By
ChrisB
Mon Oct 29, 2018 12:09 am
I’ve been digging since the early 90’s, close to 7000 LP’s and 1500 tapes. While I can see the convenience that attracts some to sampling off the Internet ( not digging) , I personally think it waters down the real artform of beatmaking. There is still a massive amount of undiscovered music out there that is not on the Internet. To me 50% of beatmaking is digging for music that no one else has unearthed, 25% percent sample selection and 25% arrangement and mixing. There has always been a pretty high etiquette amongst the beatmakers I know regarding the usage of samples, if someone found a sick loop, it had their trademark on it. That was the culture back then. . If some one showed me a loop , it was off limits, unless there was a collab. Still to this day, I sample from the highest quality source I can find, and only music that is nowhere to be found on the Internet, not on discogs, not on YouTube, not on popsike. Also, there is definitely a quality difference between an MP3 and a 24 bit file recorded through a clean interface. Ultimately, the culture as I know it, was to actively dig and find music, beatmaking and DJing went hand in hand, if you arnt actively contributing to unearth and rediscover new music, you are not really contributing anything new to the artform of sampling. I hope more “ producers raise the bar and actively contribute to the archeology of beatmaking, which is the foundations. Sitting down in front of youtube is something else all together.