Beat Making Ethics

Ive been thinking about this a lot lately and...

A lot of the beatmakers I know including myself frown upon sampling anything besides vinyl for sounds. Now with the internet we beatmakers have the oppurtunity to just download mp3s to sample from. Now from the perspective of the broke beatsmith this is dope. No more endless digging through dirty vinyl shops only to come up with 100s of hours of sampleless music. But its cheating, any **** can get a free copy of acid and download some mp3s to sample from. There is nothing like the satisfaction of spending your last 20 beans on a rare record to find a dope sample. Not to mention many cats myself included love the crackle of the old vinyl. You just cant get that with an mp3. The diggers know what I mean.

Another issue is the sample packs offered across the net (no offense tutor) . Personally I think its cheating if you're paying someone money for samples, not to mention you dont get the same satisfaction that you would from diggin for samples as you would from just buying sample packs. Regardless if the sounds are royalty free, can you really get your own unique sound from a sample pack that tons of other beatmakers are using? I find it ironic people pay money for sample zips that are geared towards other peoples sounds ie. Neptune sounds, Timboland sounds, Dre sounds etc etc. Those guys werent buying sample disks that sound like other peoples ish and why would they? They got famous off making their own sound. It angers me that some **** is making money off that shit. Its called biting! Now I understand why heads would buy something like what the tutor sells... (bass packs, drum hits etc). These encourage heads to still do their own diggin for samples, but personally I like to find my own drums and bass, if for nothing else to say I dug for every sample that was used in my music and didnt need the jumpstart.

Another thing is looping. Being that at its root beatmaking was simply ganking loops off records to rhyme over this is a touchy subject. Even many of the famous producers today simply took a loop from an old song, threw some drums on it and called it a beat. No matter who you are, you were working with simple loops when you started making beats. Being that its 2003 maybe heads should be putting in more work then sampling, layering, and constructing a beat out of various samples rather than snatching an 8 bar loop. Take David Axelrod for instance, lots of people simply stole a piece out of his songs to rap over, not really even changing it up at all. Im sure the original artists dont mind the royalty checks but wheres the musicianship?

And please stop attempting to make beats that sound like your favorite producers. This "how do I make beats like so and so"stuff bothers me People are sharks nowadays.

To the average listener it makes no difference how the beat was made or what amount of effort the producer used to make it, as long as it sounds good. All your friends may like your beats but a few heads will be able to tell that your production is effortless repetitive trash. God doesnt like cheaters, theives, or biters.

remember that hip-hop is something that comes from nothing. So if you wanna download sample packs, do it.. if you wanna sample from MP3's, then do it. Personally, I like sampling from wax and layering my sounds, but that's not to say that that's the best way to do it.. that's why poeple like 9th wonder can use fruity loops and shock everyone that uses an MPC/SP-1200. As far as buying a keyboard to sample a preloaded beat and make a song out of it, that's just horrible. 100% Pure wackness!

who cares?........I just say shut the fug up and make beats mane.....all this ethic stuff is just elitist bull....I mean, when it boils down to it-diggers are cheating in the worst way mane...I mean, you're just jacking something someone else made instead of playing your own instruments and spending lots of time and money on records that you never really listen to just to pick out those few seconds of valuable samples....that isnt very different from the cat that buys sample packs or the kid who uses a computer program and sample cd's....in the end you're not playing an instrument, you're using someone elses recorded work to make your stuff and that technically is cheating too....not trying to pop no junk cause sheeit mane, I sample and like a madman too, but trying to put it all into perspective......

I see where your coming from, but I just care about beats that have weight to them, that have a nice groove and that are pleasing to my ears. I could care less if the person that made the beat bought his kicks and snares on a cd or zip, as long as the beat is dope in the end is all that counts to me. As far as the crackling record ish', nobody walks down the street humming the sound of record static, thats not important, they connect with the melody in the sample, dirty and gritty or clean, it doesn't matter, it's how the song makes you feel, that's whats important.

Pore wrote:I find it ironic people pay money for sample zips that are geared towards other peoples sounds ie. Neptune sounds, Timboland sounds, Dre sounds etc etc. ... It angers me that some **** is making money off that ****. Its called biting! ... God doesnt like cheaters, theives, or biters.

Don't forget, outside the hip hop world, many people consider the idea of you sampling a drum loop from an old record as 'biting' or 'thieving'...

