is it dead? (stolen from dextah at tommy c7-land)

waximilien

this threw up some interesting responses over at controller7 and i hope dextah doesn't mind me throwing it up here as i'm interested what people have to say. this is his original post:

"after listening and contributing to post shadow influenced music (samples drum breaks etc) for many years i wonder if this genre is a dying breed.no disrespect to anyone on the board but alot of people that choose this type of music to release has moved on or expanded their sound."

what do people here think?for what it's worth, this was my 2p on it:for what it's worth, i'd say that the genre which began as "shadow-inspired" is probably dead but the genre of making instrumental hip-hop with samples is far from it. people are only just starting to make use of their influences in a way other than to sample them. why not use the engineering processes? why not use the melodic style? the arrangement? etc. the reason the genre has been stymied to this point is that the majority of artists involved in it up until now (and, without being snobbish, i'm guessing most of us here are in the minority) is that people have been digging in the crates for loops and samples, not for inspiration and for listening material. more and more these days i hear people inspired by the music they are sampling (or no longer sampling, as it more often the case). - when i started off as a kid i was listening to just hip-hop- then i started understand how hip-hop was made and started to hear the original tracks sampled- over the years i've realised that what i actually want to make is a lot closer to the stuff the producers i grew up on were sampling than what they eventually did with those samples

hemol

stymied

Great word.

- when i started off as a kid i was listening to just hip-hop
- then i started understand how hip-hop was made and started to hear the original tracks sampled
- over the years i've realised that what i actually want to make is a lot closer to the stuff the producers i grew up on were sampling than what they eventually did with those samples

I dig where you're going with this. A lot of what we identify as 'hip-hop' in terms of styles of playing instruments is simply distilled from various forebearers, and extracted by hip hop producers. Because hip hop producers source samples--melodic, rhythmic, and otherwise--from many locations that all evoke the same emotional response it is easy to see the sound of hip hop as something endemic to hip hop, rather than endemic to lots of music--past and present--and highlighted by hip hop. Really, hip hop producers that utilize samples are like archaeologists of feeling in music. They dig in, and find all these pieces all over the place--different genres, different years, differtent geographical locations, different uses, different economies, et cetera--that evoke a singular feeling. Then, after they've found these pieces they figure out how to put them all together and get them to make sense; the sense that they make is essentially hip hop.

When I think of hip hop I really just essentialize it, into huge drums, and melody that is sequenced to the meter of the drums. I was never that into Shadow. I feel like his music has great moments, but I only identify with those moments because of the material that he is sourcing. Praise for his listening skills, and his ability to extract heavy melodies, but dude's drums never appealed to me at all. He made a few hot ones for Latyrx.

I started out making beats to rap on, and then decided that playing drums was more appealing than making beats. I then wound up doing pretty absratcted music that was just 1-3 hours of drums with mellow drones and field recordings. Eventually that led back into making beats, and more formalized music that is drumcentric, but I focus on the sound of the drums--enigneering space and texture--way more than varying the patterns.

waximilien

A lot of what we identify as 'hip-hop' in terms of styles of playing instruments is simply distilled from various forebearers, and extracted by hip hop producers. Because hip hop producers source samples--melodic, rhythmic, and otherwise--from many locations that all evoke the same emotional response it is easy to see the sound of hip hop as something endemic to hip hop, rather than endemic to lots of music--past and present--and highlighted by hip hop. Really, hip hop producers that utilize samples are like archaeologists of feeling in music. They dig in, and find all these pieces all over the place--different genres, different years, differtent geographical locations, different uses, different economies, et cetera--that evoke a singular feeling. Then, after they've found these pieces they figure out how to put them all together and get them to make sense; the sense that they make is essentially hip hop.

yeah, that's it exactly. my first exposure to loads of different genres was through them being sampled by hip-hop producers. at the time i never gave it a second thought and just absorbed it all with a hungry pair of ears and a bank balance (or weekly allowance, first off!) that could never keep up. as i've gotten older i've realised how much i love the other genres in their own right and find myself listening to a lot more of the sample sources than the samplers.

When I think of hip hop I really just essentialize it, into huge drums, and melody that is sequenced to the meter of the drums. I was never that into Shadow. I feel like his music has great moments, but I only identify with those moments because of the material that he is sourcing. Praise for his listening skills, and his ability to extract heavy melodies, but dude's drums never appealed to me at all. He made a few hot ones for Latyrx.

i guess when i think about hip-hop i think of 2 things - the concept and the product. hip-hop is what you said in the first quote - somebody taking elements from different songs from all different genres and piecing them together in a way that creates a wholly different new whole. other than that though, i think of the beat. the big, raw, heavy beat.

I then wound up doing pretty absratcted music that was just 1-3 hours of drums with mellow drones and field recordings. Eventually that led back into making beats, and more formalized music that is drumcentric, but I focus on the sound of the drums--enigneering space and texture--way more than varying the patterns.

i want to hear your shit, man! i have to admit, lately i've become so incredibly obsessed with the sound of the drums i'm using that the variation of them is very much beyond secondary

waximilien

see, i knew this would go down well here...