Ethan Powers Final Project A-Term 2016

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I've always been interested in the idea of sampling- taking one thing or idea from another song/track, and turning it into something entirely different. (Great examples of really cool sampling- Duck Sauce's sample in "Barbra Streisand" of Boney M.'s "Gotta Go Home", Daft Punk's sample in "Harder Better Faster Stronger" of Edwin Birdsong's "Cola Bottle Baby", and Redroche's sample in "Make Your Move" of the Pointer Sisters' "Dare Me".) I think sampling also appeals to me because it requires less background in music theory than making something entirely from scratch.

For this track I sampled "State Your Mind" by Nile Rodgers. It was surprisingly difficult to find pieces from different parts of the track that sounded good next to each other to achieve the sound I was going for. It took a long time to mess with the EQ, limiter, compressor, and sidechain settings on the main track and the layered kick (with 5 different kick samples!) to get it to sound right. I was also surprised at how big subtle differences made in how different parts of the track felt- for instance, even though the listener wouldn't even notice it specifically, the tambourine playing sixteenth versus eigth notes made a huge difference in how fast the track felt (even at the same tempo).