ABSTRACT
With the recent proliferation of cloud-based music production services such as Splice, Loopcloud, and Noiiz, sample-based music making is more relevant than ever. However, misunderstandings about sample-based music making still remain prevalent amongst musicians and within peer-reviewed literature. As it stands, musicians and scholars tend to believe that sampling involves choosing one or two bars of pre-recorded music and then continuously looping this selection in order to create an instrumental track. As Martin Mull stated, and as many musicians and composers have famously repeated since, writing about music can be like “dancing about architecture”. In more global terms, a Dutch label with an international following known as Chillhop only releases music which features this type of micro rhythmic strategy. After all, hip-hop music is largely based around the presence of an emcee or rapper, whose vocal performances have little to do with the creation of instrumentals.
