How to Sample Music

Posted on June 7th, 2009 by Marck

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Everyone has favorite songs, and some people may be interested in making those songs unique to them. Many recording artists in fact take beats and melodies of their favorite songs, make a few changes here and there, and make hits and remixes that reach the top of the charts. Here are some ways for you to make your own music samples and sampled tracks:

Tools

Before the days of computers and music editing software, an entire studio was needed to sample music. Tapes, turntables, and expensive studio equipment were used to make remixes or to create track samples. The best samples are still made in the studio, but with enough patience and the right tools, you can come close to a professional sampled track:

Audio editing/sampling software. Programs like Sound Forge, Cool Edit, and even free programs like Audacity are great for taking beats, melodies, or part of a song for sampling. The user interface is also simple; most sampling software show the wave patterns of a song, and you can cut and adjust them to your liking.
Raw audio. While you can sample a compressed MP3 or AAC file, it’s still best to have raw audio on hand to give you more freedom to sample with the different channels of the track. Raw audio is best if you’re sampling the tracks of an independent performer or a local band, because you’ll have problems acquiring raw audio files for established artists.

Tips

Sampling music takes a lot of practice and dedication, and you may need to try your hand at various genres and tracks to get a feel for the kind of music you want to sample. Here are some tips to keep in mind:

Beats and melodies. Sometimes you want to use only the beat of a song, and sometimes you only want to use the melody. If you’re working on raw audio, you can simply extract the channel with the software. From there you can freely tweak and play around with part of the song you want to sample and add to your own song.
Speed and pitch. Audio sampling software gives you a lot of freedom to speed up or slow down beats and melodies. Another nice touch you can add to your music samples is to increase or reduce the pitch to accommodate the tone of the vocals or other musical elements you plan to blend in .
Effects. Voice removal may be the first effect that comes to mind, although you can also add other nice effects like distortion, noise, or modify the levels of bass and treble channels.

Remember that some music samples may be covered by copyright, so you have to be careful with what songs you are sampling. With these tips, you can cover just about any song and make it unique and true to the tune of your own imagination.