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Borrowed Sounds, Shared Stories

Borrowed Sounds, Shared Stories

Borrowed Sounds, Shared Stories

“Art is how we decorate space, music is how we decorate time” - Jean Michel Basquiat

by

Agota Marija

2 min read

2 min read

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Lauryn Hill, Sister Act 2 (1993)

Lauryn Hill, Sister Act 2 (1993)

Lauryn Hill, Sister Act 2 (1993)


Inspiration is simply one of those things that we as humans don’t get to choose. It’s like our favourite colour. We don’t choose what particularly inspires us, or when that source finds us; it just happens. This is especially prevalent in musical expression. Bob Dylan has famously described his lyrical process as being an out-of-body, even unconscious-like experience. He describes the words to flow through him like a “ghost” - he never searches for them, instead, they find him. Similarly, Lauryn Hill describes how lyrics often “find her” when she is most tapped into her own narrative, once again emphasising the lack of personal choice within what words in particular find her. Inspiration, then, is not something we control per se, it is an entity that appears not when we want it, but when we need it. It comes when the world starts turning a little grey, and every song starts sounding a little more mundane.



Personally, while I don’t write songs, I do write poetry, and I can wholeheartedly say it works the same way. Yes, I still have to sit with the words, find phrases that rhyme with one another in some sense, but I have never been in control of the words that come to me or the ideas that flow in. They simply appear. This, in particular, is an important aspect in musical expression because often as creative individuals in a rapid-paced, hyper-efficiency oriented society, we try to produce, produce, produce. We try to control when art wants to find us; but that’s the funny thing about inspiration, the more you force it, the more it’ll run away. It’s like the more responsive you are to a teasing toddler, the more they’ll wind up. One day you can come into the studio with an entire free day, knowing you have hours to sit and write, yet nothing comes. You have the pen, the paper, all the equipment it seems, and yet. In another given moment or time, you’ll be in the middle of a run and have to stop, pull out your notes app, and start writing.


@ksfsradio

Outkast, Stankonia (2000)


This lack of control within inspirational endeavours is especially important in laying the groundwork for how it then functions within the musical field. This is perhaps the perspective of the role of inspiration within an individual, but then how does inspiration begin to mingle not just person to person, but communally?


This is where sampling comes in. Sampling in music is the act of using parts of an existing song in a new one. The process often includes three different steps or stages: recording, manipulating, and blending. These three steps all interplay to change the pitch, stretch timing, loop, chop, layer, adjust volume, and so much more. Sampling was a form of musical expression that emerged in a more formal setting in France in the 1940s. While the musicians were repurposing audio in new contexts, it stayed in a relatively formal format until New York in the 1970s, particularly with Black DJ’s and the hip-hop scene. Sampling emerged as a form of creative expression that was born from limitations of early samplers and drum machines. Limitations that led to creativity and broke any barriers of inspiration. A perfect example of hip-hop sampling is Wu Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” famously sampling the 1967 tune "As Long As I've Got You" by The Charmels.



What especially interests me about sampling is the never-ending controversy it ensues. It is often said that sampling stems from a lack of originality and creativity, but what makes sampling so beautiful is exactly this collaboration between other artists’ work and your own. It does not in any way make your work unoriginal. I personally think it elevates your sound even more. To produce a song that still rings so true to you as an artist while using the work of another is spectacular. That means your sound is so particularly yours, it’s impossible not to recognise.


Think “So Fresh, So Clean” by Outkast, one of the most iconic hip-hop duos and one of my all-time favourites. This song to me is just so incredibly Outkast - the drums intermingling with the deep bass, Big Boi’s thick southern hip-hop bars and Andre 3000’s smooth, melodic tone that itches exactly the right part of your brain. Yet it rhythmically practically fully samples “Before the Night Is Over” by Joe Simon. Listen to the two songs, though, and they evoke completely different emotions and have entirely different sounds. To be able to twist a song just the right way, change the teeniest tiniest chords, and end up producing an entirely new song is what makes sampling such an underrated form of finding inspiration.


What I’m trying to say with this is that, as an artist, you shouldn’t fear sampling and all that comes with it. You shouldn’t fear being inspired by other artists, so long as the track still feels like you. The more you try to be different, unique, or niche, the more you’re running away from your inner desires as an artist as well. It’s okay to be inspired by Pink Floyd and Olivia Rodrigo at the same time because you don’t really get to choose which sounds stick and which drift off.



