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Shamelessly stolen from Reddit:

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That's perfect!

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The flip side to that is Jimmy Page was "sampling" american blues music.

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Pretty much any 12 year old with a mac can create a beat.

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This is incorrect. I mean, they could technically, but it takes a tremendous amount of skill to do well. I won't go further and argue that it is a musical skill on par with mastering instrument, but to be a good producer, one must have a decent amount of...say, musicality.

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The flip side to that is Jimmy Page was "sampling" american blues music.

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Absolutely not true. If that's your argument, then virtually every musician samples.

Two diff definitions. That's not sampling.

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Okay, so I"m going to try and not make this sound like old guy yelling 'get off my lawn'.

But I gotta speak my peace.

Someone has got to convince me that rap and/or hip hop is an art form on par with even rock music. First, I like some rap. I owned NWA as a kid and dig snoop. I'm not totally anti.

I suppose the biggest thing for me is that being a music artist means that you create music. Sampling is such a huge aspect to this form of music, how can you honestly say music is being created. Pretty much any 12 year old with a mac can create a beat. Now, I get that rapping is a skill. I'm not going to be a person that says it doesn't take any talent or skill, but cup stacking requires skill too.

I guess the bottom line for me is that I simply can not put a guy like Kanye on anywhere close to the same level of artistry as someone like Jimmy Page, who was a genius producer, BTW.

Okay, you young bucks fire away.

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Lots of 12 year olds can play the guitar/bass/drums and write songs for those instruments, too, so I don't think that is a reason to say it is easy to do. It's obviously hard to write any type of good music, just like its hard to produce any type of good rap albums. I'm not a music producer, but I doubt Kanye or Rick Rubin just play on Garage Band for an hour or two and have a hit album.

In the end, you either like the music or you don't, and either one is fine. I feel bad if you don't appreciate Kanye, but that's just my personal taste.

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Lots of 12 year olds can play the guitar/bass/drums and write songs for those instruments, too, so I don't think that is a reason to say it is easy to do.

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Yes, they can. And i would say that those 12 year olds that play guitar are more of an artists than the 12 year old that creates a beat on his laptop.

And while I haven't created a beat, I do play a little guitar so I know how damn hard that is.

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It's obviously hard to write any type of good music, just like its hard to produce any type of good rap albums.

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I think we may be talking past each other a bit. I'm not saying that being a producer is easy. However, I do think that being good at putting together samplings is not the same as what, say Jack White has done by writing, performing and producing his work.

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I'm not a music producer, but I doubt Kanye or Rick Rubin just play on Garage Band for an hour or two and have a hit album.

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Again, I think the production is a bit of a diff topic. Related, but not the same.

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In the end, you either like the music or you don't, and either one is fine. I feel bad if you don't appreciate Kanye, but that's just my personal taste.

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Maybe with Kanye, for me, it's the fact that his obnoxious personna doesn't match the talent level. And the fact that he has such a disrespect for other artists. I mean how much of a tool do you have to be to disrespect other artists, arguably better artists, given the stage in which he did all this?

I think it just comes down to you liking rock music more than rap, and that is fine. I don't think anyone will convince you it takes talent to create rap, just like no one will convince me that Kanye's music isn't great and better than any rock music put out in the last decade.

I think that came off as confrontational, but its not meant to be. People like different stuff, which is great!

I think Kanye should sample Loser on his next album.

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Lots of 12 year olds can play the guitar/bass/drums and write songs for those instruments, too, so I don't think that is a reason to say it is easy to do.

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Yes, they can. And i would say that those 12 year olds that play guitar are more of an artists than the 12 year old that creates a beat on his laptop.

And while I haven't created a beat, I do play a little guitar so I know how damn hard that is.

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All I can say to that is, if it were that easy, Why aren't you or anyone else doing it?

Producing beats isn't as easy as a lot of people think it is. My younger brother play.s 5 or 6 instruments, and he'd make beats form that when he'd dabble a little bit in beat making. The Roots are the biggest ones known for that. Sampling is only ONE angle of beat making. It can be as easy or as hard as you'd want to make it.

As far as sampling, the criticism I always hear is how its stealing music. But A) they have to get clearance for the sample, and B) it isn't anything unique to hip hop.

Santana essentially sampled Tito Puente. There are a ton of examples of when artists borrow or take from one another, as long as they get the ok.

Sampling is a hot debate, tt always will be. Especially in the case of someone like Kanye who was heavily dependent on it when he first came out. I thought his early beats with Roc were straight out of J Dilla's closet. But the genre is so tied to it, and a lot of good music has been created from sampling.

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The flip side to that is Jimmy Page was "sampling" american blues music.

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Seriously?

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I think that came off as confrontational, but its not meant to be. People like different stuff, which is great!

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Fair enough. I didn't take it that way.

Thanks.

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All I can say to that is, if it were that easy, Why aren't you or anyone else doing it?

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This is kind of a silly argument. And you may be right, but I bet if I dedicated some time, I could create some beats. Whether they would be good or not, is a diff story.

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Producing beats isn't as easy as a lot of people think it is. My younger brother play.s 5 or 6 instruments, and he'd make beats form that when he'd dabble a little bit in beat making. The Roots are the biggest ones known for that. Sampling is only ONE angle of beat making. It can be as easy or as hard as you'd want to make it.

