Tutorials Audio

Sampling Technique: Choosing, Chopping and Placing a Sample

By Infinite Creation · Intermediate · ~17 min

Overview

Sampling is two separate skills that get taught as one. The technical half is getting a fragment of a recording to sit in time and in tune with music you are building around it, which is a solved problem with well-understood tools. The other half is choosing what to sample and what to do with it, which is where the work actually is. Sitting underneath both is a legal question that has to be answered before you release anything, and answering it late has ended more records than any technical fault.

What You Need

A sampler or a DAW that can slice audio to a grid, which covers nearly all of them
Source material you have the right to use, or a clear plan for clearing what you do not
A tuner or a way to identify the pitch of the source, because repitching by ear compounds errors

Steps

Pick a section that is not doing too much

The best sampled sections are usually sparse: a bar where the drums drop out, an instrumental break, a held chord. A dense section brings everything in it, including parts you cannot remove, and you will spend the rest of the track working around them.

Find the tempo before anything else

Work out the source tempo rather than guessing, and decide whether your track will match it or the sample will be stretched to yours. Changing this decision after you have chopped means doing the chopping again, which is the most common wasted afternoon in sampling.

Chop on transients, not on the grid

Slice at the attack of each sound rather than at bar divisions. Automatic transient detection gets most of them and misses the quiet ones, so check the slices by eye. A slice that starts slightly before the attack is safe, and one that starts slightly after removes the attack entirely and sounds soft.

Decide between repitching and time-stretching

Repitching changes speed and pitch together, which is what hardware samplers did and is why a great deal of sample-based music has that character. Time-stretching holds pitch and changes duration, which is cleaner and can sound artificial under a large change. Neither is correct: choose the artefact you want.

Fade the edges

A slice that starts or ends mid-waveform produces a click. A fade of a few milliseconds at each end removes it without being audible. Most samplers do this automatically, and most clicks in finished tracks are the ones that did not.

Filter the source before layering under it

A sampled loop usually contains its own bass and drums, which will fight anything you add. High-passing the sample and putting your own low end underneath is the standard solution, and it is why so many sample-based records have thin-sounding loops over modern drums.

Rearrange rather than reuse

Playing a sample back in its original order is the least interesting thing you can do with it, and the most legally exposed. Reordering slices, playing them as a keyboard instrument, or using a single hit as raw material is where the craft is.

Answer the clearance question before you finish

Find out what you have sampled and whether you can use it. If the answer is no, you have lost a track. If you find out after release, you can lose considerably more than that. Doing this first is unglamorous and it is what separates released records from unreleased ones.

Pro Tips

Sample from vinyl or a lossy file and you inherit its noise and its compression artefacts. Sometimes that is the point, and it should be a decision.
A one-shot from a record, used as one drum in a kit you built, is a different proposition creatively and legally from looping four bars.
Repitching downward makes a sample longer, darker and slower, which is why so much of it appears in slower styles.
Keep the untouched source file. You will want to re-chop it, and reconstructing a chop from processed audio is not possible.

Knowledge Base

Background and Detail

The technical question people ask is about stretching artefacts. The one they should ask about first is clearance.

Clearance, in practical terms

A commercial recording carries two separate rights: the composition, which belongs to the writers and their publishers, and the recording itself, which usually belongs to a label. Using a fragment of a record normally requires permission from both, and either can refuse for any reason or for none.

There is no length below which sampling is automatically safe. The idea that a few seconds is permitted is widespread and has no reliable basis, and the case law differs between jurisdictions and has moved more than once. If you intend to release commercially, the workable options are to clear the sample, to use material licensed for the purpose, or to replay the part yourself, which removes the recording right but not the composition right. This page describes how the system works and is not legal advice.

Why stretched audio sounds wrong

Time-stretching has to invent audio that was never recorded. The common approach cuts the signal into short overlapping windows and repeats or drops them, which works well on sustained material and poorly on transients, because a repeated window at the attack of a drum produces a flam or a smear.

That is why most DAWs offer several algorithms with names like complex, rhythmic or monophonic. They are different trade-offs between preserving transients and preserving tone, and choosing the wrong one accounts for most complaints about stretching quality. Large stretches sound worse than small ones under every algorithm, so getting the source tempo close first is worth more than any setting.

Where This Fits

A sample is one source of material, and Making a Record follows that material through arrangement and release.

FAQ

Q: Can I sample a few seconds without clearing it?
A: There is no safe threshold. The belief that a short fragment is automatically permitted is common and unreliable, and the answer varies by jurisdiction. Clear it, license it, or replay it.

Q: Is a royalty-free sample pack actually free to use?
A: Usually yes for the recordings in it, subject to the licence, which typically forbids reselling the samples themselves. Read the licence rather than assuming, because terms differ between vendors.

Q: Should I match my tempo to the sample?
A: It is the simpler route and it avoids stretching artefacts entirely. Matching the sample to your tempo makes sense when the track already exists or when the source tempo is unworkable.

Q: Why does my chopped loop click?
A: The slices start or end mid-waveform. A short fade at each boundary fixes it, and most samplers can apply one automatically to every slice.

Vocabulary

Chop A slice of a longer recording, cut at the attack of a sound so it can be retriggered independently. Cutting slightly before the attack is safe, and cutting after it removes the attack and leaves the slice sounding soft.

Repitch Changing playback speed so pitch and duration move together, the way early hardware samplers worked. The resulting character is a large part of why sample-based music of that era sounds the way it does.

Time-stretch Changing duration while holding pitch, which requires the software to invent audio that was never recorded. It handles sustained material well and transients badly, which is why DAWs offer several algorithms.

Clearance Permission to use a fragment of an existing recording, needed separately from the owner of the composition and the owner of the recording. Neither is obliged to grant it, and there is no length below which it can be skipped.