Music sampling

Music sampling - Is it the planned destruction of the world finest music, or an exciting new step in music evolution?

Throughout my musical odyssey I have heard songs that I have loved and then sometime afterwards found out that they're covers and immediately disregarded those 'songs' as nothing but fodder in the hierarchy of music. I listened to some, such as Letters To Cleo version of Cruel To Be Kind by Nick Lowe and I have felt guilty that I like the cover version better, thinking I'm betraying the original song that was properly and lovingly written.

I am older now; I have listened to thousands of songs from all over the world in various different genres and have encountered various forms of sampling. In this essay I plan to examine sampling in its various forms taking in classical music, film music, jazz, pop, hip hop and other genres to try and provide more detailed arguments for and against sampling and give a bit of clarity for me and you. In addition maybe we'll find new ways of thinking about music on the way.

What is a cover? It is the same song played in a different way. Sometimes it changes enormously, for instance Marilyn Manson's version Of Tainted Love, originally sung by Gloria Jones; sometimes not so much in the case of Girls Aloud cover of Jump For My Love by The Pointer Sisters. It is known as the same song.

What is a sample? A sample in the popular music sense is taking a piece of a beat or bassline from a song and adding a different melody, different words to create something new. Songs that use samples are generally regarded as different songs.
The most widespread, well known use of sampling in in the part of music known as hip hop, developed in the 1970's in New York. They sampled many bass parts from jazz, soul, funk records and usually added rhythmic chants called rap to create a new sound.

In actual fact the history of sampling goes back a lot further than Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five. Classical music is littered with sampled, albeit different to the conventional view of sampling. Many composers took a certain chord progression or the first few notes of a melodic phrase from another piece. They would then proceed to lead the notes in a different direction but still based on the original line.

Variations in music are pieces or sections of music based on an original theme. Classical music, well most Western music is based on chords. Variations change the original melody by adding harmonic layers, adding notes, changing notes but keeping most chords the same. The best example of this that non classically inclined people will have heard of is Pachelbels Canon. It starts with a simple walking melody and repeats, every time adding another layer, another series of notes until the final complex melody and harmony is heard.

Most of these variations are written with the theme and are called Theme and Variations. They are both written by the same composer. It is as if the composer is changing his own work. There are also some composers who take a piece by another composer and create new variations based on that theme. Vaughan Williams' Variations on a theme by Thomas Tallis is an excellent demonstration of this.

Now unlike popular music, the vast majority of classical music was written before recording equipment existed. Even since the recording era a hundred years ago, there is not usually a link between the first performance and the first recording; they can be years apart and not played by the same orchestra or conductor.
Classical music (just like other music) is written down as a language with starts, pauses, stops chapters etc. The played version of a piece is its translation into sound. This translation occurs because like a language we can recognise the squiggles and what they represent in the different language of sound. The translation may not be accurate due to two reasons. Firstly whilst some composers write exactly how every single note is to be played, most don't. They give ideas for timing and degree of loudness but not every single second is usually accounted for. This leaves all the decisions up to whichever ensemble is playing. Also a tempo direction for example Andante, is in itself ambiguous. Andante means at a walking pace. People walk at different paces. If you look at a metronome the Andante section is anywhere between 69 and 83 beats per minute. This leads to several possible interpretations of just one marking. Same applies to dynamics.

Secondly each conductor and musicians can choose what to play. Of the one thousand instructions in Zadok The Priest, an ensemble can choose to play only nine hundred. Just like people read books and each take different messages away, so it is with music. Every playing and recording of a particular piece will be different. For example Beethoven's Fifth Symphony conducted by Simon Rattle will sound different when Marin Alsop takes the baton. They each choose their own way to interpret the piece and whilst we can recognise that both performances are the same piece, we can hear the differences.

Then in ensembles each group may have different instrumentation. Some music may have a cor anglais solo although not all orchestras contain a cor anglais. What can happen is that for a solo such as this, another instrument will take the part, although if there is a part for cor anglais or euphonium for which there isn't a solo, the part may be missed out altogether. These instrumentations change the whole timbre (the quality of sound) of a piece.

