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A History of Sampling, Part One: An Origin Story · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Histories, a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show,
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much for tuning
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: in Skirt Skirt. Before we do anything, I think we're
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: gonna have to. We're gonna have to talk about the
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: events of this weekend, maybe with a pat on our
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: collective backs for not gonna shout out our super producer
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Super I was getting there for Superproducer Max for Go Brown.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: They called me Ben Guys. We had an adventure pretty recently.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Of epic proportions. Yes, we went to mostag It was
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: we chose very specifically. We could have gone on Saturday
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Saturday Saturday, but that wouldn't have been the same as
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Sunday Sunday Sunday. So that's what we did. We went
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: to Monster Jam at the Atlanta Motor Speedway. I'm not
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: sure about you, fellas, but I'd never been to a
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: motor speedway of any variety before, so it was really
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: a whole new experience for me. And brought the kid
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: along too, who had a sensory overload explosion of a time.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. I had grown up a little closer to that area,
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  Speaker 1: spent the formative years there, so I had been to
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the Motor Speedway before, most recently a number of years ago,
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: when good friend of the show Ramsey, and I went
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: to see Burt Reynolds at an exhibition of all the
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: stunts from Cannonball Run. But the scale of the Motor
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Speedway is egregious. It's the most American sized thing you
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  Speaker 1: could imagine. And I think we were all prize when
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: we were recording our previous episode on the Origin of
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: Monster Trucks to learn that Monster Jam was in fact
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: not only still a thing, but coming to our fair
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: metropolis of Atlanta that very weekend. So we decided that
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: we would get together and go on a little bit
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  Speaker 1: of day trip of a day trip, and I just
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  Speaker 1: had such a lovely time with you guys. Great.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we had a little bit of lunch beforehand one
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: of our favorite local spots, shout outs on Manuals.
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: Manuals, that's the.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: Way to the Jimmy Carter's favorite restaurant, the Peanut Man.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: A lot of politicians over the years have made that
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  Speaker 2: kind of their home. I think Barack Obama posted up
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: there for like some sort of events at one point.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: You're right, I remember hearing that they checked the light bulbs. Yes,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: they checked. They didn't just check them, they replaced them.
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right, because apparently apparently security is way
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: tighter at manuals when the president and shows up versus
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: the you know, the podcasters getting brunch. But I wanted
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  Speaker 1: to ask you guys before we get into this week's
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  Speaker 1: two part episode, which we're all very excited about. What
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  Speaker 1: was something that really surprised you about Monster Jam.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I was definitely surprised to see, I believe Ben
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: you pointed out or heard maybe while I was off
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: getting an overpriced slushy in a creepy skull stein that
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: the original Grave Digger made an appearance and won the day,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: by the wayay, which prompted some people to say it
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  Speaker 2: was rigged.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, so surprised.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was surprised to see that because I guess
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  Speaker 2: I wasn't expecting you know, it wasn't expecting that. But
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  Speaker 2: there were T shirts obviously very much a draw. I
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  Speaker 2: was just surprised, as I think you were, Ben, by
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  Speaker 2: the diversity of the crowd. It was all kinds of
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  Speaker 2: folks that were there to enjoy Monster Jam.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was. I was surprised by that. A bit.
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  Speaker 1: We also realized pretty quickly that this was the biggest
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  Speaker 1: event in that town, you know, as Max said, a
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  Speaker 1: few counties wide probably. And another thing that surprised me
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  Speaker 1: that I hadn't really thought of seeing a monster jam
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  Speaker 1: as an adult was that a lot of the trucks
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  Speaker 1: break constantly and it doesn't really affect their score.
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  Speaker 2: Rights, right, yeah, and they've got like cruise to come,
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  Speaker 2: you know, roll up on the roll up on them
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  Speaker 2: and then help them out.
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  Speaker 1: Also, there was a loader I guess you'd call it.
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  Speaker 2: That was you know, what was a caterpillar I guess
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  Speaker 2: is the big company that makes those kind of back
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  Speaker 2: ho things. But it was a custom job. Where the
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  Speaker 2: front part of it, which I'm affectionately referring to as
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: the bucket, I think that's actually right, but I'm just
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  Speaker 2: I'm not quite sure. Let us know what you think
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  Speaker 2: out their ridiculous historians, anyone working in construction. But it
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  Speaker 2: looked like a dinosaur head kind of. And then on
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  Speaker 2: the back the little part that I guess is usually
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  Speaker 2: like a little pick kind of for like, you know,
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  Speaker 2: stabilizing the thing. It looked like a a dinosaur's tail
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  Speaker 2: and it would flip the trucks back over when they
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  Speaker 2: maybe miscalculated on some sort of maneuver and landed, you know,
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  Speaker 2: upside down or on their side.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that happens pretty often. But we saw the backflips.
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  Speaker 1: A couple of those landed successfully. These trucks, which are
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  Speaker 1: already massive, went incredibly high at the air. Oh yeah, yeah.
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  Speaker 2: I mean it's just like you know, the Motor Speedway
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  Speaker 2: is basically the part around the edges where the NASCAR races.
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  Speaker 2: You know, they go around in circles, but it's huge,
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  Speaker 2: and it's like, you know, Max pointed out that these
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  Speaker 2: types of arenas are the biggest of any types of
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  Speaker 2: sporting arena, and it makes sense because for it to
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  Speaker 2: be a meaningful race, it's got to be a decent
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  Speaker 2: amount of space and then the But none of that
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  Speaker 2: is used for the Monster Truck Rally.
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  Speaker 1: I guess we'll call.
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  Speaker 2: It only the part in the middle, which is maybe
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  Speaker 2: where like a rock band might play. And they obviously
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  Speaker 2: had to do a lot of work basically excavating it, right,
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  Speaker 2: I mean, all of these hills and ramps and stuff.
