What is Sampling?

For those who know, sampling has always been a subject that is frowned upon; for those who don’t, sampling means taking a part/section of a song and changing it (sometimes not even that) to make it work in another song. Take for example Kanye West’s song Stronger. It uses a very famous line from Daft Punk’s Harder in which he remakes in order for it to fit into his own song.

The earlier usages of sampling originated from the early hiphop days, in which producers will “steal” certain drum loops from famous funk/jazz records. They would often use a device called an MPC in order to achieve this. This piece of hardware allows producers to cut and edit certain parts of a song, for later use.

Sampling really isn’t that big of a deal, there has been tons and tons of samples floating around famous songs, which of course includes all the top hits that you hear today. Songs like Roses, Britney Spear’s toxic, have all been made with the foundation of sampling. So is sampling really something that should be frowned upon when mentioned? I personally think it isn’t a very big deal (legality excluded).