Elgar's string quartets played on clarinets would sound completely different because the whole tone of string and wind instruments are so varied. This method of variation, changing the entire instrumentation of a piece is called transcription. Since the popularization of the concert band, many orchestral pieces have been transcribed to wind band.
So when does sampling become a separate piece? The popular concert piece Carnival Of The Animals is several short pieces each dedicated to one animal. The tortoise is represented by a slow, deep, swaying melody. This melody is in fact The Infernal Galop by Jacques Offenbach's opera Orpheus In The Underworld. The tempo has been slowed right down until it's almost unrecognisable as the familiar high spirited can-can. This is seen as a separate piece from Offenbach's Galop and both are well known concert standards. Is it a separate piece though? The melody line is identical but the whole sound of the two pieces is maybe not worlds but several countries apart.
Moving on from Classical music now, to the world of Jazz. Jazz developed around the time the first recording equipment in the 1910's and the first jazz recording was in 1917. Just like classical music composers would write jazz and there would be a substantial time difference between performance and recording.
Jazz is much more flexible than classical music and one of its central principles is improvisation. Like classical methods of variation, Jazz also keeps all the chords the same and then changes and adds notes to create new sounds. Usually jazz pieces have the main melody first establishing the sound, then one or more instrumental solo improvising and varying the main tune. Some composers choose to write every note down until the solos while more often composers only wrote the chords as a guideline for the performers, giving them a lot of self-expression. Sometimes the performers like their own way of playing a piece that they write their versions down. This is called an arrangement.

Arrangements in Jazz are an extremely popular form. There are different Jazz instrumentations. Big Band Jazz uses many brass instruments; there are small groups and solo artists. Arrangements like transcription change the instrumentation to fit the ensemble.
Many jazz and pop composers wrote for a record label, giving them rights to their music. Early companies took control of the music and made it into a business. The company could then tell someone else to record the song. As far as I understand it, they paid the composer a fixed sum for their music but if someone else recorded the song then the rest of the money went to the label, not the composer. In addition, the subsuming of composers under record labels led to the songs becoming more or less public property and the names of the composers and lyricists became lost to the label. This is why with many early songs we don't know who wrote them.

Improvisation, time differences between performance and recording and subsuming of composers into record labels let to the creation of the jazz standard: a popular song that has been arranged and recorded hundreds even thousands of times. There are thousands of these now, examples include: Autumn Leaves, Begin The Beguine and Mack The Knife.

There are two ways of looking at this. Are these composers sacrificing their art for a quick buck or are they releasing it into the world to spread the joy and pleasure that went into creating it?

Some of these standards have been recorded and/or performed thousands of times by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Muse. Is the song only worth anything in its original form or is it just enough that it exists? Are all its regenerations (Yes, I deliberately used that word and yes, I love Doctor Who!) just reincarnations of same thing like The Doctor and they all have a history and new qualities we should admire?

The idea of arrangement has continued into popular music, Richard Carpenter arranging the Burt Bacharach/Hal David penned Close To You and sung by his sister Karen being just one example. In many cases an artists is only famous for a cover version. Tiffany's 80's upbeat pop version of I Think We're Alone Now by Tommy James and the Shondells for instance. The 90's boyband Boyzone's most famous songs are The Osmond's Love Me For A Reason and No Matter What from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Whistle Down The Wind.

Cover versions are used a lot in so called manufactured pop acts; The Saturdays, Girls Aloud, Take That and The Bay City Rollers among the list.
The song Yesterday by The Beatles is apparently the most covered song in history. I can't stand the song myself but hey, each to their own right? That is a good example because while listening to the cover versions most people are aware of the original and its background. A different example is Alien Art Farm's version of Smooth Criminal. Most people will know it is Michael Jackson but the Alien Ant Farm version is actually fairly different and a very popular pop punk version.

Some artists cover songs that barely made it onto the music radar first time around, even by a famous group, yet the second time it becomes a hit. Is this a way of keeping music fresh, rejuvenating fantastic songs that would never have seen the light of day otherwise? Or is it just unwillingness to create something new that is theirs and it is easier to recycle old songs?
Songs like this include Torn by Natalie Imbruglia, a huge pop song in the 90's, its fairly upbeat jangly guitar sound a vastly different arrangement to the grungy hard rock of the original by American group Ednaswap. Now if you're interested you can find out about who originally played the songs, the background and all that on the internet and books, although many people are happy to listen in ignorance, not wondering about the songwriters, composition and history. Just knowing they like it is enough for some people.

Now I am the kind of person that loves finding out about songs I like and delving into their background, discovering more about music. I used to see that a song was a cover and I didn't think they were they were valuable and I thought they were destroying great songs.

I didn't know much music until I was about 18 and for the next 4 years most of the music I Iistened to I discovered through the films I watched. I found the song All Star by Smash Mouth from watching Shrek, Golden Years by David Bowie from A Knights Tale and Supermassive Black Hole by Muse from watching Twilight. (I can't believe that one, I dislike that film, it is so bad and I can't believe I watched it however I love that Muse song.)