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I think this kinda makes my point. Making beats is not difficult. I will acknowledge that making good beats is not as easy as making A beat.

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As far as sampling, the criticism I always hear is how its stealing music. But A) they have to get clearance for the sample, and B) it isn't anything unique to hip hop.

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I've never said stealing. That's a diff thing. My argument is simply that you're not creating something. You are using something another artists has already created.

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Santana essentially sampled Tito Puente. There are a ton of examples of when artists borrow or take from one another, as long as they get the ok.

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True. But there is also the added element of having to play the music.

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Sampling is a hot debate, tt always will be. Especially in the case of someone like Kanye who was heavily dependent on it when he first came out. I thought his early beats with Roc were straight out of J Dilla's closet. But the genre is so tied to it, and a lot of good music has been created from sampling.

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Sure. And I would not argue that a good song created with sampling isn't a good song. I just think it's a different level of artistry. Lesser, IMO.

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The flip side to that is Jimmy Page was "sampling" american blues music.

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Seriously?

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Maybe its a bit extreme to say "sampling," how about very very heavily influenced. I love listening to Zeppelin, but they were not the originators of their sound. Music exists because of people borrowing or sampling sounds they heard elsewhere and putting their own spin on it. Sam Smith now has to pay Tom Petty royalties because "Stay With Me" has a similar chorus rhythm as "I Won't Back Down." Jay-Z even credited Nirvana as songwriters for the one lyric from "Smells Like Teen Spirit" used in "Holy Grail."

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In my mind, the producers are the musicians, and they are using other people's music as an instrument to make their own sound. Sampling is not a problem for me when it's used that way, like when RJD2 uses an Elliott Smith song to create something new entirely.

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That was awesome. I love Ghostwriter, had no idea it had that many samples.

Some of you probably already knew this, but RJD2 did another song that a lot of people are familiar with...

MacArthur, I understand completely where you coming from, I've talked to friends who have produced about the same thing. The degree of difficulty with making a "good beat" depends on a ton of factors. Snap was criticized heavily for using baby rhythms.

If sampling is keeping you from liking hip hop, its too bad because some of the greatest songs ever have been created as a result of sampling.

My thing with what Kanye said is that putting down Beck to bring up Beyonce is hypocritical.. That being said, after listening to both albums, I have to agree with Kanye. I think that Beck's album shouldn't have won over Beyonc. Sure he wrote, produced, and did everything on the album, but it was kinda boring. But that's just me. This whole ordeal makes Beck look better with the way he is handling it. Fan of they guy, just not his music.

He's so underrated it's crazy. Deadringer was very nearly a perfect album.

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Sure he wrote, produced, and did everything on the album, but it was kinda boring

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it's essentially an melodic, instrumental style album. I don't know why it has to sound "exciting".

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My argument is simply that you're not creating something. You are using something another artists has already created.

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I would agree if we're talking about bad producers. Good producers are absolutely creating something new and unique, even though their medium is others' recorded work.

Someone like Diddy for example, I completely agree that what he did as a producer was minimally creative. On the other end of the spectrum, guys like RjD2 or DJ Shadow are in fact incredibly talented artists.

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If sampling is keeping you from liking hip hop, its too bad because some of the greatest songs ever have been created as a result of sampling.

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Don't get me wrong, there is some stuff I like.

My thesis is just that it's not on par as an art form when you 'sample' from another source.

And that certainly doesn't mean it can't be a good, or even great song.

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I would agree if we're talking about bad producers. Good producers are absolutely creating something new and unique, even though their medium is others' recorded work.

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But then it wouldn't be sampling, by definition, right? I mean if you are sampling, you can't be doing something unique.

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Someone like Diddy for example, I completely agree that what he did as a producer was minimally creative. On the other end of the spectrum, guys like RjD2 or DJ Shadow are in fact incredibly talented artists.

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Can you link me to some youtube and give me some technical explination (not too technical) for what they are doing?

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Sure he wrote, produced, and did everything on the album, but it was kinda boring

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it's essentially an melodic, instrumental style album. I don't know why it has to sound "exciting".

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It's also an incredibly well-recorded album. The folks voting on the Grammys tend to favor the technical side of recording, and reward albums that SOUND great (see Steely Dan). Now that we've reached a point where loudness and unbelievable amounts of compression are the norm, I applaud them for rewarding an album that, while not super exciting, was recorded, mixed and mastered with skill and care.

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But then it wouldn't be sampling, by definition, right? I mean if you are sampling, you can't be doing something unique.

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We can think of it in terms of visual media. If you make a collage, that uses very tiny bits of other photos, and repurpose those to create a new image, you are creating something new that is made up completely of prexisting material

it was Sea Change Pt. II, which isn't a bad thing. I love both albums.

MacArthur, check out that link that mw03 posted, about RJD2. It at least breaks down a number of the samples used in creating his song 'Ghostwriter'. You will notice that none of those source materials on their own sounds like the final product, but when edited together they form something new.

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But then it wouldn't be sampling, by definition, right? I mean if you are sampling, you can't be doing something unique.

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We can think of it in terms of visual media. If you make a collage, that uses very tiny bits of other photos, and repurpose those to create a new image, you are creating something new that is made up completely of prexisting material

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ok. Interesting point.