Sample Chopping (Types of Sample)

Sampling records alongside break chopping is one of my absolute favourite topics. I know I’ve already done a blog post about this but I wanted to give a more detailed look into all the sample chopping techniques I know! 🥋

The .wav files for these images are included in the .zip folder attached to this post. 📁

Ok, so let’s start with a quick example…

This waveform here is showing a sample of some dubbed out horns. 🎷

If you wanted to add this sample to your track, you’d need to think about two key features. The rhythm of the sample and also the key of the sample and how they both match up to your song. 

The best way to understand more about matching samples like this is to do it yourself. Load this sound into the sampler instrument in your DAW and start pitching it around, trigger it from different points, reverse it, try time-stretching it to see what gives you the best result. It’s all about trial and error.

What makes you get better at this process is understanding which sounds are more likely to fit with your track & also which techniques are best used for the type of sample.

What I mean by this is each sample will often lean towards a preferable sample chopping technique:

Loops - Even though these can be sliced up and rearranged. More often than not, loops are great just as they are and serve as a background layer to build your track on. 

The key here is to pitch the loop or time-stretch it to perfectly fit with your track.

For anyone trying to recreate the old school style, there is definitely some magic in manually timing loops to your songs. You will notice that by subtly changing the +/- pitch of a loop, you can drastically alter it’s rhythm and how it fits with your tune. Sometimes having things a little off is exactly what you want!

The thing to remember about pitching loops the old school way is you need to match both the BPM and the Key to your song, therefore it’s often best done at the beginning of the production process. 

Cyclic modulation - If the loops are getting a bit repetitive you can of course chop them up but I often find modulating parameters like filters, volume & pan are a great way to add a little more interest without all the hassle.   

Chops - A sample like this which is taken from an Aphex Twin track is best chopped up into lots of little pieces. This is done by slicing at every new note/chord or development in the sample.  

Once you have the whole sample sliced up and loaded into a sampler then next thing to do here is to match the key of the sample to your song key. Also, filtering out the low end, adding reverb & delay and playing with ADSR gives you a lot to work with before any complex processing. 

Short Cuts - These are single elements like a glissando, sfx, stab or a piano chord.

Once again matching the key of these to your track is the most important thing. Reversing, ping-pong loops, playing with ADSR attack & release, filter sweeps & adding lots of reverb and delay are all fun to play with here. 

Long Cuts - These usually contain a few notes and chord changes as well as different instruments such as a lead guitar, vocal and bass. 

Once you’ve found a close match to your song key, try pitching the sample around +/- 5,7,12 semitones to see how the different rhythms work with your track. It's often the case that multiple pitches will sound good when matching samples so it's all about finding the best settings.

Playing with sample start point is also massive factor in getting samples like this to line up and work with your song. Reversing, ping-pong loops, shimmer reverbs, filtering etc. are all fun to play with here too.

Sample Selection & Audio Finder

When you've had a bit of a go at producing with samples, what becomes evident quite quickly is that sample selection is hugely important. Certain samples are just not going to go with your track and you’re often better off finding something else rather than wrestling with a sound that isn’t quite working. 

The skill in all of this comes from your ability to perceive how well a sample will work with your current track. Audio Finder is hugely important to me in this regard as it allows me to play the samples whilst listening to my track in the background.

I can also pitch the samples up/down to see if I can find a good match and also select certain parts of the sample to demo.

If anyone is confused about any of these topics, i’m going to put all this and more into video form towards the end of the month so don’t worry. 😊

Also, if anyone struggles with tuning samples by ear I would highly reccomend getting Mixed in Key Studio Edition. Put this on your master channel and then solo tracks to see what key they are in. https://mixedinkey.com/studio-edition/

I’ve just finished my PFM tracks & demo’s so onto filming tomorrow. Hoping to get the video out by Sunday. 🤞

Cheers,

George