Learn and Instrument

For the record, I can't play sh$t, but I'm currently taking lessons.
I have a friend who makes dope a$$ beats with his mpc. Both with keyboard and with sampling. Me and him are pretty much neck and neck with our skills. But one thing he really has over me is that he can play guitar. He'll play me a beat with a crazy sample in it, I'll ask him where he got it, and he didn't get it from anywhere, he played it. What he does is plays his own guitar riffs, and samples them as if they were a "sample". He chops em up, filters them 16 levels, all that sh$t.
For those with open minds, and who don't put limits on their skills, this is a hell of technique. I't's like dude has a limitless, not to mention free sample library. He combines all aspects of production and comes up with some of the illest sh#t. I admit, I am jealous....but, with my guitar in hand as we speak, I won't be for long.

And for those totally gung ho about straight sampling and nothing esle, don't forget that the stuff your sampling was actually played by some one using instruments first. I think sometimes we all forget about that It all works hand in hand, It's all music.

I definitely think that's a good idea, some producers been doing that for years. Automator plays his own violins... and these dudes Ming and FS play their instruments, tape them, and then chop them up and make drum N bass beats with what they sample/chop. That's a good move and you don't have to clear nothing. I just don't have the actual musical talent to play an instrument, but I wanted to learn the bass... for now I'll stick to chopping off vinyl and vhs...

reverse engineering

I can't play anything except the shakers but I will dabble on the keyboard.. I can't play anything complicated, and for the most part, if I sample a drum sound, I have to put something on the key so I remember which key I want to sample. That's why I love my mpc.. sheeyit, I can't even dance.. That's so bad.. I can't sing , or rap... how the heck did I even get involved with music! hahah

. ..roxstar. ..
www.soundclick.com/creamofbeats

I play my own strings and pianos on my Triton and ASR. I sometimes record combination-instrument single shot hitz and chop them up for use on the MPC, they come out real nice..

I read once that the dude from Portishead got so sick of clearing samples of orchestra music that he had gotten from old vinyl that he hired an orchestra, had them play the same music that he was going to sample, recorded it, then had it pressed on vinyl. He even went so far as to rough up the vinyl to get the old crackly sound.

I've played guitar for years and what I like to do is just sample myself messing around on a rhythm, then chop it up on the MPC. The fact that you have to try and make it fit into your beats makes it seem like it's someone elses samples. Try recording your guitars into a tape recorder to get that compressed hissy analog sound.

Just use software to get that analog old tape deck sound..

Or that 12bit crunchy, warm, phat, grungy gritty (whatever else peeps refer to it as) sound.

Then load back into your MPC..