Lesson video

In this lesson, you'll need a pencil, a piece of paper to write notes with.

This lesson makes use of music-making software.

You may use the same one that I do, or a similar app, or desktop, digital audio work station.

This lesson is also better with headphones, but they are not required.

If you can, find a quiet space to do this lesson in as you will be doing lots of listening and playing.

If you need pause the video now to prepare for the lesson, please do so and click resume when you're ready.

Using music software, you can create music using audio mixing software.

The demonstrations in this lesson use a free programme called BandLab.

BandLab is for use by over 13s only, and if you are over 13, you still need permission to use it from your parent or carer.

Where did sampling start? DJ Kool Herc or Kool DJ Herc is known as the father of hip hop.

Sampling is one of the foundations of hip hop.

DJs would mix portions of songs together and loop them and this technique developed into sampling and is now a defining feature of hip hop.

We will now watch a video of DJ Kool Herc explaining this phenomenon now.

I said, I wonder if I put these, so I said to myself, oh they're waiting for this particular break, and I have a couple more records, got the same break up in it.

I wonder how would it be if I put 'em all together.

And I told them, I said I want to try something new tonight, I'm going to call it the Merry-Go-Round.

Herc's Merry-Go-Round meant that instead of playing whole records, he would play just the instrumental breaks, mixing between them to create a continuous dance rhythm.

I started out with James Brown, James Brown, clap your hands, stomp your feet, That part right there, with the break, boom! I come in with Bongo Rock.

Bongo Rock was still going, no vocals in it, and I would go into Baby Huey, you know, the Mexican.

And it was like, whoa.

I think we got somethin' here! You know, 'cause people was like, oh, whoa! Everybody was like, yeah, yeah, yeah! I'm feelin' this! Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know? Sampling in popular music, before the invention of digital audio workstations, artists recorded on tape.

They then had to splice these up, and glue them back together.

Sampling has been used in many musical genres.

What might be the issue with using samples? We're going to hear from popular EDM artist, Diplo, in talking about some of the issues with samples and copyright.

One of my biggest records I've done was "Paper Planes" by M.

I.

A.

, you know, when I sampled The Clash record, it was more than just a good loop.

I felt like what the Clash represented was similar to what M.

I.

A represented, sort of like an alternative, you know, somewhere between reggae and rock music.

We had a really good negotiation with the Clash's publisher.

Nowadays, it's not that easy, like, when it comes to samples, the old school guys, they just kill you.

They make it impossible for you to sample them.

Big shout to M.

I.

A.

! I actually got sued for Santigold, I lost like $60,000 on a clearance on that.

A song I did with Black Star, called "Stuntastic," which I sampled an Underworld record, that we just couldn't clear.

We couldn't clear the master, the publishing side, nothing.

Because, I don't know why, but a lot of the times these guys that are 5 years or 10 years behind me.

Or you know, 10 years older when the records come out.

They don't even know where the publishing is anymore.

These guys are just like, I don't understand it, I'm just going to freeze it.

'Cause if they don't understand, you know, they're scared of it.

They're scared of what we're doing.

If they come to something where it's legitimate again, it'd be great, I wouldn't have to pay my lawyers so much money, I'd be able to release things I really believe in.

It'd be amazing to be able to have control of that again.

Although sampling is a big, big part of genres like hip-hop, it could be said that it's also a big part of genres including electronic dance music.

Famous EDM artist Avicii created a song not too long ago called "Levels." We're going to hear about 20, 30 seconds of that song, before hearing the original sample.

Oh, oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah.

Get a feeling that I never, never, never, never had before, no, no.

I get a good feeling, yeah.

Now, Avicii actually sampled that from a song by someone called Etta James, called "Something's Got a Hold on Me." So let's play that original song, and listen out for anything we recognise.

Now, I think it's going to be quite obvious what has been sampled.

But my question is to you, what did Avicii do to manipulate or change the sample? Or did he just simply copy and paste it? Let's have a listen.

Oh, oh, sometimes I get a good feeling, yeah.

Yeah.

I get a feeling that I never, never, never never had before, no, no.

Yeah.

However, like I said before, it's not just vocals that are sampled heavily in EDM.

You can create an entire EDM track using samples and nothing else.

Drums are often sampled, just a separate kick, snare, high hat samples.

Synths are often sampled, white noise filters, string sounds, and also, loops.

