11.1. Sampling and drum machines

The introduction of sampling into black popular music began with the turntable mixing of the 70s, exhibited by Kool Herc and company. In 1982, the Fairlight CMI, the first polyphonic sampling synthesizer, was released. E-mu Systems entered the sampling game in the 80s with their Emulator series, again embraced by Hancock and Wonder but the major use of samplers were in hip hop towards the mid-to-late 80s. The first sampler championed by producers was the Emu SP-1200, used in the “golden age” era of hip hop between 1986 and 1989 and in the second golden age of the 90s. The 1200 was known for its gritty sound quality, due to its low sampling rate (half that of a compact disc). This gave it the ability to mimic the audio texture of vinyl records and helped maintain the style of using vinyl, harking back to the early hip hop days
But there were other motives for sampling technology. Particularly for those who couldn’t play instruments, it was an opportunity for producers to use their favourite drum breaks and bass lines in compositions or interpolate them to sound how they wanted without the need of formal musical training. For black music, sampling could be seen as a technological form of storytelling, where the person sampling would be the “digital griot”. Drum machines were introduced in the early 80s, with the Linn LM-1 being the first drum machine to use digital samples. Roger Linn, the inventor of this machine, later helped Japanese manufacturers Akai in creating the MPC60 (Music Production Center). Emu’s SP-1200 competed alongside the MPCs but the latter soon became the “industry standard” with each new iteration. As time went on, the concept of drum machines and samplers became less detached as producers began to sample drum hits from records instead of using the default drum sounds from their machines. The advantage of using these drum machines within compositions was in it’s precise metering with quantization of drum hits and the implementation of swing. However, as styles evolved, particularly within hip hop, some producers began to use quantization less