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I thought it'd be cool if everyone listed their favorite things to sample, at home/field, and why, what environment (because not everyone has a sound treated room to record themselves tapping their fingers in), and what you might use those sounds for.


I have been using my cellphone and getting alright samples by cutting/ cleaning them up, things like making beats on a desk, beating a mailbox with a bat, hitting pots and pans with a spoon, or vice versa, guitar feedback, destroying different types of wind chimes. And I've yielded decent usable results in multiple environments, outside, the kitchen, the garage.

Recording your phone conversations can give you a lot of inspiration later, and intense voice cuts especially if you've got a flair for the dramatic, don't care if your friends get upset that they're in your music, and have a relatively sad love life or summing.

Also cutting and transposing background noise can give you interesting melodic results.

Also if you like, discuss the pros and cons of different field recording hardware, like I said I've been using my phone and getting workable samples, and the noise definitely lends character to some sounds, I just don't have the money for a legitimate one myself, or I'd probably use it instead.


I'm well aware that not all of this is new or even remotely interesting knowledge to some of you, but it's something I've been doing a lot more in my music, and I figured why not post a thread about it, if anything more people will try it and be equally inspired by what you can do.


Anyway, lets see how this works out.

i have never recorded anything myself to use in a song ! keep saying im gonna get onto it. I think i am going to place a recorder into a room when me and my mates are wrecked, would be some fucking funny/unusual samples there!

Kes-Es wrote:I've been using my phone and getting workable samples, and the noise definitely lends character to some sounds, I just don't have the money for a legitimate one myself, or I'd probably use it instead.

Kryptic Minds did this exact same thing with some of the snare samples on their "One of us" album. Just whacked a tree with a log and recorded it on a mobile, gives a nice amount of natural bit reduction.

My most triumphant bit of firld recording was leaving two dicaphones in an old church overnight and recording the wierd creaking noises that you get with such an old building. Its wierd and kind of difficult to explain but even the bits or recording that had no real sound on them, by that I mean just background static, air type noise, sounded sinister....... Like I said its difficult to explain. I'll see if I can find it and up it here.

Not recorded samples as yet and used them but I sure as hell want to.

Slapping books, slapping my thighs and hitting stuff with the flight side of a flexible plastic ruler... Going to start recording dropping stuff on various surfaces next.

Drums from other tunes.

wub wrote:Drums from other tunes.

ive really got into this lately, just chopping shit up and making something completely different with it, but i reckon the only thing ive really sampled say in my room has been a beer can (tapping/opening it) and just make a beat out of it.

I've got a thunder (basically a wooden cylinder with a plastic skin at one end with a long metal spring attached to it, when you shake it it sounds like thunder, hence the name); when you shove a sm58 into it you get a weird growly note which I love the sound of.

I once made a tune completely from noises from my mouth (I'm no beardyman or anything like that) but it was well fun and had some interesting results. If you have any singing skills sampling yourself doing mwaaarghoooargh sounds and then processing gets some sick results (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpCfDHbUmvM point in case).

Other than that I love sampling oldschool and more modern breakbeats (hot tip, rage against the machine have some really nice kicks to be sampled and nickleback have some sick snares).

hm... this thread gave me the idea of giving my ex a call for sampling purposes

hasezwei wrote:hm... this thread gave me the idea of giving my ex a call for sampling purposes

Believe it or not, I did this exactly, unintentionally though, and I only got my end of the conversation, but if I find something moody enough to use it in, I'm going to.

Kes-Es wrote:

hasezwei wrote:hm... this thread gave me the idea of giving my ex a call for sampling purposes

Believe it or not, I did this exactly, unintentionally though, and I only got my end of the conversation, but if I find something moody enough to use it in, I'm going to.

i was imagining more of a.... bedroom sampling session
but to be honest i dig your idea even more (musically speaking ). but how would i record my phone output without the other person noticing?

some phones have a build in recorder / dictaphone.

yuroq wrote:some phones have a build in recorder / dictaphone.

This, You could record your end of the conversation with your computer or a mic, and hers with the record function on your phone.
Line up the samples, cut out odd bits, and then throw it into your interlude or whatever.

Anyone ever tapped on a mug for a cowbell sound?

jaydot wrote:Anyone ever tapped on a mug for a cowbell sound?

No, but we've got stainless steel bog roll holders here at work. If I tear the sheets off whilst taking a shit at a certain angle, the whole casing resonates briefly.

i love to sample movies. non-dialogue parts. pads, fx, crashes risers. etc

films are sooooo good to sample.

yeah Ive used my phone & the recorded it back into my macbook via the internal mic, add reverb & it sounds amazing.

ive recd... claps, snaps, hits on heaps of shit, i made a glass flute & recd that. sample records (grace jones recs have some mad shit!!).
recd 20 or so different percussion instruments in the studio.


SM57>any other mic!

After BATTLE ROYALE 2... we should have a comp...
& everything has to be sampled by us personally!

!!chea

I fill empty bottles with water and tune them. Then I record each note of the bottle. When inside a sampler it sounds like an soft organ. Give it a try.

Pffff...feel like I wasted a hundred bucks on my Tascam DR-07 since everyone is just using their phones...but seriously...I love this thing...for the most part it's recordings are anywhere from 90-99% percent accurate to what I actually heard while making the recording. It comes with a 2 gig SD card, has a built in limiter and has some loop functions I've never played with, totally plug and play w/ Win7 64bit (shows up as an external storage device).

I've mostly done ambient field recordings so far, some voice sampling (I recorded myself gurgling like that creepy monster kid from The Grudge etc...). I bought it to record percussion sounds--FAWM interrupted my plans for my oddball percussive recording session though...I want to try breaking things like sticks or pieces of plastic to get snappy snare sounds. I recorded an layered striking matches for a song that turned out shite...still want to play w/ that idea though...