We know the ori­gin sto­ry of hip hop as the prod­uct of an enter­pris­ing sub­cul­ture of young, most­ly African-Amer­i­can, West Indi­an, and Lati­no tastemak­ers in the Bronx (or first in Brook­lyn, accord­ing to an alter­nate his­to­ry). We’ve seen at least one of the dozens of doc­u­men­taries and drama­ti­za­tions cen­tered on this piv­otal moment in musi­cal his­to­ry in the late 70s/early 80s—when pio­neers like DJ Kool Herc and Grand­mas­ter Flash began using two turnta­bles and a mix­er to splice togeth­er bars of dis­co, soul, funk, and many oth­er kinds of music to turn them into an entire­ly new form.

In time, sam­pling became the prove­nance of ded­i­cat­ed dig­i­tal machines, which, in con­cert with drum machines and clas­sic turntable tech­niques, formed the basis of the sound of hip hop, dance, and pop music as we know them today. From local NYC roots came a glob­al phenomenon—which has tak­en “cen­ter stage on Netflix’s orig­i­nal music pro­gram­ming,” as Forbes notes, with the stream­ing com­pa­ny invest­ing mil­lions in new hip hop-themed con­tent. Still, even with the music’s main­stream­ing and glob­al reach, it’s a bit odd to see the piv­otal role of sam­pling explained by Eng­lish DJ and pop pro­duc­er Mark Ron­son, on a TED Talk Stage, through a remix of a few dozen oth­er TED talks.

But Ron­son turns this clever pre­sen­ta­tion into an immer­sive exam­ple of the ways that sam­pling allows cre­ators to become part of a “shared event” and to make new nar­ra­tives or alter the old ones. “That’s what the past 30 years of music has been,” he says, “that’s the major thread.” Sam­pling, he argues, is not about “hijack­ing nos­tal­gia whole­sale,” but about cre­at­ing new tapes­tries of sound. “Albums like De La Soul’s 3 Feet High and Ris­ing and the Beast­ie Boy’s Paul’s Bou­tique,” he notes, “loot­ed from decades of record­ings to cre­ate these son­ic, lay­ered mas­ter­pieces that were basi­cal­ly the Sgt. Pepper’s of their day.”

I think Ronson’s right—no these weren’t pio­neer­ing, exper­i­men­tal rock albums, as purists might point out, but the com­par­i­son is valid for the sheer vari­ety, inven­tive­ness, and son­ic com­plex­i­ty of the arrange­ments. (And like The Bea­t­les, these artists were involved in their share of law­suits, though in their case for copy­right infringe­ment.) Artists mak­ing albums built pri­mar­i­ly out of sam­ples aren’t “too lazy to make their own music,” Ron­son says, or “try­ing to cash in on the famil­iar­i­ty of the orig­i­nal stuff.” Most artists and pro­duc­ers, indeed, look for the most obscure sam­ples they can find, with some pret­ty obvi­ous excep­tions.

Rather, Ron­son argues, like the influ­ence of the Delta blues on British inva­sion rock­ers, sam­pling is a way for artists to pay trib­ute to music that moves them and to take its dis­tinc­tive­ness and make it their own, “to co-opt that music for the tools of their day.” To put it in oth­er terms, sam­pling is both a form of love and theft. Ron­son fol­lows his argu­ment with some per­son­al his­to­ry of his own musi­cal jour­ney, then gets back behind his DJ rig for a demon­stra­tion of Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick’s “La Di Da Di,” the fifth most sam­pled song of all time, as re-appro­pri­at­ed by The Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. and “cul­tur­al tour-de-force” (he says with tongue in cheek), Miley Cyrus.

Like it or not, sam­pling is here to stay, now the source of vir­tu­al­ly every build­ing block of many pop­u­lar gen­res, from snare drums and cym­bals to gui­tars and effects. But maybe this isn’t just a new phe­nom­e­non of the dig­i­tal age or a spe­cif­ic arti­fact of the hip hop rev­o­lu­tion, but just anoth­er exam­ple of Kir­by Ferguson’s cul­tur­al the­o­ry of every­thing in his four part video essay series, Every­thing is a Remix.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Every­thing is a Remix: The Full Series, Explor­ing the Sources of Cre­ativ­i­ty, Released in One Pol­ished HD Video on Its 5th Anniver­sary

Found­ing Fathers, A Doc­u­men­tary Nar­rat­ed By Pub­lic Enemy’s Chuck D, Presents the True His­to­ry of Hip Hop

150 Songs from 100+ Rap­pers Get Art­ful­ly Woven into One Great Mashup: Watch the “40 Years of Hip Hop”

The His­to­ry of Hip Hop Music Visu­al­ized on a Turntable Cir­cuit Dia­gram: Fea­tures 700 Artists, from DJ Kool Herc to Kanye West

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Last night I had din­ner at a local restau­rant that hap­pened to have a playlist on of great songs from my high school years. As one after anoth­er came on I thought, “wow, I for­got how good these songs are.” But after a while I real­ized I couldn’t real­ly sep­a­rate the songs them­selves from my mem­o­ries of lis­ten­ing to them back in the old days. Nos­tal­gia, as we know, plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in how we respond to record­ed music. But as to the ques­tion of what makes a song great to begin with, what sep­a­rates it from thou­sands of oth­er songs released around the same time… this is much more dif­fi­cult for many peo­ple to answer.

