Sampling Techniques and How to Throw a Cool Party in a Smaller City

There are two ways. The first: I go to the record store, buy something, put it on my turntable, and sample it into Ableton Live. There are many ways to cut it up, depending on exactly what you wanna do. Ableton's slice to MIDI is pretty underused in my opinion. Cut up drum breaks, layer them with whatever drum machine sounds you like, filter, or just take a break and chop in the arrange window. I'm mostly an Ableton guy, so Simpler Sampler is my shit. Take pieces, toss them in there, tune it so it's in tune, and play it. I could go more in depth, but there are mad nerds out there on YouTube who probably already handled that already. Logic I think does the same thing with the EXS24. Fuck Logic tho. It's also 2012, and in a weird way, I think sampling off YouTube is bringing back some sort of lo-fi, 12-bit kinda vibe. An amazing tool is Cycling 74's Soundflower. It routes your computer as an out and you can input it into Ableton, easily recording/sampling whatever you want off YouTube. It's free. I have a Maschine by Native Instruments. It's fun to load samples into that and mess around MPC style by laying everything out onto the pads. Honestly, my methods are always changing. I'm a crackhead, so I never do things the same twice. Mostly, it's important to be creative. Peep how Mobb Deep flipped this Herbie Hancock sample to make a beat that makes you wanna knock everyone out the second you hear it. This gives me the chills. And the drums are sampled and just looped. Damn.

Hey man. Thanks for writing. It's amazing that you started your own party. It takes guts, especially because in terms of the music game, putting on parties has the least reward for how much you actually put in. You should be proud. I grew up in St. Louis. I wasn't throwing my own parties back then, but I knew people that did and they had similar problems. The good thing for us was that most artists went to play in Chicago, so with the right hustle, you could get guys in. I remember we had Goldie on a Sunday night in a place that fit like 50 people. So, I would say reach out to promoters in your vicinity and just put it out there that you would be interested in trying to tag along on some of their bookings. It could save the other guy money on travel, so everyone starts to win. It also helps said DJ out with another show, even if it might be for a little less than "normal." Also, I would reach out to booking agents, same deal. Just let them know you have X budget and you are trying to help build acts. When my friends and I threw our party in New York, the whole premise was not to make a penny but to just have something we loved and people didn't forget. We ended up bringing SBTRKT to America for the first time in his life, hosting Lunice's first headlining show, Egyptrixx, HudMo, DJ Sega, DJ Assault. It definitely helped people find out who I was as a growing artist, and eventually helped get me out of town, too. Sponsors are good, but it's really difficult. Meet your local alcohol distributor. See if they can give you an open bar, or a few bucks. Go to the local college and get some weird hot girls to bring all the other weird hot girls—then all the weird dudes will show up. And there's the last resort that we all know works the best: sell drugs to fund projects that you love. It's ill, you make it up as you go along. In the game of putting on a party, I don't think there is a tried-and-true formula. No risk, no reward, right? Hope that helps. Happy holidays. *Column 13*