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  Speaker 2: That stuff's not always there, you know. They had to
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  Speaker 2: build that stuff with dirt, you know, from scratch. So
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  Speaker 2: that was pretty impressive, just the whole I don't know
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  Speaker 2: the logistics of the whole thing.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: The production. Yeah, the production. Everybody's got there. So they've
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  Speaker 1: got the they've got like the profile video that plays
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  Speaker 1: for every driver, which those things are I think on purpose,
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  Speaker 1: really funny. And they all have their cool nicknames. All
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  Speaker 1: the trucks are themed. There's like Megaladon, which I think
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  Speaker 1: was your favorite. That was uh with uh what was
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  Speaker 1: his name? La Due? There was le duc Le Duke
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  Speaker 1: was the driver of Megaladon. No, maybe he was the
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  Speaker 1: driver of the now I think he was.
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  Speaker 2: Mildon had a bit of a rough run though. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: if we were called I think he you know, we were.
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  Speaker 2: We made it a little late and we got there
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  Speaker 2: for the freestyle event, which is like you know, it
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  Speaker 2: sounds like with skateboarding brav where you basically just show
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  Speaker 2: bowed around and do all the flips and maneuvers that
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  Speaker 2: you can hand. And yeah, something went broke down on
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  Speaker 2: old Megaladon. He didn't make it for more than thirty seconds,
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  Speaker 2: but the rules were if you get up to thirty seconds,
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  Speaker 2: you still get scored, and he got a respectable he
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: got a respectable smort because he did some pretty cool moves.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: El Toro did a neat flex where he has the
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  Speaker 2: thing is obviously looked like looks like a bull. He
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  Speaker 2: kind of climbed up to the top of a hill
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  Speaker 2: and then started shooting steam out of his his anthropomorphizing
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: this truck here nostrils, I guess, headlamp nostrils El Toro Loco.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. And I went and looked up some of their
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: other work. I think I might have a new obsession.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure I might. I might assume when they
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: come back now that we know it's such a big production,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: both as a show and getting there. Another thing that
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: they did that I really enjoyed calling out to Max's
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: KFE wrestling references. They all had snippets, dare we say,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: samples of plane as as they're introu That's what this
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: week's two part episode is all about. Free samples, right,
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  Speaker 1: you know?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, costre oh exactly, little cubes of cheese, all that good.
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  Speaker 1: Slice of pepperoni.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, or if you go to like a super h
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: smart perhaps a little ramikin plastic rammichin of noodle soup.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps I love the things that look like a medical
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: sample sized cup of kimchi, just enough to mess with
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  Speaker 1: your breath, just enough. No, thank you, I'll give that
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  Speaker 1: what it passed.
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  Speaker 2: No, no, we we just we are talking today about
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  Speaker 2: the history of sampling. Sampling in music, and I mean
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  Speaker 2: the term really it does come from, you know, something
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  Speaker 2: very similar to what we're talking about with food stuffs,
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  Speaker 2: the idea of taking a little snippet and recontextualizing it,
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  Speaker 2: you know, putting it in a new light or a
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  Speaker 2: separate little cup. Let's just say, so, what exactly is sampling.
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  Speaker 2: It is exactly what I said. It's an art. It
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  Speaker 2: is a very controversial thing over time, and we're gonna
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  Speaker 2: talk all about that, but essentially, it is taking something
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  Speaker 2: from a song, whether it be a part that is
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  Speaker 2: highly recognizable or a part that no one would ever
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  Speaker 2: be able to recognize. Out of context, you can transform it.
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  Speaker 2: You can use it as the basis for a tune,
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  Speaker 2: you can use it as a refrain of some kind,
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  Speaker 2: or just some extra little bit of texture. We also
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  Speaker 2: will run into terms like remixes, covers, and interpolations. All
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  Speaker 2: of these things play into the fascinating history of sampling
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  Speaker 2: and our research associate Extraordinary Jeff went above and beyond
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  Speaker 2: on this one.
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  Speaker 1: We are really good.
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  Speaker 2: This is definitely gonna be a preemptive two parter because
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  Speaker 2: there's so much history wrapped up in this, so much
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  Speaker 2: cool pop culture. It's just really kind of a whole
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  Speaker 2: thing that we're gonna get into, and I think it's
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  Speaker 2: something that's close to both you and i've been as
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  Speaker 2: music fans and fans of hip hop and music production.
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  Speaker 1: This is something that's very close to both of us.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so say we all you know the
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  Speaker 1: I like they're bringing up samples, remixes, covers, interpolation. They
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  Speaker 1: all kind of orbit around the same concept, but they
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  Speaker 1: apply it in different ways. One thing you noticed, you
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  Speaker 1: noted about the way a sample could be transformed. I
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  Speaker 1: would say there's also something that's pretty common in hip
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  Speaker 1: hop where a sample is sped up or slowed down
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  Speaker 1: to hit the tempo of whatever else the producer has
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  Speaker 1: in the sonic cauldron. I like what I like the most, though,
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  Speaker 1: I gotta confess I love a good sample, But I
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  Speaker 1: am a sucker for a cover. And we're not going
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: to talk too much about cover songs day, but folks,
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  Speaker 1: I can nearly guarantee you unless you have done some
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: digging already. I can nearly guarantee you that one of
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  Speaker 1: your top twenty favorite songs in the world, the version
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  Speaker 1: you like is probably a cover totally.
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  Speaker 2: Like I mean, you know, we get this out of
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  Speaker 2: the way because it really isn't exactly part of the
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: podcast today. But like, for example, of the song without
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  Speaker 2: You by Harry Nilssen, you know.
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  Speaker 1: I can't leave lieve it is with that.
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  Speaker 2: The original version of that is by a band called
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Bad Finger, who were on Apple Records, was the Beatles label,
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  Speaker 2: and they were like really kind of you know, taken
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  Speaker 2: under the wing of the Beatles, and they had a
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: couple other hits of their own. But the version of
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: without You by Bad Finger is so incredibly dull, like
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  Speaker 2: it's you know, the bones of it are there. It's
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: the same song, but it took Harry Nilssen's kind of
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: soaring vocal and like schmaltzy, you know, overwhelmingly you know,
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  Speaker 2: cinematic production with all the strings and stuff to really
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: take that song where it needed to go. Or for example,
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  Speaker 2: you know, Jimmy Hendrix's version of All on the watch Tower.
