Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Sampling.. the lazy way to make music

When last did you hear a track on the radio and think to yourself: "Hey I know that tune...!", only to be horrified when you hear the new lyrics of the song, which have simply been pasted over the original tune...
To make matters worse, the new artist then claims the track as their own, and makes whackloads of money out of it!

They call this "sampling" in the music industry, which I think is fine and good when using a short segment of another track.
A good example of this would be the bassline for the early 90's Vanilla Ice track "Ice Ice Baby" - Vanilla Ice made use of the original bassline from the Queen & David Bowie 80's track "Under Pressure".

Nowadays, however, it seems the norm is to use an entire song, dump the original lyrics and make up your own.
Anybody who grew up in the 80's will remember a track called "Echo Beach" by Martha and the Muffins - a fantastic tune and definitely a classic.
File:Echo Beach cover.jpg
Now a South African born artist living in London called "Mpho", has released her debut album entitled "Pop Art".
Among the tracks on her album is one called "Box n Locks" - give it a listen and you will very quickly realize that it is essentially the original track "Echo Beach", but with new lyrics sung in a different tune to the original.

So am I the only one who thinks that all the sampling going on nowadays is a bit fishy?
I mean cover versions are one thing - there is a clear reference and credit to the original artist who actually created the track, whereas sampling allows anybody to create their "own" music by using the creative property of somebody else!

2 comments:

  1. I don't like any form of music sampling including your Vanilla Ice example which you said was "fine and good". That's lazy too.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ya I hear you.

    Just last week I heard another "new" track on the radio with a snippet from an older track...

    The more "new" tracks I hear, the more I realise how unimaginative some new music has become.

    NOT fine and good! :)

    ReplyDelete


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