Now loops, is an interesting one.

Oftentimes, loops themselves are comprised of lots and lots of different samples put together.

But people sometimes sample loops as well.

There's also something else called midi.

Midi stands for musical instrument digital interface.

And it's not quite sampling, but it is a way of recording synthesised sounds using potentially a keyboard that's plugged into your laptop.

Now, you can create string sounds or a sound of a trumpet, or even the sound of somebody singing using this keyboard.

But, there isn't a piano or singer in your laptop.

It's using different information to produce those sounds.

Okay, so here we are over in BandLab.

And we're going to have a look at how we can use samples and loops to create our own EDM tracks.

Now, first we need to do is open our mix editor of course.

And when we get to our mix editor, you are probably going to be given this screen here.

And you may notice that in the top of the, the top left hand corner of the first two, instruments and drum machines, we have that word that I just said, midi.

And that's literally just the computer has information of different sounds.

So if we play something on our keyboard, and want to change it from a piano to a trumpet, then the computer can do that for us.

Now of course, they're not real piano sounds or real trumpet sounds, but they're synthesised sounds made by the computer.

We are going to have a look at the loops in BandLab first, and when you first open up the loop packs, you should be greeted with this.

So it might say guitar loop, African Afropella loop, and they have lots and lots and lots of different ones.

But the easiest thing to do is use the search feature, type in EDM, and you have Megapack Volume One, and Megapack Volume Two.

I'll just click on Megapack Volume Two for now.

And we have lots and lots and lots of different samples, it goes on and on and on.

And on the left-hand side of this panel, it will tell you the name of that loop.

And on the right-hand side, there's a number that represents the beats per minute.

So our project at the moment is 128 BPM.

And that is perfectly acceptable for an EDM track.

You might notice that most of the tracks or the loops here are at 128 BPM.

And that means if we were to play them at the same time, they'd all be in time.

If I played one that was 128 and one that was 140 BPM, it wouldn't sound good.

So just be careful that you are selecting loops that are at the same BPM.

And if it doesn't sound right, then just double check the BPM and you should be okay.

So first thing I would like us to do is literally just go through and see if any of the loops sound good to us.

So you just tap once and it should start playing.

Great, so that's a nice little melody.

And you'll find that if they say Orca Melody 01, and Orca Kick, and Orca whatever, those are sort of designed to be put together.

But you can mix them.

So I could play the Orca Melody with say, a Tomahawk Crash, as long as they were at the same BPM.

So let's hear a Tomahawk kick loop and see what that sounds like.

I'm just tapping once to hear it.

Okay, seems very simple.

It's just a four to the floor, it's just a kick drum on every beat of the bar.

Let's maybe hear some, maybe, I'll have a look.

The Ibiza Perc Loop.

Okay, let's say I really, really like this.

It's quite cool.

I can click, hold and drag that loop into my project.

And it will process the information and put it in like that.

So I want to make sure, okay, yes.

This is 128 BPM.

Which is perfect.

Now you can see I didn't put that in very well here.

And I didn't put it in right at the beginning.

So I just need to double check that and make sure that it goes from the beginning of bar one.

So I've got a drum beat now, kind of.

We definitely want some kind of four to the floor.

So I would also drag in the kick loop as well.

You can see, again, it didn't snap it straight to bar one.

So we'll do that ourselves.

And we can hear what they sound like together, by clicking return to bar one, and play.

Okay, it's missing some hats.

Now I don't want to just do IB for the hats.

I don't want it all to be from the same pack.

So I'm going to have a look and see if there are any other packs that have hats.

So I can see here Tomahawk Hats Loop.

And it is in the correct BPM, so I can drag that in as well.

Now, I didn't do that very well because I've gone over my kick drum.

So I'm just going to click Command-Z to undo that.

Or I could do edit undo up there.

I've scrolled down now so there's an empty track available, and then I'll drag that in again.

And recognise that I have to put it back to bar one.

So let's hear what that sounds like all together.

Cool, perfect.

So you can see that because it's all 128 BPM, it's sounding pretty good.

Now, I need a melody, so I'm going to find one.

Let's hear the Orca Melody 7.

I don't like that.

Okay, that's slightly better, slightly better.

I'll put that in.

So we've got a melody now, let's see what that sounds like.

Okay, now the good thing about samples and loops is that we can edit them.

So we know that Avicii edited Etta James' sample.

