Probably a dumb question, but...

[Rokket]

How does sampling work?
I hear different things in various hip hop songs. I notice that any guitar, vocal, whatever is added in without the rest of the surrounding tracks.

It leads me to believe that there is either a machine out there that will pick out and sample the desired track, or the artist has access to the original tracks.

So how do they do it? EQ and cleaver editing, or is there something else to it? How do they sample from say, a stereo track?

 

[mentalattica]

The surrounding tracks are always there, unless like you said they have access to the session. To sample anything, whether it's a stereo or mono tracks you find a point in the song which is usually a few seconds, EQ anything you may not want heard (for instance if my sample has drums in it I'll try to make the as non-audible as possible), most beat makers pitch shift or time stretch the sample and chop it into segments (splicing or slicing is another term used). Then you load it up into a sampler (such as a MPC or Keyboard) and trigger the multiple sliced samples using the pads or keys.

I hope that kinda helped, I'm sure someone else can clarify it a bit better.

 

[ethos]

Also, it's not uncommon for producers to replay parts of the songs them selves.
so if you hear a famous guitar riff in a hiphop beat, and it was never solo in the original track, chances are they had it replayed, and just recorded that to use.
it's also useful to do it that way, because you can play it to match the tempo of the beat. time-stretching has small side effects.

 

[Rokket]

Thanks for the insight! I had planned on doing some of this when I get back to my gear! I wasn't sure how to get started.