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  Speaker 1: Or another example would be and this is one where
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  Speaker 1: all the artists come out as winners. I will always
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  Speaker 1: love you. Dolly Parton has a beautiful original version of it.
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  Speaker 1: Whitney Houston, though, brought it to a new audience and
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  Speaker 1: brought it to a level of worldwide renown and fame.
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  Speaker 1: And the neat story about that all praise due to
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Dolly Pardon. I'm legally required to say that, being from Tennessee.
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  Speaker 1: The neat part about that is that Dolly Pardon was
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: absolutely over the moon happy with Whitney Houston's version. She's
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: had all this beautiful stuff to say about it. We're
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: gonna get into probably in part two, we're gonna get
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: into some of the more controversial stuff about sampling. But
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: just so we've got all our our guidelines clear here
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: for this monster jam of music. We've talked about a cover,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: we talked about remixes. We've we mentioned interpolation, but nol
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  Speaker 1: I guess the best way for us to say that
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  Speaker 1: is an interpolation occurs when you hear some part of
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  Speaker 1: a previous song exactly as it is included or woven in.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know you. Could you talk about that?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you definitely, and it's definitely something you hear a
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  Speaker 2: lot in songs today, like you know, for example, and
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  Speaker 2: it might sometimes be paired with the sample, so there
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  Speaker 2: could be a little vocal nod you know, to the
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  Speaker 2: original song that actually either sings the exact melody, and
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  Speaker 2: it's not meant to be sneaky. It's kind of meant
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  Speaker 2: to be an homage, but it's sort of like it's
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  Speaker 2: it's it's using that to add to the kind of
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  Speaker 2: gravitas of the song by putting it in the light
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  Speaker 2: of that original song, you know, and sort of saying,
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: here's our style on this, but it's not. It's maybe
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: like think of it as like a modernization of like
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: a Beach Boys song.
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  Speaker 1: You know, there was a I think there was a Garbage.
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  Speaker 2: Song back in the day on their album Versus two
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  Speaker 2: point zero where she says, I'm like you're the talk
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: of the town. You're the talko of the that's I
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: think is a is a Beach Boys. Uh, it's like
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: literally a little snippet of a Beach Boys song. But
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  Speaker 2: I think this is a really great place to start
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  Speaker 2: be because it used to you know, it took advancements
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  Speaker 2: in technology for sampling as we know it to even
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  Speaker 2: become possible for like manipulation of pre existing sound to
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  Speaker 2: even become possible, you know, in the earlier days sampling,
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: you know, for what it was at the time, I
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  Speaker 2: guess would have really been more kind of interpolations or nods,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: like say, like a jazz riff that somebody made really popular.
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  Speaker 2: You know, you might hear somebody recontextualize that same riff,
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  Speaker 2: you know, in a new piece of music, right because
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  Speaker 2: that was the only thing they could do. They had
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  Speaker 2: to play it, and it would not have been considered
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  Speaker 2: theft necessarily if it was done in a clever way
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: and it was woven into the fabric of kind of
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  Speaker 2: a new piece of music. But it wasn't until turntables
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  Speaker 2: and you know, the audio tape you know, came around
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  Speaker 2: that people were able to take a recording, cut out
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  Speaker 2: a little snippet of it literally either loop it, or
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: you know, physically manipulate the media in such a way
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  Speaker 2: that you could stack that on top of other pre
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: existing kind of production bits.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, and this I like that. We're porting this
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  Speaker 1: out too, because sometimes, especially if you're not a hip
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: hop fan, sometimes it's a little too easy for people
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  Speaker 1: to say, oh, sampling, you're just taking something and you're
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  Speaker 1: taking you know, let's say six seconds of it or whatever,
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: and you're just popping it in and looping it. That
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  Speaker 1: does happen. But there really is an art and as
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: science to this, and you can do really really creative
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: dare I say postmodern things. Let's let's start there with
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: the jazz musicians. Okay, so this is not plagiarism. That's
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: an important thing to know. Often when jazz musicians are
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: playing and say the early nineteen hundreds or whatever, they
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: might see another musician they know in the crowd, right,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: and when they see that person, let's say you're doing
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: your trumpet solo or whatever, they see that person and
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: they might add a little riff that they know that
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: person created as kind of a nod, a mark of respect,
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: and let's play together. This was a really cool thing.
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: And then of course, if you're a jazz aficionado in
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: the crowd and you get it, then what an easter egg.
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  Speaker 1: And people love this. That's why they liked seeing the
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: live music, even if they had the records when records
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: became much more common.
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this stuff really was a way of rewarding
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: the careful listener or the fan. These are kind of
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: little in jokes almost or just ways of kind of
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: everyone feeling included.
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  Speaker 1: Of course, I love that you pointed out that this was.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: A way of commune to other musicians, but as these
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: things made their way onto records, it's a way of
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: kind of carrying on the legacy of other players. And
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  Speaker 2: I don't think at this point people were necessarily clamoring
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  Speaker 2: to be like, now that was mine.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: You know.
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  Speaker 2: It's certainly not the same as say, like stealing a
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: joke verbatim from another comedian, right, you might maybe borrow
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: the setup of another comedian and then make it your own,
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: you know, do a little twist on it. But this
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: is kind of more like that. You're taking a little
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: thing as a out of respect and saying, look, I
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: think I dig what you're doing, so I'm gonna throw
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: it in here into the mix. And then you got
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: yourself a bit of a got yourself a stew.
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: A sonic stew.
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  Speaker 2: And what I wanted to mention too, just about the
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: idea of what you pointed out, people maybe mischaracterizing sampling
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: as like lazy or like in some way just like
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: stealing because you didn't have an idea of your own.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: I would and if I think you were saying some
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: people think that, we don't think that. I think what
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: we think is it's more like making a collage, you know. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it's more like taking cool things that you see in
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: the world, in nature perhaps, or in different magazines, and
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: cutting it up and put it together to make something
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  Speaker 2: that is in fact greater than the sum of their parts.