Lots of cover versions feature in movies and television. The Oasis song Champagne Supernova is covered by Matt Pond P.A. in an episode of The O.C. and Changes, my favourite David Bowie song is covered by Butterfly Boucher in Shrek 2. I have disliked this and been irritated that I've heard songs I've loved in a film and then found out they were covers, although does it matter how I came to find these songs? Maybe it only matters that I have found them and I do love them. Those last two songs I do actually like the original versions better than the covers.

The film 10 things I hate about you features a band called Letters To Cleo who sing Cruel To Be Kind by Nick Lowe. I saw it when I was about 14 and that was one of my favourite songs for years until I found out it was a cover a couple of years ago. I like the Nick Lowe version just as I always determine to like the original better and disregard the cover but my heart prefers the cover by Letters To Cleo.

Nick Lowe isn't a hugely popular household name although certain people in England are likely to have heard of him, he has released several albums and was Elvis Costello's producer for years.

The Four Seasons are a well known American group and you may have heard of then even if you don't know they originally sang the song By Bye Baby (Baby Goodbye). Likewise Stevie Wonder is well known and you are likely to have heard his songs even if you don't realise the song Gangsta's Paradise samples the music and chorus of his song Pastime Paradise.

Edyta Gorniak however, I'm guessing you haven't heard of her, she is a Polish singer. Now you probably heard of Martine McCutcheon, the British Actress. Amongst many other actors she tried her hand at singing and her really only famous song was a cover version of Perfect Moment by Edyta Gorniak. Now I would have never heard of this lady if not for the Martine McCutcheon version I heard on Top Of The Pops thirteen years ago. I love music from around the world but generally not music that fits into the Anglo American popular music tradition; I prefer other popular music such as Klezmer, Soca and Cajun music. So maybe it is not too awful that I found this song?

Pop music makes great use of the conventional sampling we know. The earliest example I know of is Teenage Kicks by The Undertones which sampled in One Way Or Another by Blondie. Then there are songs like Touch The Sky by Kanye West which samples Curtis Mayfield's Move On Up, MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This sampling Super Freak by Rick James and Vanilla Ice's Ice Ice Baby sampling the bassline from Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie.

The entire section of music called hip hop is almost entirely based on samples. I don't know of any hip hop songs not based upon a pre-existing song. Like I've mentioned I have disregarded sampling so I have not listened to much hip hop. I do like the music from the films Step Up and Save The Last Dance though. I think it's really fun to dance to. The 1974 song Nautilus by jazz musician Bob James is one of the most sampled songs in hip hop history. It was sampled by British hip hopper Slick Rick in 1989 in his song Children's Story and then this song in turn was sampled in 1995 by Montell Jordan. I actually like both songs and all this creativity and sounds from one song, that's pretty awesome. Maybe if we decide to disregard all samples we lose our chance of finding some incredible music. Hip hop does use samples but should that be a reason to disregard an entire genre?

Okay so far it may seem as though I've presented a fairly one sided argument for sampling so let me balance the scales a bit. I was checking out Slick Rick Children's Story there was a list of about 50 songs that have sampled this song. I have to question the quality of the music. Music is wonderful because of its infinite variety and possibilities not basing everything on one idea and one person. If all these songs take the same bassline or guitar riff just how different are they? Are they just using music that already exists because these artists can't come up with any original ideas?

The singer Rihanna has several popular songs based on samples. One of her earlier songs is called S.O.S. The foundation is the electronic rhythm of the Soft Cell version of Tainted Love. The song was originally sung by Northern Soul singer Gloria Jones in 1964. Likewise her song Please Don't Stop The Music samples Wanna Be Startin Something by Michael Jackson which is based on Manu Dibango's Soul Makossa and the now famous refrain of "ma-mako, ma-ma-sa, mako-mako ssa" One has to question the integrity of this music. The music appearing in such a diluted form does it fail to make an impact? I dislike Rihanna's music. I think there is little artistic value to it and I dislike both of the aforementioned songs. Despite the argument that some samples and covers are effective I think her songs are positively ghastly and just terrible music. Just an opinion, though.

The television show Glee is extremely popular. To my mind it's about a bunch of bitchy, annoying typically attractive teenagers whose behaviour is disgusting. Oh and they sing lots of songs. To those of you lucky enough never to have seen the show, allow me to elaborate. (Yes I'm showing bias and I don't care.) Glee is a television programme set in an American high school. It centres on the schools Glee club. Glee clubs in America are mainly acapella singing groups. Apparently they are at the bottom of the social hierarchy which in America is all too important. Anyway as glee clubs perform many existing songs so do the characters in the show. They have performed hundreds of songs from a variety of artists and musicals including Madonna, Louis Prima, The Pretenders, The Wiz, Les Miserables, Kiss to name a few. Most of these songs appear on the soundtrack albums and some have been released as singles.