We might pull out one or two musi­cal elements—“this beat is amaz­ing” or “those heavy gui­tars are awe­some” or “her voice is just so powerful”—before falling back on sub­jec­tive cri­te­ria about how the song makes us feel and what we think of when we hear it. Most peo­ple can’t iden­ti­fy with pre­ci­sion how and why cer­tain songs sound like they do because devel­op­ing such an ear takes years of train­ing. It’s a skill learned by study­ing the­o­ry, record­ing, and musi­cal tech­nique, and by lis­ten­ing crit­i­cal­ly to lots and lots of music. Ask a musi­cian, pro­duc­er, or engi­neer what makes a song great and you might get a sem­i­nar on its mix­ing, arrange­ment, chord pro­gres­sions, and use of stu­dio effects.

That’s what we get in the YouTube series What Makes This Song Great?, cre­at­ed by musi­cian and pro­duc­er Rick Beato. Here, as Metafil­ter writes, he “breaks down the musi­cal struc­ture and pro­duc­tion tech­niques in pop­u­lar songs. Work­ing from the stems [pre-mixed group­ings of drums, gui­tars, vocals, keys, etc] of each song, he dis­cuss­es every­thing from Sting’s Lydi­an mode bassline, to the use of Neu­mann mics to cap­ture the inten­si­ty of Chris Cor­nel­l’s vocals; from sidechain com­pres­sion in an Ari­ana Grande song, to the use of a flat 6th to intro­duce a melan­choly air into the vocal melody of a Tool song.”

Now, everyone’s enti­tled to their tastes, and you might find your­self look­ing over his choic­es and think­ing of some of them, “this song’s not great!” And, well, fair enough. But give it a chance any­way. Because you can gain new lev­els of appre­ci­a­tion even for music you don’t sub­jec­tive­ly enjoy, just by learn­ing how that music was con­struct­ed. When I first began to learn about the skill and effort that goes into writ­ing, record­ing, mix­ing, and mas­ter­ing stu­dio-qual­i­ty music, the expe­ri­ence was quite hum­bling, and I found myself lis­ten­ing to songs I didn’t love, exact­ly, but could very much appre­ci­ate from a tech­ni­cal point of view.

I also found my tastes expand­ing, even to include some pop music I had dis­missed as mean­ing­less fluff. Because I could hear inter­est­ing uses of reverb, or stereo pan­ning, or delay, or chord voic­ings. In short, with care­ful, informed, lis­ten­ing, you can learn to appre­ci­ate the archi­tec­ture of record­ed music, rather than just the choice of exte­ri­or paint col­ors or obvi­ous dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments. And songs don’t always need to land emo­tion­al­ly to still tick­le your inter­est. Does that mean that I’m now a fan of Blink 182’s “All the Small Things” (top)? Well, no. But instead of rolling my eyes when it comes on, I can hear the small things (see what I did?) Beato points out and think, okay, that is actu­al­ly kin­da cool.

The lit­tle hook in the intro, that one mut­ed chord in the open­ing pro­gres­sion, a sus4 chord thrown in for a dis­so­nant instant. Maybe it also helps that, with the vocals stripped out, this could be anoth­er three-chord punk song and not that song, but, hey, it’s a learn­ing process. Many of the oth­er songs in the series might be more uni­ver­sal­ly acknowl­edged as “great” for their musi­cian­ship and songcraft. But that doesn’t mean we can’t glean some­thing from all of Beat­o’s videos. Get­ting expert per­spec­tives like his can expand our appre­ci­a­tion for any kind of music, and the best pro­duc­ers and musi­cians tend to have the most eclec­tic tastes.

Fur­ther up, see Beato’s videos on The Police’s “Every Lit­tle Thing She Does is Mag­ic,” Steely Dan’s “Kid Charle­magne,” Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of,” and, just above, Tom Pet­ty’s “I Won’t Back Down.” And check out all of the videos on his chan­nel here.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Made John Entwistle One of the Great Rock Bassists? Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks from “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Baba O’Riley” & “Pin­ball Wiz­ard”

The MC5’s Wayne Kramer Demon­strates the Cor­rect & Offi­cial Way to Play “Kick Out the Jams” on the Gui­tar

Hear Mar­vin Gaye Sing “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” A Capel­la: The Haunt­ing Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track