The hidden art of sampling

Remember Prodigy’s Smack My Bitch Up? (Spotify link) The video of this track from 1997 was so violent it was banned from day time television and even MTV had to play it only at night time.

The times have gone by, the video itself has got a cult status, but the track keeps living a life of it’s own still being remembered in night clubs all around the world.

Prodigy’s lead man (that usually keeps everything low key) Liam Howlett is known for his sampling. Some music enthuastics have been spotting various samples from Prodigy tracks. Now in the era of YouTube the stuff gets some videos.

In the summer 2009 a very creative video of how to recreate Smack My Bitch Up was posted to YouTube. The spotting of samples was spot on and the way how the data was presented, indeed top notch.

However just a month a go producer from Ukraine Jim Pavloff showed his superb producing skills by recreating the whole track in Ableton Live.

Check it out.

Sampling (other people’s tracks) is something that is usually kept tightly undercover, one reason being the copyrights. There’s no mention there’s been used partitions of another track. But properly used it’s really entertaining to spot samples.

How do you feel about sampling? What if someone gives out and reveils your secrets?