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: And a French composer named Pierre Schaeffer really pioneered this
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: at the advent of being able to manipulate sound through
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: literal physical manipulation of magnetic tape.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and Arpal Pierre thought of this more like
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a a study in the art of sound. In the
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: world of literature, the analog to this would be the
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: postmodern movement. Right, you are taking pre existing concepts, stories,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: and so on, and you are putting them together. I
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: had a really interesting conversation last night about this about
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: art as synthesis, right, And art as synthesis means that
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: every creative mind, whatever they make and whatever given medium,
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: they are taking snippets of their own life experience, of
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: other art and creations that they like. They are analyzing them.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: They're applying a critical eye and then through this through
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: this interrogation, they synthesize and they make something new out
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: of something existing. Now that sounds a little high faluting
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: for a comedy podcast about history, but I think it's
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: a good way to describe it. And this, Okay, this
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Pierre guy, by the way, in this regard, he's tremendously important.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: He's often not acknowledged as widely as he should be.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: He is the one who is at the bleeding edge
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: of technology at the time. This music concrete is this
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: way of taking that tape music, making this sound collage.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: And for him, really you can think of him as
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: a guy who created a technique of composing. He wanted
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: to take all these sounds with the technology available and
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: kind of vivisect them, cut him up, put him together,
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: collage them. I think it was later, actually pretty briefly
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: after there was the German electroniche music, right, Yeah, I.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: Mean sure with folks like craft Work eventually, but Stockhausen
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: there's all these like, you know, synthesizer kind of pioneers
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: who were using you know, combinations of tape machine and
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: like things like I don't know for mely the history
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: of music is riddled, as you would say, Ben with
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: misuse of technology right in the best possible way. Let
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: me let me let me clarify what I mean by that. Like,
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: you know, you take a piece of equipment that was
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: maybe designed for a broadcast purpose, like literally recreating speech,
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: you know, like like magnetic tape or wax cylinders, which,
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: by the way, that's more what Schaeffer and then his
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: partner Pierre Henry were using.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: This is pre magnetic tape.
• 20:57
  Speaker 2: They were using disc cutters, you know, to act create
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: these kind of recreations of sound they could then manipulate.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: It wasn't until a little bit later that magnetic tape
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: became widely available. But magnetic tape and things like tone generators,
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: a lot of these were developed by the military, you know,
• 21:16
  Speaker 2: like for example, tape would have been used during World
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: War Two as ways of sending transmissions that could just
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: play on a loop, right, you know, that would have
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: been important, whether it be things like number stations or
• 21:29
  Speaker 2: you know, just warnings or whatever things that would be
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: broadcast out. And I saw the most incredible walk through
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: of Abbey Roads studios in England, and that is you know,
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: ground zero for a lot of evolution of music technology. Again,
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: they figured out how to use it wrong in the
• 21:47
  Speaker 2: best possible ways. And they were talking about the studio
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: managers talking about this one particular tape machine they have
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: there as being you know, basically they went after the
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: war was over, they were able to kind of, you know,
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: some technicians from Abbey Road were able to go and
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: look at some of the military tech that was now
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: kind of considered to be now part of the public record,
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: I guess, you know, and they kind of retro engineered
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: it or reverse engineered it and figured out how to
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: make because they were hearing these transmissions like why does
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: it sound so good? How are they able to make
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: it sound so clean? Because prior to that it would
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: have been on things that were much more low fidelity. Right,
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: So that's exactly what we're talking about here with music Concrete.
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: And then now back to Abbey Road. The Beatles, you know,
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: were fans of these types of techniques, and they even
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: use some of this tape splicing and you know, using
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: different sounds and combining them, you know, like train sounds
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: and field recordings of nature and use it on a
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: piece of music called Revolution number nine on.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: The White album. Yeah. Yeah, And we also see that
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: this this practice sort of gates in the world. In
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, there's a guy named James Tenney. He
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: creates something called Collage number one most creative name, but
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: it's an important It's an important track because he takes
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: an existing, very popular song, Elvis Presley's recording in blue
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: suede shoes, and he clips out parts of it. He
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: moves them around. Anybody who has worked with editing of
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: any sort, you can kind of picture the timeline right
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: the different tracks he's doing an analog version of that,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: and then he plays them with this tempo. This is
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: pretty experimental. You can hear this. By the way, you
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: can find this online and check out what we're talking
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: about for pretty much all of these examples, so you
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: can find them somewhere. There was another one just a
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: few years later by two guys Bill B. Cannon and
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Dicky Goodman. This was called Flying Saucer, and it was
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: like an early version of Girl Talk with a weird
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: UFO agenda, which I love. It's they took a bunch
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: of rock and roll hits, they smushed them together in
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: this creative way, and then they also have a fake
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: news report. Before the term fake news became weaponized they
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: have this like made up comedy sketch news report about
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: aliens coming from outer space, and this becomes popular, I
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: mean not you know, it's not like topping the charts popular,
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: but becomes known enough, becomes a novelty to the point
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: that lawyers get involved, right, and then we're gonna you know,
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: obviously this is this is a only the beginning shadow
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: of that can of worms being busted wide open. So
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: we start to see music recordings being treated as instruments
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: on their own, right, Like that's sort of what each
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: individual piece here is. You know, you're making a piece
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: of music that's combining different pieces of pre existing stuff,
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: and you're kind of using them as elements in some
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: sort of arrangement or orchestration. Not necessarily like SYNCD up rhythmically, right,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: These are more like kind of you know, amorphous sort
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: of sound collages, you know, that are meant to be
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: sort of experiential. But we're not really we don't have
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: the technology yet necessarily, or maybe no one's thought of
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: it on how to get things to kind of rhythmically align.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: It wasn't until the invention of a really cool instrument
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: called the chamberlain that we really start to see this
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: idea of manipulation of sound being used as another instrument
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: in the orchestra and the ensemble. A guy named Harry
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: Chamberlain invented this electro mechanical keyboard which contained within each
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: key in this very large, very clunky piece of equipment
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: is a loop of tape. And let's just really quickly
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: talk about what a tape loop is. Typically, you know,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: tape is a on reels, you know, and it would
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: be a.
