FMS-Blog : The Wildly Whimsical, Mostly Musical WebLog
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
Samples
For some reason, I seem to be getting a reputation with my brothers in The First Few for having a dislike for all things sampled. So, I write this blog to clarify and defend the position that samples are all very well when used properly but in the context of a live rock performance in a small venue they tend to sound, well, utterly shite.
For evidence of how effective and useful samples can be when used sparingly and appropriately balanced with other more traditional musical instruments, one need look no further than the opening bars of Pink Floyd's outstanding album The Division Bell. Here the music ever so gradually builds up through a period of more than five minutes, initially with some elongated sounds that are unrecognisable as anything from the natural world but almost certainly are made up of digitally altered samples, then with the introduction of a number of instrumental forces, starting with piano and an electric guitar, the latter of which is treated with a number of enhancing effects, making it difficult to hear where this sound starts and where the samples end. Once drums join the compliment of sounds the auditory experience feels complete and so the album moves forward with its inevitable rock feel.
So, I'm not a Luddite when it comes to the use of these various bits of gadgetry in music making. There are even good examples of where drum machines (God forbid!) can really work well in an interesting and creative way. Take Sheryl Crow's song We Do What We Can from the sensational 1993 album Tuesday Night Music Club: through the majority of this track the accompaniment to Crow's vocal is mainly very gentle bass, piano, a little brass and also a fixed drum machine track that sounds like the 'swing' setting on a child's keyboard of the late 80's - there is nothing to the sound, but in this particular context it works perfectly, especially when contrasted in the middle section of the song with a live jazz kit. When the tinny little drum machine comes back for the final verse we actually feel some sense of relief having just been through a much more frantic section with live drumming. Wonderful stuff.
But, then we have bands who play in pubs and clubs in your local town. You know the ones - they'd love to write music half as inventive as Pink Floyd or Sheryl Crow, and maybe one day they will. Hell, maybe they're already writing incredible songs, but rather than let those pieces stand on their own merits they feel the need to add garnish in the form of various samples, no doubt badly recorded and very badly placed. Say, the sound of a ticking clock here and some rain and thunder sounds there - utter clichés often thrown willy-nilly into the mix, usually way louder than they deserve considering the lack of musicality about it, not to say anything of the all too regular distortions etc. Even 'serious' classical musicians of the avant-garde fall into similar pitfalls - I once saw a guy in Birmingham playing a self-penned four-part flute piece made up mostly of imitative counterpoint, three parts of which had, for no reason that I could establish by logical reasoning, been pre-recorded as a *shudder!* backing track! This, despite the place being full of musicians who were more than capable of playing those parts live - it seems that the composer chose to go ahead with the performance in this vain, though, to give it some kind of edge. Somebody ought to have tipped him off about today's blog message: whatever your musical tastes and however cool you think it'll sound, seriously people - leave the samples to those who can do something interesting with them.
As a postscript, I hear the voices of criticism yelling out the question "What about digital piano? How do you think they got it to sound so much like a piano??" Well, yes, I acknowledge that sampling was required to get my Korg SP-200 (and many other digital instruments) to sound like a real acoustic piano and, so, sampling does also have a part to play in more traditional approaches to musical performance. However, samples used to mimic a real instrument are somewhat different from those used to make it sound like it's raining in The Shoulder of Mutton, of an evening, and even then they often don't work... have you ever heard a convincing clarinet or cello sound coming from a keyboard?!
For evidence of how effective and useful samples can be when used sparingly and appropriately balanced with other more traditional musical instruments, one need look no further than the opening bars of Pink Floyd's outstanding album The Division Bell. Here the music ever so gradually builds up through a period of more than five minutes, initially with some elongated sounds that are unrecognisable as anything from the natural world but almost certainly are made up of digitally altered samples, then with the introduction of a number of instrumental forces, starting with piano and an electric guitar, the latter of which is treated with a number of enhancing effects, making it difficult to hear where this sound starts and where the samples end. Once drums join the compliment of sounds the auditory experience feels complete and so the album moves forward with its inevitable rock feel.
So, I'm not a Luddite when it comes to the use of these various bits of gadgetry in music making. There are even good examples of where drum machines (God forbid!) can really work well in an interesting and creative way. Take Sheryl Crow's song We Do What We Can from the sensational 1993 album Tuesday Night Music Club: through the majority of this track the accompaniment to Crow's vocal is mainly very gentle bass, piano, a little brass and also a fixed drum machine track that sounds like the 'swing' setting on a child's keyboard of the late 80's - there is nothing to the sound, but in this particular context it works perfectly, especially when contrasted in the middle section of the song with a live jazz kit. When the tinny little drum machine comes back for the final verse we actually feel some sense of relief having just been through a much more frantic section with live drumming. Wonderful stuff.
But, then we have bands who play in pubs and clubs in your local town. You know the ones - they'd love to write music half as inventive as Pink Floyd or Sheryl Crow, and maybe one day they will. Hell, maybe they're already writing incredible songs, but rather than let those pieces stand on their own merits they feel the need to add garnish in the form of various samples, no doubt badly recorded and very badly placed. Say, the sound of a ticking clock here and some rain and thunder sounds there - utter clichés often thrown willy-nilly into the mix, usually way louder than they deserve considering the lack of musicality about it, not to say anything of the all too regular distortions etc. Even 'serious' classical musicians of the avant-garde fall into similar pitfalls - I once saw a guy in Birmingham playing a self-penned four-part flute piece made up mostly of imitative counterpoint, three parts of which had, for no reason that I could establish by logical reasoning, been pre-recorded as a *shudder!* backing track! This, despite the place being full of musicians who were more than capable of playing those parts live - it seems that the composer chose to go ahead with the performance in this vain, though, to give it some kind of edge. Somebody ought to have tipped him off about today's blog message: whatever your musical tastes and however cool you think it'll sound, seriously people - leave the samples to those who can do something interesting with them.
As a postscript, I hear the voices of criticism yelling out the question "What about digital piano? How do you think they got it to sound so much like a piano??" Well, yes, I acknowledge that sampling was required to get my Korg SP-200 (and many other digital instruments) to sound like a real acoustic piano and, so, sampling does also have a part to play in more traditional approaches to musical performance. However, samples used to mimic a real instrument are somewhat different from those used to make it sound like it's raining in The Shoulder of Mutton, of an evening, and even then they often don't work... have you ever heard a convincing clarinet or cello sound coming from a keyboard?!
