Paul Miller, also known as DJ Spooky, in his essay Loops of Perception, voices his theories on music sampling and the market of digital information. The issues with sampling come from the conflict of copyrights and intellectual property with appropriated media. This conflict is especially prevalent today because of the ease in which an artist can obtain media digitally. Music artists often use sounds and rhythms that already exist because they say what the artist wants to say. An artist being forced to use 100% original material would be like a person making up new words for everything they want to say. The key to the artist’s intentions can be understood through exploring essays and writings as well as the music of the artist, which often contain introspective messages and specific tactics for aesthetics.
Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky
The basics of sampling’s intentions are similar to those of collage in general. Pablo Picasso wrote that the purpose of collage, “was to give the idea that different textures can enter into a composition to become the reality [in the piece] that competes with the reality in nature.” This is to say that the element appropriated serves to provides an accept to the rest of the piece. In music, a sampling artist has a wide variety of “textures” to introduce into the song because they can draw from anything manner of recorded sound. Whether using a previously recorded song, a soundbite from a speech, or a clip from a film or television, music can be written to facilitate the use of any audio. The beat or melody can change during the course of the song as the desired “plundered-phonics” dictate. In this way the materials introduced into the song do not have to be invasive to its rhythm, although it can. The artist may choose to select material that stands out from the rest of the song in order to emphasize their point. For example, in the song ‘King of NY’ by Dan the Automator and Kool Keith, the track begins with a movie clip that is very much set apart from the rest of the song. The song by GZA the Genius entitled ‘Liquid Swords’ also begins with a vocal sample in which a child talks about his father the samurai and his assassination. The song continues without including any parts of this sample in the rest of the track. The samples are meant to emphasize the tone of the album in a very obvious manner. Many of the Wu-Tang’s albums (group and solo) use this same technique.
In contrast, in the ‘The Horror’, turntablist RJD2 selected a sample to enhance the sound of the beats he was spinning in a more subtle fashion. RJD2 used a recorded voice that sounded like a crazy man (assumedly a mad -scientist in this situation) repeating the line, “time to understand the world” and speaking about “destroying the monster”. This emphasizes the effect of the song which is to create what sounds like an old-fashioned black and white horror movie soundtrack accented with modern beats and a shrieking keyboard sound. “It’s just aesthetics,” is RJ’s explanation for the sample. “It was the tone, and what the guy was talkin’ about. The track kinda came together and I was just, like, ‘What kind of vocals would work with this, and what kind of tone?”.
RJD2
In Loops of Perception, Miller describes the DJ Culture “as a kind of archival impulse put to a kind of hunter-gatherer milieu.” The film Scratch by Doug Pray provides excellent insight into this world of hunting and gathering. The camera follows DJ Shadow into the basement of a Davis, California music store. Here he sifts through piles upon piles of dusty records searching for the perfect sample. DJ Shadow’s samples are not picked arbitrarily. Instead, he spends innumerable hours finding an album that has something that matches what he wants to say. As Miller says, “There’s always a rhythm to the space between things. A word passes by to define the scenario. Your mind picks up on it, and places it in context.” DJ artists like Shadow use music and soundbites to define these moments. Each sample chosen represents a level of purpose, whether to showcase an interesting beat from a long forgotten record or as a vessel for political agenda. Miller uses this type of analogy in his Loops of Perception essay. “You can think of sampling as a story you are telling yourself - one made of the world as you can hear it, and the theatre of sounds that you invoke with those fragments is all one story made up of many. Think of it as the act of memory moving from word to word as a remix: complex becomes multiplex becomes omniplex.”
Miller cites musical theorist Henri Lefebvre’s 1974 essay The Production of Space: “The body’s iventiveness needs no demonstration, for the body itself reveals it, and deploys it in space. Rhythms in all their multiplicity interpenetrate one another.” DJ Shadow is famous for taking rare/obscure pieces for his music. In this way he can claim individuality and originality because the value of the song is in the talent of collaging and not because of the sample’s notability. DJ Shadow chooses to appropriate material that distinguishes his work from other artists, as evidenced by this interview for !*@# Exclaim! magazine in June of 2002:
Noel Dix: You didn’t sample Corey Hart on “You Can’t Go Home Again” did you?
