r/mpcusers • u/luvfader • 1d ago
QUESTION [TECHNIQUE] - From song to sample
How do you identify good sections in a song, and do you look for loops or bits to cut out first?
Personally, I loop a single measure in Ableton over the drums, but I feel like it’s a waste of time.
Do you have any tips for finding interesting sections?
2
u/jorgb MPC LIVE III 1d ago
The most simple technique is just scrubbing the start position while the drum is playing. When it clicks, put an end position on it,.copy the pad and do it again. It saves chopping. When a sample really favours melody and it needs to be chopped a certain way to make it sound right, use the chop menu of the MPC. There is no right way, it depends on your energy of the song, the dynamics and texture you are aiming for.
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u/lonnielovemartian 1d ago
This is part of the recipe (sample selection) which is easy to describe but hard to master.
It’s an ear thing first and foremost.
An experiment thing, secondly.
Simplest - learn to count musical bars, it’s not always easy and not always 4:4. But start there until you hear any song and can time out it’s 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4.
Next you got choices.
Sometimes you just grab an entire 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4,
Pitch up or down, slice evenly, boom.
But the farther you go down the rabbit hole and master the fundamental techniques, the more you can tweak that recipe.
The more your ear hears little Moments or textures to grab and sample. Sometimes it’s not at the 1 but at the 2 3 4, as an example.
Remember, you’re grabbing a sound, and tweaking it. Dont forget the filter. Eq. Etc.
Between a filter and pitching up/down, and understanding counting bars, that should be enough to get some basic drum loops sounding good with samples over them.
Good luck.
1
u/FrequencyGovernor 12h ago
I was taught (shown) to just take one shots and then try and make compositions out of them (am not good at this part).
The idea of taking a bar or more and chopping it was foreign to me.
3
u/Few_Control8821 1d ago
That’s not a waste of time, it’s just kind of the simplest kind of sampling you can do. It depends on the sample.. sometimes I will chop it into 8 and rearrange over drums, if the loops has sections that sound good like that.. other times I might just chop one element out and layer that over another loop.. sampling is art form that starts with finding a good sample, then how you process and mash that sample is where you get creative. You can down pitch, up pitch, add effects… there are quite a few channels on YouTube that are focused on sampling.. they break down samples in old songs which I found really interesting/helpful to learn from.