What especially interests me about sampling is the never-ending controversy it ensues. It is often said that sampling stems from a lack of originality and creativity, but what makes sampling so beautiful is exactly this collaboration between other artists’ work and your own. It does not in any way make your work unoriginal. I personally think it elevates your sound even more. To produce a song that still rings so true to you as an artist while using the work of another is spectacular. That means your sound is so particularly yours, it’s impossible not to recognise.


Think “So Fresh, So Clean” by Outkast, one of the most iconic hip-hop duos and one of my all-time favourites. This song to me is just so incredibly Outkast - the drums intermingling with the deep bass, Big Boi’s thick southern hip-hop bars and Andre 3000’s smooth, melodic tone that itches exactly the right part of your brain. Yet it rhythmically practically fully samples “Before the Night Is Over” by Joe Simon. Listen to the two songs, though, and they evoke completely different emotions and have entirely different sounds. To be able to twist a song just the right way, change the teeniest tiniest chords, and end up producing an entirely new song is what makes sampling such an underrated form of finding inspiration.


What I’m trying to say with this is that, as an artist, you shouldn’t fear sampling and all that comes with it. You shouldn’t fear being inspired by other artists, so long as the track still feels like you. The more you try to be different, unique, or niche, the more you’re running away from your inner desires as an artist as well. It’s okay to be inspired by Pink Floyd and Olivia Rodrigo at the same time because you don’t really get to choose which sounds stick and which drift off.



Sampling also requires such deep, immense knowledge of the tracks you are using. This knowledge can only come from keeping yourself inspired by other artists. Allowing for their sound to intertwine with yours sometimes. Instead of constantly trying to be different, just be, create, and see where that takes you. Most of us have heard about collective consciousness, which is the idea that there are collective ideas and morals that, then, shape mutual understandings within society. This idea applied to music, then, reflects how music can evoke similar emotions in completely different individuals because, as humans, we share one common experience: being human.


In that sense, inspiration in music is never entirely individual. It moves between people, across generations and genres, finding new forms with each artist it touches. Sampling becomes one of the clearest examples of this process, not the copying of an idea, but its continuation. A melody, rhythm, or lyric that once inspired one person can inspire another decades later, creating an ongoing conversation between artists who may never even meet. Music, then, is less about creating something from nothing and more about contributing your own voice to a collective story that has been unfolding long before you and will continue long after.


Outkast, Stankonia (2000)

@tersoedebiyat

@tersoedebiyat

@ksfsradio


Sampling also requires such deep, immense knowledge of the tracks you are using. This knowledge can only come from keeping yourself inspired by other artists. Allowing for their sound to intertwine with yours sometimes. Instead of constantly trying to be different, just be, create, and see where that takes you. Most of us have heard about collective consciousness, which is the idea that there are collective ideas and morals that, then, shape mutual understandings within society. This idea applied to music, then, reflects how music can evoke similar emotions in completely different individuals because, as humans, we share one common experience: being human.


In that sense, inspiration in music is never entirely individual. It moves between people, across generations and genres, finding new forms with each artist it touches. Sampling becomes one of the clearest examples of this process, not the copying of an idea, but its continuation. A melody, rhythm, or lyric that once inspired one person can inspire another decades later, creating an ongoing conversation between artists who may never even meet. Music, then, is less about creating something from nothing and more about contributing your own voice to a collective story that has been unfolding long before you and will continue long after.



This lack of control within inspirational endeavours is especially important in laying the groundwork for how it then functions within the musical field. This is perhaps the perspective of the role of inspiration within an individual, but then how does inspiration begin to mingle not just person to person, but communally?


This is where sampling comes in. Sampling in music is the act of using parts of an existing song in a new one. The process often includes three different steps or stages: recording, manipulating, and blending. These three steps all interplay to change the pitch, stretch timing, loop, chop, layer, adjust volume, and so much more. Sampling was a form of musical expression that emerged in a more formal setting in France in the 1940s. While the musicians were repurposing audio in new contexts, it stayed in a relatively formal format until New York in the 1970s, particularly with Black DJ’s and the hip-hop scene. Sampling emerged as a form of creative expression that was born from limitations of early samplers and drum machines. Limitations that led to creativity and broke any barriers of inspiration. A perfect example of hip-hop sampling is Wu Tang Clan’s “C.R.E.A.M (Cash Rules Everything Around Me)” famously sampling the 1967 tune "As Long As I've Got You" by The Charmels.


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