Sampling.

A process in which a sound is taken directly from a recorded medium and transposed onto a new recording. At first sampling was done directly from original vinyl sources, with DJs mixing records first with other records, as part of a DJ set, and then during live performances. The most famous early example was the Sugarhill Gang’s Rapper’s Delight, a 15-minute single which featured rapping over a reconstituted loop of Good Times by Chic: it simultaneously introduced both rap and sampling to a worldwide audience. Double D and Steinski took sampling technique further in the early 1980s, using innumerable samples and cut-ups as the basis for their own non-rap tracks. Their influence can be heard on M/A/R/R/S’s UK number one hit, Pump Up the Volume, a collection of samples (done on turntables, as was still common) overlaid on a drum machine track and bassline. Sampling technology progressed in the 1980s, with the Ensoniq Mirage (the first affordable digital sampler, 1985) and the Akai S1000 (1989) present in most recording studios. The technique was later used on rock records such as Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve, which looped a pattern sampled from a string arrangement of the Rolling Stones’s As Time Goes By.

WILL FULFORD-JONES