Music As Communication
Prof. Oliver-Cretara
Frantz Jerome

In Defense of Sampling

“They [dj’s, musicians, producers who sample] place authenticity and creativity in crisis, not just of the issue of theft, but through the increasingly automated nature of their mechanisms.” – Andrew Goodwin

Sampling is defined as, ”the selection of a suitable sample for study” by Merriam Webster’s dictionary. Musical sampling is better defined as, the act of taking a portion of one sound recording and reusing it as an instrument or a different sound recording of a song. This act has been hailed as the future of music and called theft in the same breath. Which is it? This paper seeks to find the art and romance in sampling in defense of its use and its transformative ability. Is sampling the Devil? No. Not by a long shot, and not by any means. Sampling is the result of ingenuity, appropriation, skill, and innovation working in an organic, collaborative process. In it’s purest forms and with its purest intent, sampling (despite utilizing already produced material) is, “…something new, the mass production of the aura.” (Goodwin, pg.259) This paper seeks to defend sampling by proving its relevance as an art form.

“Reproduction, pastiche, and quotation, instead of being forms of textual parasitism, become constitutive of textuality”- Peter Wollen (Goodwin, pg.258)

One of the main arguments against music sampling is that is it in fact theft of intellectual property. It would appear as though ‘sampling’ as a demonizing act applies only to the technological versions of the technique. If one can recall the musical styling of Chuck Berry, then one can also recall the appropriation of Berry’s sound (and extrapolation of his movements) by Elvis Presley. This is sampling in its simplest, and most easily legible form. In the case of Chuck Berry v. Elvis Presley, clearly sampling won the day, as fewer and fewer people know who Chuck Berry is. Imagine a world where Berry was ‘the King of Rock’. Now wake up. Whilst the Berry and Presley example might delve into cultural sampling, the idea of what sampling is and its effects on society at large still remain true. The inspiration for Berry’s music was experiential for him, and created such a palpable aura that is was used as a blueprint for Presley, but utilized none of Presley’s own intuition or skill. Still, Presley is lauded as the first name in rock & roll, and it has never come to collective consciousness that his whole career is a sample. Hence, it was never demonized collectively. This act of organic sampling proves that the reproduction of the aura requires the aforementioned ingenuity, appropriation, skill, and innovation in order to validate the reproduction. Listen closely to the comparison, and note what you can ‘feel’ from the ‘aura’ presented by the mash-up.




The case for sampling starts with a sample of a statement by Andrew Goodwin. “…New technologies are being used to deconstruct old texts.” (Goodwin, pg.259) This is the art of sampling. This construction of newly inspired texts rooted in the foundation of old texts. Kanye West samples “Through The Fire” by Chaka Khan to speak to the sentiment of surviving a horrific car accident and having his jaw wired shut, and produces “Through The Wire”. West has said that he was inspired by Chaka Khan’s music growing up, and utilized his experience to channel the aura of Khan’s track (about making it through a tough situation) to feed the aura of his track (a depiction of surviving a life-changing event). This digital sampling is the type under the most scrutiny. The sampling of someone’s work digitally allows for a high quality reproduction, essentially, the aura is copied wholly. This lies at the crux of the arguments for and against sampling, as the concern becomes whether listeners of the new material care for the aura of the sampled material. Note the below videos of Chaka Khan and Kanye West, listen for yourself and decide whether the aura of Khan’s lyrics and music are built upon by West, or deconstructed and reconstructed with the original intent forgotten about.




“In the age of mass production, Benjamin stated that the audience is no longer concerned with an original textual moment. In the age of digital reproduction the notion of the “aura” is further demystified by the fact that everyone may now purchase and “original”. (Goodwin, pg.259)

