Sampling (music)
Sampling is the reuse of a segment of an existing sound recording in a new musical work. Producers may repeat, edit, layer, or transform the segment.
Digital audio workstation: Software for recording, editing, arranging, and mixing digital audio. A DAW lets producers cut, arrange, and process sampled recordings.
Phonograph: A device that records and reproduces sound using a stylus and a grooved medium. Its playback mechanism made recorded performances available for repeated reuse.
Breakbeat: A rhythmic passage, often from a funk recording, used as a repeated beat. Breakbeats are among the most recognizable source materials in sampled music.
Interpolation (music): The re-recording of a passage from an existing composition for use in a new work. Interpolation borrows the composition but uses a new recording rather than the original audio.
Bridgeport Music, Inc. v. Dimension Films: A 2005 U.S. appeals court case concerning digital sampling of a sound recording. The court held that the sampled recording at issue required a license, influencing clearance practice.
Sampler (musical instrument): An electronic instrument or device that records and plays back audio samples. Samplers organize recorded snippets for triggering and musical performance.
Musique concrète: A mid-twentieth-century compositional practice built from recorded sounds manipulated on tape. It established editing and rearranging recordings as compositional techniques.
Plunderphonics: Music made by appropriating and recomposing recordings, often to foreground their sources. It treats recognizable sampling as the work’s central compositional idea.
Cover version: A new performance or recording of a song previously recorded by another artist. A cover performs a song anew instead of reusing its recorded sound.
Copyright: A legal system granting creators exclusive rights over specified uses of original works. Sampling may implicate rights in both a recording and the underlying composition.