How about the guy who originally played that drum break you discovered in a thrift shop? Will he be complimented by you taking that break and using it in your music (and perhaps making money off it), or will he be calling you a thief and a biter? He may feel that if you want drums, you should go to a studio and record your own, not lift them from his record!

Just a different perspective. Personally, I don't think it matters where you get your sounds from, as long as you produce something original out of it and give credit/pay sample fees to the people whose sounds you use in your music.

As to the guys who make money from producing Neptune and Dre sounding sample packs - well, they wouldn't be making that money unless people were buying them in the first place, so there's obviously a market for it. So I say good luck to them.

9th Wonder uses Fruity Loops?

I cannot belive tha t 9th wonder uses fruity loops. Any one have in info on the subject.


Peace & Love , Lord TORANAGA.

he does.

FL is the shit.

I agree with a lot of what you guys said. I guess its just a personal ethics thing with me. Im not trying to force my opinion on anybody but it just doesnt seem right to me. Im a firm believer in the idea that you use whatever you can to make the best music you can, regardless if its a computer program, sampler or keyboard. It just seems to me a lot of producers are taking shortcuts with these sample packs and things of the sort.

Tutor, you brought up a good point. Although Im not really interested in the opinions of the people outside of the hip hop world, they can think what they want. If I sample a drum loop off a record it is in a way stealing. Lately Ive been using your recycle method to replace my drum sounds with midi files so I dont have to use someones loop and it becomes my own original drum loop (thanks btw). As for the people who buy the sample packs geared towards other peoples sounds, yeah its sad that there is a market for this stuff. But I guess to each his own.

Peace to all the devils advocates out there.

My two cents (by the way this is my first post, but I'm not an MPC or production newbie)...

I think that, with my style of music and production in general, any sound I hear is fair game for me to sample. However! I don't take loops, and I don't take sounds off of albums. I record mostly my own, or make them on my gear somehow. But I don't think that using loops inherently is 'wrong', as long as you credit the player/producer of the original. Nor do I think using a sample pack is 'wrong'- music is music. The methods that you take to get to the finished product aren't an issue, the music is. If you've got a banging beat, nobody will care how you arrived there, unless it's a blatent rip from somebody else. And copycats and thieves won't 'make it'. Something original always has the soul and feel that a duplicate will never attain.

rep

taken in and digested.....well said...

Yo, what does this accomplish? Are you trying to change the game, lol? A lot of the earlier producers made there name from loops and what not. Dre did for sure and look where "nothin but a g thang" got him. Face it, cats "get inspired" by other peoples music.

Man, I have bought plenty of drum kits from these companies because I dont have the studio equipment available to make the drums I hear on record sound a certain way (BANG!)...And the MPC sampler for drums isn't the best all by itself (I have tried). All I have is the MPC and a CD recorder/burner, and some turntables...straight.

The companies that market those sounds like that are just using the phrases for a marketing ploy to get heads attention. Think about it, drums are drums...it doesn't matter where you get them. Melodies are different though...You cant take someone's melody and call it yours. But you can take their drums all day and no one will notice.

A lot of those cats leave room for snatchin their drum sounds in their songs anyway. Ain't nobody gonna be like, "yo that beat was ill...but why he usin' Pete Rock's snare man?"

"Chop notes, bend samples, adjust the pitch
Do what you gotta do to make your beats hit..."

it is so much easier to make a beat using those sample cds cuz the sounds are already right there in front of u. i have done it before and they don't come out that bad. but for some reason when im done and the beat is accomplished i don't feel the same as when i record everything off of vinyl and and chop up my own sounds and make a beat from a record that cost me no more than 2 or 3 bucks. Not only that i think vinyl has that sound that u can never get from a cd. also for people that don't have enough money to go out and buy those $100 sample cds all the time (me). u can just buy a turntable and a cheap mixer and get records for 1 buck a piece.

so dj shadow only used first issues when he sampled material for entroducing, who cares? can the normal listener tell? would the listener be put off if he realised that that snare was actually sampled from a reissue? no,

i make music, i dont pride my self on owning loads of rare records which i sample....thats quite different- for me the release is in composing, i think maybe in the old-skool hip hop scene digging is still cool, but in reality many top end producers use pre-sets and sample cd's.....if it fits why try and change it......dont get me wrong love finding unqiue samples but hell if i find a snare i like and fits ill use it....

i think its elitist bullshit to slag a beat off if it was resequenced or composed of samples from the net or sample cds....the listener still bobs their head whether its the most original set of samples in the world or just a bunch of old 808 samples layered with some module......

its about the music dude....the music....

greg