And how did he do that? Well one of the things he did was slow it down, sorry, speed it up a little bit.

I think that, and if I just isolate my Orca Melody by pressing S for solo, and have a listen closely.

Okay, I don't like the end at all.

So what I'm going to do is manipulate the sample by just chopping it in half like that.

And then what I'd like to do is I'm going to hold the Alt key, and click, hold, and drag, which just is a quick way of copy and pasting.

Let's hear how that sounds.

I've just chopped it in half and I've repeated the first half of that original loop.

Okay, so that's one way I could edit that.

Another thing is I could get this percussion loop, and I could have maybe just one bar of it.

And then maybe I want a different percussion loop.

So I can get the Nightcall percussion loop, and add it onto the track.

Maybe have that for one bar, like so.

And then again using Alt, click, hold and drag, I can copy these two over there.

So now I'm alternating between the Ibiza percussion loop and the Nightcall one.

See how that sounds.

Now, I've done something silly there.

I've still got my melody solo, so I can just quickly un-solo that.

It's easily done, it's okay.

So let's hear that from the beginning with everything.

Okay, cool, and I quite like that alternating pattern.

It's kind of like what DJ Kool Herc was doing in his video where he was playing the instrumental break from one record, and then switching over to the other record, and back and forth, and back and forth.

So using that method of just experimenting with the loops and seeing what you like and dislike.

Try and do, how many did I do, four? Let's see if you can do four or five loops yourself.

Remember, you don't have to use the loops from one pack.

I might be able to add, I think you can, the EDM Megapack.

See, it was just there.

So if I go here, okay, well I've listened to all the EDM Megapack Twos, and I want to have a look at the ones.

I can open them up as well.

And there we go, there, a lot of them are 128.

So I'm free to use them as well.

So you can pause the video here, and click resume when you're ready.

And good luck! Let's see what you come up with.

So I hope you managed to create something really, really cool.

One of the other things we can do is use samples to make a drum beat.

So if I add a new track, and click on the drum machine.

Let it load up.

Then we are presented with the drum machine which we have seen before.

Now I can change the kits to lots of different ones, maybe I want the lo-fi kit for example.

And that little bar there loading, is just loading in the different samples to the left-hand side here.

So if I know, for example, that I don't want to use a tom, and I want to use a cowbell instead, then I can just select cowbell there.

And the drum machine corresponds with my keyboard as well.

So S is the kick drum.

And as we did before, we can just add in different patterns.

Like that.

And we can press play to see what it sounds like.

Now, that isn't very good, or very EDM.

So what I like to do is just click and hold, and drag my mouse all over the screen just to get rid of the whole thing.

You can just click clear.

And add in a very simple EDM beat.

Now if you are watching this and don't have access to BandLab, but have a phone, you can find similar apps, Garage Band is one, that have drum machines on there as well.

And also some keyboards have a drum pad as well.

So very, very simply, I'm going to have the hi-hat just every other note.

Like so, here we go.

And I'm going to have four to the floor loops.

Let's get my kick drum back, there we go.

Four to the floor means I've got a kick drum every single beat.

And actually, I think it'd be nicer to have the hi-hat on the off-beat.

So I'm going to change that.

Like so, and then I'll have a clap on the two and the four.

And maybe I'll have my snare on the two and the four as well.

So let's hear what that sounds like.

Okay, it's okay, it's okay.

Let's see what it does sound like with the hi-hats on the beat this time instead.

That's the good thing about these things, you can, if you don't like it, you can change it really easily.

Okay, I think if the kick is playing, I don't want the hi-hat to play.

So I'm going to get rid of those.

Okay, that's getting better.

I'm going to add in a rim shot just before the shots come in.

Okay, now add an open.

Okay, wow, I'm kind of happy with that.

So I'm going to leave that one there.

I encourage you now to experiment with using the drum machine again.

And you can import those, your then, your pattern, back into your track into your EDM piece.

So pause the video, and have a go yourself.

Click resume when you're done.

Using samples in your EDM track, use the loops library on BandLab to add samples to your EDM track.

Select the appropriate EDM loops in the right key and tempo.

So make sure that we're using EDM loops and not Afrobeat loops, or drill loops, or rock loops.

You can watch the video to make sure you know exactly how to check that it's in the right key and the right tempo.

Pause the video now to complete your task, and click resume when you're ready.

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