jazz/funk/soul production (sampling)

Y

Yukon

Yukon
Joined
Jan 24, 2013
Location
Auckland, New Zealand
Greetings,

So for quite some time now I've been aiming to make jazzy kinds of drum & bass in my productions i.e shit you find on labels like good looking, soul deep, liquid brilliants, liquid tones etc. I noticed that samples are largely based around this type of production so I was wondering how youd go about getting these samples. Do these guys just listen to a ton of jazz/soul/funk and find stuff they like in the track and just chop it out? or is there a lot more to it. Any advice would be appreciated, TY.
 
Do these guys just listen to a ton of jazz/soul/funk and find stuff they like in the track and just chop it out?
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Yes, mostly this.

As I try the same kind of style, I know that feel. It's hard for me to find something to sample from.
Check out the LSB Tutorial to get an idea how that stuff is made. Unfortunately there aren't many tutorials or some kind of help in the interwebz concerning this style. Just be creative and think out of the box.
 
there are a few great sample packs out there for jazz and funk type stuff, the trouble is finding them . . .
but when you do, they'll provide material for ages.

Sorry thats not much help, but as youre finding, it can be really hard to find great inspiration / samples.
 
Leave the sample packs IMO, what's the point? Much more rewarding listening to music and discovering your own samples. It's the same as anything really, the more you listen and figure out what a good sample source can be, the easier it gets. Plus discovering artists leads onto discovering other artists and expanding your tastes and influences. Spotify is a great resource for this IMO.

The Spectrasoul tutorial is also worth a view just to show you how one string sample can for the base for the tune.
Less is more etc, not everything has to have bells and whistles on it.

I also started watching the Nu:Tone tutorial but didn't get round to finishing it. The way he uses samples might also be worth investigating.
 
I'm not sure, but here's some stuff to get started. I think the best way to find out if it's possible is to try sampling some things yourself, then if it doesn't work, try sample packs.

Um.... try Squarepusher, he wrote a load of really weird jazz influenced DnB and he's completely got his own unique style- no-one else is even close to being similar to him. He did an album where he actually played 170bpm crazy breaks on a real drum kit.
Also try Herbie Hancock's album, 'Headhunters'. That's also a bit wierd in places, but massively funky and amazing drumming.
Dave Brubeck's album version of Take Five has an extended drum solo in the middle, but you won't be able to use loops from that because there are five beats in every bar. (Unless you write a piece of Dnb with five in every bar, but it's so hard to get other time signatures to sound good.) You could still get some good hits and rolls though, the drummer does a load of rim-shots and stuff like that.
James Brown is good too, apart from all the shouting in his tracks.
Maybe even Elvis Presley? Just avoid any of his cheesy ballads.

I think that's a good representation of the jazz/funk/soul spectrum, so youtube them and have a listen. I expect you won't like most of what I've put here, but you should find enough things to sample.
 
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Take Five is a shout. Lot of decent stuff on there. Clean passages of piano and other nice bits to get involved with.

There really are no rules, it's just taking something and making what you can out of it. When you start picking up on sample origins in tunes, you realise how ruthless and cunning you can be. It's all quite rewarding.
 
As mentioned above finding samples and knowing how to use them gets easier with time, so I would dive and make some mistakes. There are solos abound on most jazz albums. Check the instruments/musicians and you'll start to notice patterns between labels, years, players. Liking the source is a necessity imo because building a mental list of where to find a certain sound when you need it saves loads of time. I spend more time listening to jazz and funk than dnb these days.
 
And once you've found some stuff you think you would work with, I like use the samples and cut it up in a sampler and then sit and jam some with myself on my midi-keyboard. It's a whole lot more fun than making puzzles with audio chops imo
 
i don't have the patience to work with samplers like i can synths so i can't help with the technicalities but i do think i have a helpful perspective to share that might answer your question since it wasn't a technical question anyway. but i need to toss some hip-hop history out there for perspective:

you have to master the ancient art of crate-digging, invented by dj kool herc and mastered by 80's hip-hop dj's :kermit:
i grew up on 80's/90's hip-hop, my life used to revolve around it and my favorite dj/producers always sampled. most of em say they grew up listening to funk/jazz/etc records their parents would play so they were familiar with the genre's sound already. this would help them know more of what it is they wanted to start with by having a good idea of how varied the genre can be. then they'd go through their parents' vinyl collection or down to the record shop and play vinyls for hours until they found some that are good for sampling... or they'd just buy a few that had promising names or interesting album art if in a rush ;) then they'd play what they wanted to sample and throw the promising part in the sampler and go from there. you can imagine how many vinyls most of these guys had, practically a small library's worth after years of doing this.

as far as sourcing material outside of commercially released jazz/funk/soul... Nu:Tone uses a commercial library sample, commercial as in its aimed towards advertisements/commercials IIRC, he mentions the name in the video (youtube url is at the end of the post). also like spyre said you can dirty up and use your own samples. you can use a VST that samples the real instruments, there's a lot of em but some popular ones are omnisphere or kontakt and buy some funk, jazz, or specific instrument libraries for whatever you want. then write your own melodies and resample, maybe find a cassette tape recorder and transfer it from mp3 to cassette tape then back to add some real analog grit. it'll sound different from using a comparable sample off some commercially released material b/c sampling a real, live played instrument always has a better groove than using the sampler software IMO due etc different velocities, diff recording material, tons of diff details but it might get you close enough to where you're saitisfied and it'll be a nice 100% license-free legal approach. so that just goes to show you can not only get creative with what you do to the sample but you can get creative as far as where to find the samples too.

these days some things have changed but it's still the same basic routine. you listen to songs on youtube/mp3/etc for hours just like they did with the crate-digging. except now there's an advantage using tools like spotify, like riisu said, or if you start to notice multiple good releases from the same label then pull up their discography of releases and check em out. so today it's easier to find related material with all the websites that have the "you might also like..." recommmendations. it just takes getting more acquainted with the genre and its artists really. so instead of digging through crates for hours, now you spend hours digging through digital media. it's still the same practice, just with a software sampler substituting a hardware sampler (for most ppl these days anyway), with streaming/digital media selling websites replacing record shops and finally with digital media replacing vinyl.

Riisu said:
I also started watching the Nu:Tone tutorial but didn't get round to finishing it. The way he uses samples might also be worth investigating.
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Yeah the Nu:Tone tutorial is a great reference IMO although he does more work recreating the sample rather than working the actual sample itself. but the OP might find it really interesting because it's a good video for anyone interested in sampling. here's the Nu:Tone video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPPhWcoOSMY
 
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