DJ Shadow: No. (laughs) You mean ‘Sunglasses at Night’ Corey Hart? Definitely not. I mean, if I was going to sample from something from that genre, which I did, it wouldn’t be anything known. It would be something totally beyond obscure. I mean, the vocals from ‘Blood on the Motorway’ come from such a record. And on the record it says written ‘number 231 out of 500.’ So it’s totally a homemade record. That’s the type of stuff I prefer to use.
“Insight, foresight, more sight, the clock on the wall reads a quarter past midnight…
DJ Shadow
DJs select their material with various purposes. DJ Shadow finds value in obscurity while Z-Trip, another DJ, prefers to select material which breaks traditional boundaries in scratch/DJ music. Like Shadow, Z-Trip intensely digs for the perfect beat. The Scratch Recording’s website describes Z-Trip as “rebelling against stagnation within the DJ Community (too many DJ’s playing the same scratches and routines)”. Instead, Z-Trip chooses many rock beats instead of hip-hop beats to incorporate into his work. DJ Kid Koala enjoys spinning his Monty Python and the Holy Grail soundtrack in concert and privileged members of the audience recognize the tune. Kid Koala capitalizes on the cult-popularity of the film and the informed revel in the connection he makes.
Kid Koala actin’ like the kid he looks like
Buck 65’s album Square is an interesting example of the types of material that can be appropriated for an album. The song ‘Square 3′ begins with a soundbite of Alfred Hitchcock from Alfred Hitchcock presents: “Music to be murdered by… it is mood music in a “jugular vein” and I hope you like it. Our record requires only the simplest of equipment. An ordinary phonograph needle, a four inch speaker, and a 38 calibur revolver. Naturally the record is long play even though you may not be. So why don’t you relax, lean back and enjoy yourself… until the coroner comes.” The next three minutes take on a Hithcockian suspense tone followed by Buck 65 rapping spoken word poetry about surviving as an artist in the world of music. The power of the song is derived from the idea that even if it were to be split into individual components, each piece would retain its meaning. The beats support the soundbites which support the lyrics which support both aforementioned sounds. This confirms Miller’s argument that techniques such as “…natural language processing, information retrieval, knowledge representation, intelligent agents, and databases” when taken together, “resemble a good DJ, who has a lot of records and files, and knows exactly where to filter the mix.” All of the most widely respected DJs possess these qualities.
The advantage of information sharing and availability is expressed well by Miller when he wrote, “When recorded, adapted, remixed, and uploaded, expression becomes a stream unit of value in a fixed and remixed currency that is traded via the ever shifting currents of information moving through the networks we use to talk with one another.” DJ and Hip-Hop culture falls within a fairly tight community in the grand scope of music. DJs have the ability to share ideas and samples (although many choose not to in order to remain unique. It also allows fans to share music and artists so that the genre can grow underground. DJ Shadow warns against underground CD trading, though. Underground acts don’t make as much money as pop music and cannot afford to have their music pirated on the level that internet Peer-to-Peer networks and CD ripping can provide:
“…when you sell 200,000 and you lose a fourth of that or more, it hurts BIG TIME. Not because I can’t afford that crystal chandelier I had my eye on; but because the labels, already suspicious of these artsy -fartsy, so-called musicians like us are going to be that much less inclined to front the money to make the next video, or to support the next tour. Like Spike Lee always used to say, “I just want to make enough money to make the next film.” With what’s going on now, there’s a real threat in our ability to do that with our music. So if you’re downloading music, don’t kid yourself. Be aware of the role you’re playing in this ever-changing landscape of music, for better or worse.”
DJ shadow, along with many other artists, want to be able to make more music for their fans to enjoy and encourage supporters to buy their albums. Some people raise concerns over this, though, because they feel they should be able to share music freely that already contains pirated elements. This is an issue that will likely resolve itself through the same information sharing networks on which the music is founded. As long as people continue to enjoy the music the culture can thrive thanks to the same ideals that began it.
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