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: Song perhaps, you know, if you're in a studio, you
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: might mix mixed your song down onto a reel of
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: tape that has a stereo you know, two tracks, a
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: left track and a right track. If you make a loop,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: you can actually splice together a discrete piece and have
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: it play over and over again over what's called a
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: tape head, and that is the part at the bottom
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: of between the reels, kind of the big chunky part
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: at the bottom of the tape machine if you've seen
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: a upright reel to reel. Chamberlain did this per key.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: So essentially, each key triggers a loop of tape that
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: has a single sound, a single note of that sound,
• 26:36
  Speaker 2: and then when you can play them all together, you
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: get a chord, and they would be things like flutes
• 26:41
  Speaker 2: or strings or even the human voice.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: And it's a brilliant application of technology and art. He
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: also wasn't really in it for the money. These were
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: very expensive to build, they were pretty expensive to buy.
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: There weren't very many made. But it was interesting because
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: it sounds like we're talking about nine ancient history, but
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I think the last chamberlains were actually made in the
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, In like the early eighties or from what
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: is it, nineteen seventy nineteen eighty one, there were around
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: one hundred Chamberlain M one, M two's nim fours made.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: So this is this is really cool. I love unique
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: musical instruments, and I think this is as neat as
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: Ben Franklin's glass harmonica totally.
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: And if you want to think about like the sound
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: of a chamberlain or what we're gonna go on to,
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: it's kind of you know what came after it, the melotron.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: Think of the sounds of bands like Electric Light orchestra yelo.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: You know you have like these big sweeping pad sounds
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: that sound like string.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: It was like, that doesn't sound quite like.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: An orchestra something's a little uncanny valley about in a
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: cool way, or if you know the Smashing Pumpkins album's
• 27:59
  Speaker 2: Sorry Siamese Dream, there's a song on it called space
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: Boy that has this cool kind of like tapey out
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: of tune, kind of like the choir sound or music
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: of the band Genesis or Emerson, Lake and Palmer. These
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: were all kind of adopters of Oh and of course
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: Strawberry Fields Forever by the that that is you know,
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: classic melotron slash Chamberlain tape, you know, keyboard and yeah,
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: it's a beautiful sound because it is its own thing.
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: It's like it's interesting with music technology, things get invented
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: kind of in a wave off. What if we replaced
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: the orchestra, you know, but that it ends up not
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: being what it becomes. It becomes more like this is
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: something that's different than the orchestra. The orchestra is the orchestra,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: but this gives us it's it has its own unique
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: quality to it. And that carried on with the melotron,
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: which was developed a little bit later. Well, I want
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: to go back to Electric Light Orchestra, especially to shout
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: out one of my favorite songs by them turned to
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: Stone because because the band themselves said that when they
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: would do this in live performances, the part where it
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: gets really really fast. I talked with our pal Casey
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: Pegrin about this at length when I was going through
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: an el O phase when they get to the really
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: really fast part of the lyrics. They said they had
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: about an eighty percent success rate in live shows just
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: getting through it and getting every word.
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: So shout out to you Elo. They didn't replace the
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: vocals there, they did my hand or by a voice
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: box every time. Yeah. Melotron though, So with our shoutout
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: to Yello, let's talk about the melotron, we need to
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: shout out a guy named Bill franzen Bill franzen Is
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: starts off as a money dude. He's an investor, and
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: he says, look, I'm going to get two of these
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: Chamberlain instruments. It's nineteen sixty two. I'm gonna get him
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: shipped to the United Kingdom. I'm going to make a
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: deal with a company that was called Brad Mattock Limited
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: later street Lee Electronics, and we're going to mass produce
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: these with the economy of scale. We're going to give
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: it a new name the melotron, and this is where
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: they make like the very first melotron that you could buy,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: the Mark one is essentially a clone of the Chamberlain.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: You could say it's a cover of the instrument. This
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: of course, they start to evolve and make their own innovations.
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: They get the Melotron in four hundred, the M four
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: thousand came out in two thousand and seven. And want
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: to shout out a couple of different cool blogs we found.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Let's let's give a shout out to a brief history
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: of sampling on tommin dot de. This was this was
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: where we got a lot of cool information. There's also
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: some videos you could watch of people playing Chamberlain's doing
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: the disc cutting for music concrete and then also playing
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a melotron.
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Melotrons are neat because, like you said, they really are
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: just a carryover of the Chamberlain and and you know,
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: the first ones were clones, and they started getting a
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: little more elaborate where you could have multiple tape sets
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: in each one, and that may have been the case
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: with the Chamberlain as well, but I kind of have
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: a sense that would have been much more limited I've seen.
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: I think maybe it was a Melotron M four hundred,
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: like one of the maybe like eighties versions, but it
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: has a knob on it that has a real clicky knob,
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: and it basically it does a shift, a physical shift
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: of some kind of the tape head over to a
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: different set of tapes. So I think on each one
• 31:29
  Speaker 2: of these you could maybe have like four sounds. And
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: the beauty of it now is obviously we're going to
• 31:34
  Speaker 2: get into digital stuff a little later. All of these
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: tapes have been archived and stored, so the Melotron Company
• 31:41
  Speaker 2: now has what's called the M four thousand and D,
• 31:44
  Speaker 2: which is a digital version of the melotron. They're still
• 31:47
  Speaker 2: quite expensive, but they're not the same as like having
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: this massive behemoth, you know, full of magnetic tape and
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: tape heads and you know, electro mechanical equipment. But they
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: have very faithfully sample do their own stuff, and you
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: can get on one of these melotron in four thousand d's.
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: They even have mini versions and there's several different models.
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: You can get every single one of these sounds that
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: would have been throughout the history of the melotron and
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: the Chamberlain pretty cool and a lot of them too.
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: Ben would have been little loops of like a band,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: like little jazz bits, you know, a little like background
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: music or like swing jazz. And you can get all
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: of those two. I have a few plug in versions
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: of them. I don't have an actual melatron, I would
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: love one, but you can get them in plug in
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: form as well, and they're all very meticulously recreated from
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: the original tapes.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Pretty cool stuff. The December is third. Remember they use
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: they use a melotron, and that's what we're talking about,
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: is almost like a personality or an accent that it
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: can give a band, right or a song.