The first single they released was their arrangement of Don't Stop Believing by Journey. The first time I heard it I actually cringed. It was at the time I started disliking covers but still I couldn't stand it. I should say that I happen to love the original song; I think it's gorgeous and I think the Glee arrangement destroys the song. In addition I don't think any of the Glee cast can sing very well, if at all. What concerned me at the time was that people would forget the original song and who sung and wrote it.
The next single they released was Somebody To Love originally by Queen. Queen is my favourite popular music act ever and I love that song so I was crushed by this deliberate trashing, to my mind anyway, of this beautiful song. I decided to boycott Glee, I only listened to the music because it was playing at the pub where I worked at the time. By the way I was involved at a hospital radio station at the time and I was assistant on a show. We used to have Anti Glee nights, where we would play all the original versions of the songs that Glee covered. Fun times!

When I was about five I went to see the pantomime Aladdin with my Grandma in a local town. It was hilarious actually, we went with her old folks club and no one could remember where the coach was, so I led them all safely back. That was fun, but I digress. Pantomime is a form of British entertainment traditionally performed at Christmas. In simplest terms it is slapstick comedy based on a well known fairy tale such as Cinderella or Sinbad. They always sing popular songs in these pantos and the audience joins in and it is a great laugh.

In this production they had Aladdin and Jasmine sing Could It Be Magic. The next week I had a Latin/Ballroom dancing lesson. The song we danced to was Could It Be Magic and my teacher asked us if we knew who sang it. I remember being very excited and saying 'Aladdin!'. My teacher then replied 'No it's Take That.' The song was actually originally recorded and written by Barry Manilow but anyway. My point is that I heard Aladdin singing it and so naturally I thought it was him on the CD. I know I was five and didn't quite understand music yet but still.

The general view is that when you listen to a song for the first time and hear the artists name on the radio you think it is they who sung it, wrote it and it is original. Do other people have the same experience? I know many people don't know who originally sung Tainted Love or I Think We're Alone Now. Does covering songs and making them hits make people forget the original? In twenty years are teenagers over Britain and America talking about how great and original Glee music is? Are they saying they love how Glee create original songs such as Like A Virgin and On My Own? Having said that are we clinging too hard to these songs, the memories of another times? Do we need to let them go and love them as they are, enjoying the various regenerations? Or should we fight to preserve what we know, the old familiar songs? Should we resist change or embrace it?

At this point I realise I've failed to mention film scores. Most film scores are composed of orchestral music based on the classical music tradition. John Williams is arguably the most famous and most popular film composer of all time. Williams took the first 3 chords of the theme to Kings Row, a film scored by Erich Korngold and used them in the main theme to Star Wars. He then takes the music in a different direction but he does use exactly the same chords as Korngold.

Actually another section of the same phrase in Kings Row is used in the theme to Superman that Williams also scored. Actually there's a fun video on YouTube that showcases the similarities between Star Wars and Kings Row. A massively heated debate emerged on this very subject; on how much Williams stole, if anything. Check it out, just type 'star wars vs kings row'. In a way this is sampling in a different sense again, using the beginning of a musical phrase and then changing direction to create something new.

The most interesting use of sampling I've seen was in the Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I was watching it and a couple of notes sounded familiar then the next few did something strange. Basically Shore did the same thing as John Williams but with his own work. He took the beginnings of phrases from his score to Lord Of The Rings then changed tack with them to create different melodies. I thought that was genius, because it was similar to Lord of the Rings and it needed to be, to connect the two as the same story; the same universe kind of thing. It also needed to be fresh; to stand alone as a solid piece of music and it did that perfectly. It grounded me because I heard the beginning and thought 'yeah, I remember this, I know where this is going' and then it surprised me, keeping me hooked to what was going to happen next musically. I thought it was incredibly effective.

We've looked at sampling in a number of different genres and uses, we've seen how some composers sample a whole melody line while others sample a few notes, and we've seen how our definition of sampling as changed over the centuries. So decision time: is music sampling the destruction of music or a new stage in evolutionary music?

I think it comes down to each individual piece and the way it is used. Some samples are used to great effect, adding something new to the piece that didn't exist before and some are seemingly just used for monetary gain with little thought to musicality. I think it also depends on your own point of view. I've given my thoughts on Rihanna although you may have a different opinion on Please Don't Stop The Music. Music as an art form is completely subjective and its value is determined by you, the consumer. It only matters or it only means something because you like it, or dislike it as the case may be. I guess what I'm saying is judge each individual piece according to your own tastes, but do make sure they are your own and not the ones forces upon you. You decide.