What can be gathered from the above statement is either that younger generations of listeners don’t care about aura, or that they care enough about the aura to take ownership of it. This paper presses that the latter outweighs the former. Proving this ownership aspect of sampling requires only citing how the music industry reacts to the shift in ownership as technology becomes more available to the public. “More radical still is the technology of DAT…It opens up the possibility that consumers will simply make their own perfect copies of CD’s…against which the music industry has mounted a huge and largely unsuccessful campaign.” (Goodwin, pg.259) Not only is the act of sampling artful in it’s intent, but it also aligns itself with a more radical socio-political element when regarding ownership.
The next level of owning the aura of others’ performances is to then sample them skillfully while maintaining artistic integrity. Anyone can take home some ‘aura’, but what can one do with it? It is here where the intent of the sampler is made evident through the technique by which they sample. It is here where the skill comes to play. The skill required when sampling is truly recognized when the musician/producer/DJ challenges the listener. “…The ‘recognition’ involved in knowing how to hear electronic music depends in part on understanding the associations to any given sound.” (Goodwin, pg.266) It’s this ‘understanding’ of how people listen to music that allows a musician sampling to pull specific emotional strings in the listener, with much of the same experiential inspiration that informed the sampled artist. The argument remains, that although all the artistic building blocks are there, where does the skill (often called ‘classical training’) come from? Again, we arrive at a place in the debate where the divide of ‘what skills are valued by whom?’ rears its head.

“We got the records and found a common denominator beat…laid down a beat at 114 b.p.m. [Beats per minute] and slowed down or speeded up the tracks I was going to use…the baseline is original, we’ve got a drum pattern around it…we sampled one not of wah-wah guitar and reconstructed it on keyboards. You wouldn’t be able to find that guitar pattern on any other record.” – Tim Simenon (Goodwin, pg. 267)

“Scratching is actually more creative than sampling. With sampling you are basically limited to a staccato effect whereas a good scratcher can really mess things up.” – Martin Young (Goodwin, pg. 267)

In what way is scratching not sampling? Listen to DJ Shadow’s “Walkie Talkie”, and note that the song is recorded as a take, scratching the whole way through, live. In what way is sampling not equal parts innovating and inspired? The Prodigy’s “The Way It Is” pulls samples, tweaked notes, and modernized bass lines from various sources using various techniques.







“We have grown used to connecting machines and funkiness.” (Goodwin, pg.263)

The above statement couldn’t be more antiquated, and couldn’t be more incorrect. As humanity innovates new ideas and new technologies to solidify those ideas, all aspects of culture enter a technological sphere of influence. As we become more technological, as humanity digitizes, our musicians, storytellers, painters, photographers, and eventually our curators become computer programmers at heart. Cory Arcangel’s works sample the data contained in 16-bit video game cartridges, and are being recognized as movies, songs, and stories all at once. Arcangel is a programmer by trade, utilizing his skill in manipulating motherboards, sound, and video cards to make art that speaks to his experience.



There is no true “automation” in art as long as there is the inception of inspiration in said art’s creation. This is the organic process that humanity identifies with the most. It is responsible for our scientific classification apart from all other species. In light of this, it isn’t machines that are connected to funkiness, but the inherent knowledge of the emotional effect of the synth and drum sounds. As life imitates art, art illustrates life in another of DJ Shadow’s introspective pieces, “Building Steam With A Grain of Salt”, and “Devil’s Advocate”. The tracks speak to the effect of music on the emotion of the artist and of the listener, respectively. Sampling vocal material that predates the technology used to sample them by a few decades, the blending of organic humanism and inorganic aura usage speaks to the creator and the audience simultaneously.






In closing, let it be said that sampling has already made a name for itself as an art form. Has sampling communicated across the boundaries of time and space? Has it communicated authenticity across concepts of intellectual property and aura? What has it communicated, and to whom?

“…The majority of fans don’t go to see the artist but to be in the presence of the artist, to share space with the artist.” – Bill Graham (Goodwin, pg.269)

“…To consume the only truly original aura available in mass produced pop – the presence of the star(s). (Goodwin, pg.269)

This paper leaves you with “Pushing Buttons” by DJ Shadow, DJ NuMark, and Cut Chemist. An amazing piece of live sampling, orchestrated through MPC drum pads, mixers, and thirty years of musical history. Note how the machines are ‘played’ by the DJs, not the music itself, note the racial ambiguity of the DJ’s, note that above everything this is live, and there is nothing more authentic than live performance…right? (Best enjoyed viewed/listened from start to finish.)