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: It has a certain vintage quality that you can't get
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: any other way.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: Right, And we are talking about a lot of very
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: smart people. First they're doing kind of live samples for
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: each other, honestly, and then we're building contraptions right to
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: utilize the latest technology. To your point, we haven't gone
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: digital yet, but fear not, it's on the way, right.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: We're not into digital yet, And I just want to
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: say too, up to this point, we've largely been talking
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: about sampling. I mean, aside from some of the music
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: conqurette stuff, as like recreating sounds of instruments in a
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: way that is easily recallable, right, Like so the Melatron,
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: it's not sampling as we know today in terms of
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: like cutting out a piece of popular music and making
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: it into something new. But these these devices are still
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: called samplers. And you know keyboards that say have meticulously
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: recreated multi recordings of a drum kit or like a
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: guitar or whatever, those are still called samplers. So there
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: are kind of two sides of the sampling. And then
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: sometimes people kind of lump it all into the idea
• 34:04
  Speaker 2: of taking someone's song and stealing it is not It's
• 34:07
  Speaker 2: way more than that, that's all we're trying to say.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like we said earlier, it is more of a
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: creative act. And that's something I think we'll keep re
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: emphasizing to here because we're obviously team sampler. We're advocates
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: for this practice and this philosophy. Quick note too, on
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: the on that earlier statement, the when we say sampling
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: of these recorded instruments, we're counting vocals as an instrument absolutely,
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: because that's where you hear a choir tones or you know, yeah, yeah,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: that's one of the other things get to all right,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: it's the nineteen seventies it's nineteen seventy one. There's a
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: musician named John Congo's with a K out of South Africa,
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: and John is, according to the Guinness Book World Records,
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: not the most reliable source. Just being honest, John is
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: the creator of the first song to use a sample.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: He takes a sample of a drumming track, an African
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: drumming track, and uses it in his song He's Gonna
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Step on You Again. Okay. Now, people, even people at Guinness,
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: argue about this because whenever you're talking creative acts, it
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: can get kind of muddied, right, parallel thinking, right, right.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: I mean, this is like the stuff was out there
• 35:27
  Speaker 2: at this point to do these kinds of things. It
• 35:30
  Speaker 2: was just who was going to do it first and
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: the most popular version of it, I would argue, and
• 35:35
  Speaker 2: I think we would both agree that this was probably
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: happening in all over the place. People were trying experimenting
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: with this stuff. That's just how humans work.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so there's all right, brief side note on
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the Guinness Book of World Records, which we could totally
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: do an episode on the Guinness Book of World Records.
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: Is a lot of fun, but is by its own admission,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: not perfect. It was actually made to settle bar disputes
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: when people would be drinking and arguing in bars. So
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: it's not exactly a scientific work, but it is really
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: cool and the folks working there do their best. They
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: do a lot of fun things. They take it seriously,
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: but in some cases it can be difficult to figure
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: out the real first of something, So you will find
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: a lot of people saying Guinness might have gotten this
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: one wrong and that the real first song to use
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: a sample in this way was Mike Stephenson or Michelle Bernauld,
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: a French composer, was his song Burundi Black. It also
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: has a sample of a group of drummers. These are
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: from the Ingoma tribe in Burundi. This appeared on a
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight album Music of Burundi. This guy Mike,
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: he adds guitar, he adds keyboard, and he creates this
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: song Burundi Black. So it's kind of like in hip
• 36:57
  Speaker 1: hop where you might take a nice, a tasty beat,
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: just the drum sample from it, and then boom you
• 37:04
  Speaker 1: add the organ, Boom, you add some vocal samples of
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: someone going oh yeah, are youre ah yeah, and then
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: someone else being like okay, and now it's suddenly a
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: different song.
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it's it is very transform and then that's
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: we're also going to sorry transformative. We're going to get
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: into that whole debate too as to when is it
• 37:23
  Speaker 2: like okay to borrow like this and when are you
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: putting yourself in serious legal jeopardy if you end up
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: with a hit on your hands. The very basis of
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: technically not technically truly belongs to somebody else. And it
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: also to your point earlier, Ben about synthesis, this is
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: all a big conversation about just the nature of creativity,
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: you know, and like where we where ideas come from,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: and like you know, what is and is not off limits,
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: and like with the finite nature of the human imagination
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: and all of that good stuff. So seventy one, you're right,
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: we have this, Brendi Black. It's a loop of this, this,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: this drumming, this kind of field recording, you know, from
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: indigenous drummers, from the Ngomont tribe drums to your point earlier, Ben,
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: as well, you know, they're some of the easiest things
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: to sample because they're cyclical and repeating by their very nature.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: So you you know, this point we would be talking
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: about people probably making actual tape loops, you know, perhaps
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: recording it onto a real to reel that we said,
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: and like you know, the beatles of this all the
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: time where you are are Pink Floyd, you know all
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: any band that uses this kind of sound, you know,
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: this kind of like looping tape y kind of stuff.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: You can actually just take a real to reel tape
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: machine or like a portable Nagra tape machine and you
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: can make the loop and you splice it together with
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: splicing tape and you can make a seamless loop that'll
• 38:49
  Speaker 2: just go over and over again. You can even do
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: stuff where you take the tape, spool it off of
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: the the real and loop it around like a microphone
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: stand or some believe and used like beer bottles that
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: they would hold, you know, and then that that loop.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: Those are usually for more amorphous, less precise loops. But
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: to make a really precise rhythmic glube, you have to
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: cut it like really really accurately and then have it
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: loop like that. So this is all done by hand
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: with with raizors, you know, and and tape using these
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: splicing blocks. It was like film reels exists very it's
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: exactly the same. And in fact, film editing, you know,
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: there's a there's an aspect of audio editing as well,
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: because you're you're you're splicing. You have the audio track
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: and the video track and they're both, you know, videos
• 39:33
  Speaker 2: on film, the audio is on magnetic tape.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: And you know, I.
