer to this will depend upon the calls made.)

If you have pointers to literature (other than the thousands of man pages on Google) I'd be appreciative of that advice, as well. Thanks in advance.

Sampler / Looper?

Karlos the Jackal — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 01:48:08 -0800

Music Instrument Filter: I know what I want but not what it's called or if it precisely exists. I want something that samples and loops over itself, overdubbing or "stacking" the samples as it goes. I want it to accept MIDI so that it knows when to start the loop again. And I don't want it to require a computer. Basically, I want something kind of like in this Imogen Heap video (although I don't think I need discrete tracks with seperate volume controls -- one track at a time is fine).

I don't use a computer to record or play, but I do use MIDI, so I want to be able to use MIDI to let the sampler know what the tempo is. (I don't think tapping the tempo will be accurate enough, since I won't be using the samples as a guide; I want them to sync up with stuff that's already recorded.)

Ideas? Recommendations?

Bad study design? or no?

beerbajay — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:26:18 -0800

Is this study an example of bad statistical study design? In the report (page 21, page 37 of the PDF), the method is stated as:

The survey was conducted using face to face interviews in respondents’ homes. A random location sampling approach was used: 379 areas were randomly selected, each area containing around 300 addresses and interviewers were asked to obtain nine or ten interviews from each area. Quotas were set based on age, gender and working status to ensure a representative sample was achieved. Individuals who took part in the survey were given a £5 high street voucher as a thank you for completing the interview.

Will these quotas lead to bias in the resulting statistics?

Oh Sample My Sample

Witty — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 09:26:38 -0800

Is there a website where one could enter the name of a song and be returned with a list of other songs that are known to have sampled segments of your query song?

Turn that noise down!

matty — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 13:30:59 -0800

Just another music sampling question... I'm trying to figure out the source of vocal sampling in Blockhead's "Insomniac Olympics". I can't tell if the genre (of the vocal sample) is country, folk, or native American, much less who the artist is. Anyone know who/what the original sample is from?

Like Pat Robertson's after-death experience, whatever the answer is, I'm sure I'll be surprised!

examples of artists who employ vocal samples and equipment for same

nanojath — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 09:49:04 -0800

Vocal sampling and sequencing in music: examples and equipment? I'm interested in experimenting with sampling vocals and including sampled vocals as a component of live and recorded music. Most sampling in music seems to rely on samples from prerecorded music, my interest is in artists who utilize samples they create themselves, bonus points if they incorporate live sampling into onstage performance.

If anyone has input based on experience for portable sampling and sequencing hardware suitable for sampling and basic mixing on the fly, and vocal effects hardware, that would also be appreciated. Not interested in software-based solutions at this point.

Are there Automatic samples any remixes anywhere?

ejoey — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 18:40:45 -0800

Are there songs that contain samples of or are remixes of Automatic [youtube] by the Pointer Sisters?

Samples, Junior

Danelope — Mon, 12 Jun 2006 20:59:04 -0800

Are there any comprehensive sites which catalog the original sources of audio later sampled in songs? Example: Yesterday, whilst idly searching for video of the man responsible for voicing The Truth, I watched this excerpt from Wild Angels and immediately recognized "Just what is it you want to do?" as the sample that kicks off Payroll's Bank Holiday.

It occurs to me that a database which maps samples to their original sources (e.g. The "knock 'em out the box" in De La Soul's "Brakes" is a sample from Slick Rick's "Children's Story") and vice versa (e.g. A list of all 24,000 songs that have sampled Slick Rick's "Children's Story") would be an entertaining resource, if not exactly useful.

The Google waters are quite muddied when searching for terms like music sample database. Know of any worthwhile sites?

Okay to use non-musical samples in music?

Durhey — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 15:04:01 -0800

Is it okay, legally speaking, to use non-musical audio samples in a musical recording? I know you're probably not a lawyer, but a general idea would be good to have. For instance, if phrases of speech were recorded from the television, radio, or a movie and used in a song, is that actionable?

Such use of samples is widespread, but is it because there's no legal ground for complaint of such use, or because most of the samplees don't know or care about the samples?

My band's "thing" is making very liberal use of such material. We've always distributed our music for free, but we're submitting to the MeFi compilation album, and it would be good to know that there would be no issues arising because of this.

Specifically, I wish to know if the audio in the KFC radio commercial outtakes available here could be sampled for a music piece without worrying about Colonel Sanders' crack team of lawyers frying our figurative chicken.

Ragga song that the Black Eyed Peas were covering in "Get Original"?

rkent — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 23:10:42 -0800

Ragga song that the Black Eyed Peas were covering in "Get Original" (or vice versa)? OK, I'm not 100% sure which way the quotation runs with this one, but the way these songs sound to me, I'm betting the cover/quoting song is BEP's "Get Original," specifically the line "Stop now, get original, start practicing, master your flow." The other, I'm guessing original, song is dancehall/ragga, and its chorus uses exactly the same vocal melody and rhythm, and I think even some of the same words.

I heard the song on some random Reggae radio show and didn't catch the call letters for the station. I'm guessing it's older than Bridging the Gap just because it sounds like pre-2000 dancehall music, but then I've only heard it once. Thanks!

Help me identify this voice sample

40 Watt — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 12:39:30 -0800

Who is the person speaking in the sample on this song? (2.9 Mb MP3 file) The song in question is "Harmonic" by Hex. The sample does not, however, appear on the original 12" version of the song, but only on the remixed version found on the ColdKrushCuts mix album, meaning it was added to the mix after the fact. I've always liked this little vocal snippet for some reason, and I've never been able to identify the speaker. Any ideas who it might be?

What PC software to use to remove noise from a radio recording?

phearlez — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 13:33:30 -0800

I record several NPR radio programs with my RadioSHARK and am happy with the process except for the vague background noise. What can I use to filter out the noise without the sizable investment in MY time? I've used Audigy with great success as far as a result, however the load time for a 60 minute audio file is subtantial, then I have to find a section of silence to sample the hiss, then apply noise reduction to the entire thing, then save it.

Even though the human intervention time on this isn't big it takes a lot of my time to do this to the 4 programs I record currently and possibly more down the road.

I'd like something I can feed the files to which will scan the entire thing, make a 'best guess' about the noise waveform and then remove it and save the result. It can take almost any amount of time so long as I can fire it off for multiple files and walk away.

It needs to run on an Intel/Windows machine since that's where the RadioSHARK and my iTunes to load them on the iPod currently live and if it costs money it needs to be <$20 cheap.

I am not at all afraid of perl scripts and the like so if there's some bundle of CPAN modules to do it and they will run on ActiveState's windows perl implementation that's plenty fine.

Jazz Quoting

rkent — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 09:26:25 -0800

Are there any books, journal articles, or magazine articles about the phenomenon of "quoting" and other allusory / referential techniques in jazz? The term "quoting" is usually used to refer to a short allusion at the beginning of an improv solo, but I'm also interested generally with the re-incorporation of older works and styles in jazz songs. The eventual goal is to provide some historical context for the modern practice of sampling in rap and electronic music. I'm mainly interested in textual sources describing the phenomenon, but if you know of a great song Y that incorporates a piece of song X, let me know about that, too.