The Murky World of Sampling

Even if you're not a fan of rap and hip-hop, you surely know about "sampling," when an artist incorporates pieces of existing music into a new song. I like sampling when it's used to good effect, whether a sample is a fragment tweaked beyond recognition to create new sounds or a huge chunk of intact music with new lyrics added on top.

What I don't like as much about sampling is that it's so expensive to do legally and that it's so often done with little acknowledgment to the original music and, more importantly, the original artist. I think music sampling should be more like the citation of literary works: free, but with strict requirements about giving credit where credit is due.

Artists not backed by the world's top labels can't afford to sample if they want to sell their music. Making sampling free would level the playing field. Then if the original works and artists were cited more clearly and openly, they could greatly benefit from the increased exposure due to these contemporary borrowers. This is a half-cocked theory that I've had for years and in a way musicians are probably already supposed to do the latter part by listing samples in the liner notes. But who has liner notes when listening to internet radio or buying digitally? Anyway, my point is not to expound on the theory at length right this moment.

What I'm leading up to is this: listening to classic funk is always an eye-opening experience. I love it for its own sake, but it's even more fun to stumble across sounds I recognize from the more recent past. Funk is a seemingly limitless source of cool sounds and hip-hop never hesitates to return to that well. As with fashion, everything old becomes new again, sometimes with very little alteration, since younger generations don't remember the contributions of the older.

A Pandora station I've been listening to lately, which jumps around from classic funk to disco to modern techno, has recently played three songs I recognized as being sampled in famous hip-hop songs. One of them came up while I wrote this post, in fact: The Isley Brothers' "Between the Sheets," which I already knew was the "inspiration" for Notorious B.I.G.'s "Big Poppa." This is somewhat obvious because the sample is a largely intact piece of music from a very famous band.

But the other two sampled songs were never big hits, or at least not lasting hits, they seem to have avoided any resurgence in popularity despite their inclusion in two massive modern hits (is 1997 still considered modern? The movie franchise is technically still alive, so let's just call it modern). Below I've listed two more sets of youtube video links. The first link of each set is the original song, the second is the modern one that sampled from it. If you're under 30, you probably won't need the second links to guess the modern songs, but you've probably never heard of the originals either:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W2XhhuM9GZo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7CePeRW6eM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol0ZyaGG5H4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UjsXo9l6I8

Seriously, Jay-Z's "Empire Falls" is New York's anthem, and I hadn't even realized the most famous hook from it is taken note-for-note from a song called "Love on a Two Way Street." I love what Jay-Z and crew did with one epic piece of music from an otherwise boring song, but don't obscure the source. And "Forget Me Nots"...well, you have to give Will Smith credit for turning that into a catchy pop smash by changing the lyrics and adding a standard drum beat. But he should have given Patrice Rushen credit for providing the foundation for his music. Then we could have decided to ignore her on our own terms, rather than on his.

TWO Organs!

That's not the set-up or the punchline to a terrible joke. Actually, that's probably a lie -- somewhere in this world, I have to imagine there's at least one joke involving the exclamation "TWO organs!" But I promise I don't know that joke, and neither is this my attempt at creating a new joke. In fact, two organs is something I experienced on Sunday. Um...okay, it still sounds bad. I'd better just get on with it quickly and try to ignore the numerous puns.

The Mainz College of Music is moving onto the campus of the University of Mainz and they're getting a new organ as part of the deal. They donated their current organ to the Altmuenster church in Mainz, which already had an organ, but a very small one. This donated one is much bigger and nicer, so they moved the old one next to the altar and the donated one is now up above.

On Sunday the church had some special masses to celebrate the advent of two organs; they had a choir and people to play each organ. My supervising teacher, Bettina, and her husband, Gernot, were singing in the choir, which is how I found out about the whole thing. It was a really interesting experience, especially when they did a song that was specifically written for two organs. I'm not sure why you'd ever write a piece of music like that, but then again at the Fulbright conference in Berlin I also saw a guy perform a sweet tuba solo, so I'll just roll with it.

So although I had to go to church for it, it was worth it for some beautiful music and an unusual story. There was even champagne afterwards.

Oh no...I know I promised I wouldn't, but I'm weak. It's just got too much potential for me to not even try:

What's worse than church wine and an organ?
Church champagne and TWO organs!

Sorry you had to witness that. At least we now know for sure there's a joke somewhere in this world involving the exclamation "TWO organs!"

Let this post be ended, and go in peace.