• 39:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to purport to be able to understand
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: how magnetic tape works exactly, or like how graglets were
• 39:46
  Speaker 2: on a vinyl. It's magic. As far as I'm concerned,
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: I understand the basis of it. I mean, it is a
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: way of storing data. You know, you use magnetic tape
• 39:54
  Speaker 2: to store data. So that's the best that I can.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: You know, essentially, audio is just capturing sound waves through
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: a microphone. That is a way of picking up vibrations
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: on the air. You know, air carries sound their different
• 40:10
  Speaker 2: wave forms. You know, if you use a synthesizer, the
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: purest waveforms are just like a saw tooth wave or
• 40:18
  Speaker 2: a sine wave or whatever. Complex waveforms are when all
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: those things combine together and create these like really interesting harmonics.
• 40:25
  Speaker 2: And that's literally what sound is. It's not much more
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: complicated than that. And then you're using various electronic components
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: to translate the vibrations that microphone is picking up, combine
• 40:34
  Speaker 2: them with other ones, and then store them on a
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: thing that can be replayed. But we're getting right up
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: on the advent of the first digital sampler.
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's step back to sew up RUNDI Black.
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: It comes out, It does pretty well. It sells one
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: hundred and twenty five thousand copies in the United Kingdom,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: and generally those two guys, Mike Stevenson and John Congos,
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: those two guys will be mentioned as the first people
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: to use a sample in a song. Right. If we
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: look at nineteen seventy six, this is where we see
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: the dawn of the digital the computer music melodion, which
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: sounds like a really cool job. It's actually the first
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: digital sampler. It's monophonic, meaning it doesn't have those two channels.
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: It's vented by a guy named Harry Mindel. And this
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: is a contraption. I love the word contraption. I don't
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: think it has negative connotations. I think it should be
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: used more often. This thing is a contraption. It's heavy.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: If you look at it, and you pull pictures of
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: this up pretty easily, Folks, if you look at it,
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: it's like an old school cathode ray nineteen sixties television
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: looking thing, and it's got a keyboard, and then under
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: it it's got something that's about the size of a
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: household microwave that is the processor. Remember this is before
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of miniaturization of technology, so this is a
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: charm and uh and people start using it. One of
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: the most famous early adopters is the man myth legend
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Stevie Wonder on his nineteen seventy nine album Journey through
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: the Secret Life of Plants, which still is a great name.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, and folks like Herbie Hancock, you know, would have
• 42:18
  Speaker 2: been aware. Anyone that was like at a certain level
• 42:22
  Speaker 2: of fame. You know, they would have had first crack
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: in these kind of things because they could afford it.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: They could afford it or not only they were probably
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: just let allowed to use it, just so that the
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: manufacturer and like the creators they needed to get co
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: signed by like these big artists like Mogue for example,
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Moge synthesizers. They were not popular until you had folks
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: like Emerson, Lake and Palmer bringing these giant things out
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: on tour. And then you know when they started making
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: more miniaturized versions of them, like with the Mini mog
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: you started to see the Beatles using them on records,
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: you know, on Abbey Road for example, And that's what
• 42:56
  Speaker 2: leads to these things becoming household names because these these
• 43:00
  Speaker 2: megastars you know, are using them. Same with this one,
• 43:03
  Speaker 2: the computer music melodeon, and essentially all it is, I mean,
• 43:07
  Speaker 2: we think about computers now how easy it is for
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: us to record and playback sounds and do video and
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: do any number of things that would have been absolutely
• 43:16
  Speaker 2: just impossible to do at the time. All it is
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: is basically the same concept as that melotron. Each key
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: plays back a sound. It can be a set of
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: sounds where each key is just a note in a
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: particular instrument that's recorded to each you know, key position,
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: and so you can play back sets. But then you
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: could do things like I don't know if you remember,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: speaking of Stevie Wonder, there's an episode of The Cosby
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: Show where Stevie Wonder is in it and they're in
• 43:41
  Speaker 2: the studio with Stevie Wonder and he's showing THEO or
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: whatever whichever character was, I can't recall his sampler, his keyboard,
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: and he's like he records his voice into it and
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: he goes jamming on the one jamming on the one
• 43:52
  Speaker 2: drumn on the w DR. It's pitched. You can record
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: it and then pitch it. Each key takes it down
• 43:58
  Speaker 2: a certain interval of musical steps.
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: So you could.
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: Really create things that were impossible to do beforehand. Oh yeah,
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: and this, So the way this stuff proliferates is that
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: you're talking about rarefied air right with these musicians. So
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: once one person does something really creative and interesting with it,
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: everybody else wants to explore. It's not necessarily in a
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: competitive way. It's more like, imagine you are a painter
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: and one of your buddies who is also a painter,
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: discovers a new color right right, and then you it's
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: not you being a jerk, it's you saying, I want
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: to paint with that color too, which I think is
• 44:41
  Speaker 2: pretty amazing. And we're getting to one of we're not
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: doing you I want to jump the gut. But we're
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: getting to one of my favorite parts of music history here.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: We've got to earn our way to it. We've got
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: to talk about some more of these digital innovations. Man, Like,
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: there's still really nice ments. Yeah every time.
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there's still yeah, there's still like okay, like the
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: oh the fair Light computer musical instrument called the Fairlight CMI,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: that's what it says for a computer musical instrument. Uh.
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: This was polyphonic. It's a digital synthesizer and it had
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: it was like an early version of a one stop shop,
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: you know. It kind of I think, I don't know.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: It reminds me of that technology that came out back
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: in back in the eighties where they had early versions
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: of like smartphones or early versions yeah, like touchscreen stuff,
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: and it just never caught on because it was very expensive.
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: But this thing, the fair Light, had a digital audio
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: workstation and it also had a touch screen.
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: Which is essentially Yeah, we think of digital audio workstations
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: today as like any computer software that allows you to
• 45:59
  Speaker 2: make multi track recordings like Adobe Audition. Adobe Audition would
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: be a digital audio workstation. The real popular ones for
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: music production things like pro Tools or Logic Logic Pro
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: you know on Apple, or there's free ones, just one
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: called Reaper that people really like.
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Fruity loops.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: Back in the day, loos is dope, fretty lous is
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: really and actually there's fl studio is still quite popular.
