Why Sampling is the Most Important Tool in Modern Music - Matthew Herbert, 'The Horse'

Matthew Herbert explains why he thinks sampling technology has created a revolution in music, and discusses the significance and power that it holds as a political tool.

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LABEL: Modern Recordings

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[davidmcgirr]

The samples of Mount Shrine in his ambient works felt very in the spirit of this discussion. The sounds of rain and water, the sounds of nature, layered in with the sound of air traffic control.

All sound is in the air, and with sampling we can capture these moments, and these sounds that we may not hear forever.

[sonicart]

Matthew is so refreshing, sampling doesn't get enough recognition for how important it has been and its possibilities for exploring or moving music interview thanks..

[aspasap]

Excellent stuff. Thanks. That’s just pulled together a whole bunch of stuff I’ve been thinking about lately.

[welshaccenttutorials]

I absolutely loved this rant. Solidarity brother!

[lesterfalcon]

He Says the Manifesto he wrote a few years ago, but it was over 2 decades ago, I remember where I was when I read it. As follows:

THIS IS A GUIDE FOR MY OWN WORK AND NOT INTENDED AS THE CORRECT OR ONLY WAY TO WRITE MUSIC EITHER FOR MYSELF OR OTHERS.

1. The use of sounds that exist already is not allowed. Subject to article 2. In particular:

No drum machines.
All keyboard sounds must be edited in some way: no factory presets or pre-programmed patches are allowed.

2. Only sounds that are generated at the start of the compositional process or taken from the artist's own previously unused archive are available for sampling.

3. The sampling of other people's music is strictly forbidden.

4. No replication of traditional acoustic instruments is allowed where the financial and physical possibility of using the real ones exists.

5. The inclusion, development, propagation, existence, replication, acknowledgement, rights, patterns and beauty of what are commonly known as accidents, is encouraged. Furthermore, they have equal rights within the composition as deliberate, conscious, or premeditated compositional actions or decisions.

6. The mixing desk is not to be reset before the start of a new track in order to apply a random eq and fx setting across the new sounds. Once the ordering and recording of the music has begun, the desk may be used as normal.

7. All fx settings must be edited: no factory preset or pre-programmed patches are allowed.

8. Samples themselves are not to be truncated from the rear. Revealing parts of the recording are invariably stored there.

9. A notation of sounds used to be taken and made public.

10. A list of technical equipment used to be made public.

11. optional: Remixes should be completed using only the sounds provided by the original artist including any packaging the media was provided in.

MATTHEW HERBERT 27-11-00

[evanseesred]

Matthew Herbert is the most undervalued musician and producer for twenty years running

[FranciscoG]

Sound is music and no sound is isolated

[RaquelFoster]

I'm not a psychologist. But that's definitely a red flag when you ask a guy what his favorite thing is and he responds with a disjointed 6-minute rant of pure negativity... Except when he tries to give an example of "anything" and comes up with "your daughter's bedroom"???

KENNEDY: What piece of equipment couldn't you live without?

HERBERT: Sampler. It's too good.

KENNEDY: Yeah...

HERBERT: Now let me give you some advice.
A guitar isn't original. Right now there's 20 million losers picking up a guitar.
Ukraine!
Manifesto! Revolution!
A horse.
I could make music out of literally anything — Your daughter's bedroom!
A dam bursting in Ukraine.
My slippers.
Colonel Gaddafi's pencil case.
I had a gig on 9/11, so I recorded one of the twin towers collapsing.
I don't know the morality of making music out of the twin towers collapsing.
EVERY CHILD HAS SEEN MILLIONS OF MURDERS BY THE TIME THEY ARE 20.
We're all doomed like the musicians on the Titanic.

[Jon-BEDM]

Electronic musicians ignore where their own genres came from — DJs hand-manipulating samples via turntable, manual modulation of pitch, amplitude, delays (using fader on mixer). Language, convention - the sampler is as big an advancement in abstraction in our time as the Neanderthal flute was in theirs.

[victor-hiuw]

I love sampling and I love Marxism. I agree with pretty much everything this guy said.

[foljs]

As an "act of resistance"? That's why such rebellious artists as the boring Top 20 hits use it?