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: People still use it.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: There's lots of different ones, and there are lots of
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: debates over which one is the best one. I love
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: the one called Ableton Live that is very loop based
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: and it's a real creative tool. A lot of that's
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: It's made by a German company and it is kind
• 46:35
  Speaker 2: of the go to for electronic musicians. I've always loved
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: it for its kind of creative sketch pad ability, but
• 46:41
  Speaker 2: I've recently started using Logic as well for band more
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: band kind of recordings.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: But the fair Light CMI really was sort of an.
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: Early version of that because you could record audio into
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: it and have it playback more than one thing at
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: the same time you hit on it. Ben the idea
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: of it being polyphonic, and I actually, when I was
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: doing my Stevie Wonder story earlier, I sort of was
• 47:06
  Speaker 2: incorrect because the melodion was monophonic, meaning you can only
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: play back one sound at a time, which isn't you
• 47:14
  Speaker 2: know that's a limitation of you know, certain instruments that's
• 47:19
  Speaker 2: actually done always a bad thing, Like certain synthesizers are monophonic,
• 47:23
  Speaker 2: meaning you can only play lead lines, you can only
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: play melodies. You can't play chords, but on the fair
• 47:28
  Speaker 2: Light you could. And I've actually seen one of these
• 47:31
  Speaker 2: in person. They're white, they're very stark and futuristic kind
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: of looking, and that touch screen was huge. And so
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: then you had folks like Quincy Jones using these again,
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Herbie Hancock, Peter Gabriel. You know, any eighties kind of
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: luminary would have gotten their hands on one of these.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: And that's where you know that orchestra hit sound been
• 47:53
  Speaker 2: that first came out on the fair Light, And legend
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: has it that it was actually a sample of a
• 48:00
  Speaker 2: Stravinsky performance of the Rights of Spring, and that sound
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: has been put on cassio keyboards and you know, like
• 48:08
  Speaker 2: cheapy kind of like you know a little you know,
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: learn how to play kind of keyboards ever since. And
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: now it's being brought back a lot and a lot
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: of this like hyper pop music and stuff that is
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: very kind of referential of these these older periods. But
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: that is a sample of an orchestra that you know,
• 48:27
  Speaker 2: when you get a keyboard like this, all of the
• 48:30
  Speaker 2: sounds on it, technically you're allowed to.
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: Use them, right Otherwise they wouldn't be on the machine
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: unless you're buying something homebrew, which you can. You can
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: find people who will make these things for you. They're
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: mad scientists, and I am in love with every one
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: of them. The big thing that happens now is this
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: economy of scale. Right as technological innovations occur, unless somebody's
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: playing some reindeer games, inevitably a piece of technology will
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: become affordable to more and more people. That's just the
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: pattern we see throughout history totally, unless someone's trying to
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: interfere with that, like in the world of nuclear weaponry.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: Well frankly with creativity. It's kind of the pattern you
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: want because it is a It is the democratization of creation.
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: You know. It doesn't mean that only.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: The super rich can go to acting school and become
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: you know, a star an actor, or go to music school.
• 49:28
  Speaker 2: It now means that through YouTube videos, tutorials and free
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: software garage band fruity loops, anyone can make the can
• 49:37
  Speaker 2: get their ideas out, and it just means we have Sure,
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: it means we have a lot more to sift through,
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: but usually the really good stuff rises to the top
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: by its own merit. And I think, I think, yeah, hopefully,
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: but in a perfect world, I really think that that's
• 49:50
  Speaker 2: it's it's there's nothing, there's nothing greater than anybody being
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: able to exercise some creative muscle, you know, because anybody
• 49:57
  Speaker 2: could do it if they had the tools. That That's
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: why I'm a huge proponent of the democratization of knowledge, Right,
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: it should not be restricted because it is powerful. And
• 50:07
  Speaker 2: knowledge is another type of technology, I would argue because
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: a lot of it's human created. Well, technology, writing is technology,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: you know. I mean the way to spread these ideas
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: is in and of itself technology too, you know.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so this this idea of things becoming affordable,
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: this is key, This is the next problem to solve.
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: It happens in the early nineteen eighties. We see digital
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: samplers become much more affordable, much more accessible. This is
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: the era of the MPC getting on the scene, the
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: SP twelve hundred, the EBUSP twelve hundred, These things all
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: of a sudden seem to be everywhere. And people who
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: have really creative minds that could not afford an orchestra,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: that could not you know, maybe have the time and
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: energy and cap all to play producer and say, let
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: me go find somebody who has a French horn, right,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: and can spend the afternoon doing this riff with me.
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: Now they are able to become the authors of their
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: own sonic destiny. And Folks, we did say this was
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: going to be a two parter, so we we actually
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: went a little further and decided we were going to
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: hold the rest for part two. No, I can't wait
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: till we get to hip hop, because we were going
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: to talk just about the some of the controversies of sampley.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: But I think maybe we say a good thing too
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: for parts Yeah, No, I undercent me.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: And the thing is, like like I said at the
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: top of the show, this is something that's very near
• 51:37
  Speaker 2: and dear to both of us and Max as well,
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: and so we're gonna we've got a lot of our
• 51:41
  Speaker 2: own little size to share, you know, because this is
• 51:44
  Speaker 2: something that's very close to us, that we've kind of
• 51:46
  Speaker 2: grown up with as well, and you know, as fans
• 51:49
  Speaker 2: of all kinds of music and music production, we got
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: a lot to say about the subject, and we're happy
• 51:54
  Speaker 2: that you're along for the ride with us. Meanwhile, huge
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: thanks to research associated Shordinaire Jeff Bartlett for this absolutely
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: whopping research grief on on topic that we are all
• 52:05
  Speaker 2: super super excited to talk about Jonathan Strickland, the Quistor,
• 52:09
  Speaker 2: Long may he rain in anonymity hopefully yes, And Big
• 52:13
  Speaker 2: Big Things, of course, as always, inevitably have repeater Bowmans
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: in every show. Big Thanks to Max Williams, thanks to
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: Jonathan Strickland, thanks to Chris Frosciotis, thanks to Eve's Jeffcoat,
• 52:25
  Speaker 2: thanks to The Grave Digger, and thanks to Caleb Blood.
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: Those last two are from Monsters Jam.
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, We'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: you listen to your favorite shows