another grime thread: this time concerned with sampling

Blueski said:

1) are there any big grime tracks that are sample-heavy (whether beats, strings, dialogue, effects or other)?

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two off the top of my head:
Imp Batch - Gype Riddim
Big E-D - The Rush

maybe its the lack of audio input on a playstation

sampling of certain sounds gets done alot. like the screechy hat that dizzee blessed us with in i love you. that done the rounds. also the strings from are you really from the ends gets beat up.

but actual sampling doesnt really catch on, ehat youll find is if one tune makes it big with a certain sound, everyone will jump on that sound. no matter how small.

the car screech is a fave at the mo

I think you'll see a lot more of it now, since the success of Low Deep - Straight Flush, which is like a hip hop beat with the high pitched vocals and all

Very good point. This is something that struck me when I first came in contact with grime. From what I can gather, the further a track is located from hip-hop, the more it is " synthetic " ( meaning that soft synths were used for the bassline, leads, etc. ). This might just be a false induction

I have noticed this in drum and bass also. In the early days, jungle and dnb was sample based music : the breaks, vocals, riffs, sound effects, everything was sampled. From the no U turn / Prototype era until now ( roughly speaking from the end of 96 until now ) producers made it so that sampling took a back seat in the production process. It was a progressive process. Nowadays, a lot of breaks are synthetized, the use of soft synths is widespread, even vocals are synthetized. We are kind of at the other extreme. Grime producers seem to be following this trend. Some popular sounds ( LFO modulated saw from what do you call it... - Wiley is the first to transpose modern dnb production techniques in grime - " square " leads and bass sounds, the bass heavy pulse stabs found in the " drive by " riddim, etc. ) cannot be achieved through any other means.

Have you noticed how most grime producers don't seem to use compressors and limiters at all ?

Kaiser said:

Very good point. This is something that struck me when I first came in contact with grime. From what I can gather, the further a track is located from hip-hop, the more it is " synthetic " ( meaning that soft synths were used for the bassline, leads, etc. ). This might just be a false induction

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old skool hip hop, maybe. but some of it sounds very much like contemporary hip hop to my ears. its got that high end compressed synth thing going on which you encounter in many hip hop tracks as well as dancehall. if it wasn't for the vocal inflection giving it away as a london ting you could almost imagine someone chatting over it.

Blueski said:

2) if not what do you think prompted this move away from sampling? can it be linked to the similar shift in hip-hop that saw the Neptunes, Dre and others get #1 hits without building the tracks around familiar samples

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there's almost certainly a direct connection between the style and methods adopted by grime producers and the more recent trends in hip hop and r'n'b - one-hit drum programming with "machine-like" noises (as opposed to "real" drums or breaks), synths, stabs...

there's still plenty of samples though - I get the impression that you're referring to large, obvious loops / breaks rather than the strict definition of sample use.

3) is this the first self-facilitating genre (either in the British 'underground dance continuum' or more generally) to emerge without this reliance on sampling?

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I'd say no - techno is the first example that springs to mind. plenty of early hip hop tracks were just booming drum machines and synth stabs too (on both sides of the pond).

4) is this rejection of sampling in fact the key factor in grime's critical approval and authenticity? an admirable statement? or is it not quite as conscious as all that?

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I see it as cyclical - after years of loop-heavy street / club music, it makes sense that music that is obviously machine-generated will sound fresh and exciting to young ears. it's a trend across the board - indie bands with synths and shiny production, electroclash and the revival of electro-disco house, the emergence of crunk... if you're gonna try to explain it in any kind of broad terms, I'd define it as a generational thing. not sure where "critical approval" fits in there.... I hope that any approval / praise comes because some of the grime tunes being made are simply good music...

I suppose that the one area where grime could be seen as pushing boundaries is in testing the relationship between MCs and producers.... i.e. how sparse and mechanical can you make a track before it becomes impossible to rhyme on top of it? it's like the producers keep setting little challenges for the MCs.

as far as the basic production building blocks / sounds are concerned, there's not a whole lot to separate grime from a lot of current hip hop and r'n'b, in my opinion. it's all pretty much coming from the same place, but leaving at different angles.

doesn't wiley use lots of samples? in that martin clark interview at hyperdub he was talking about buying cds from foyles and sampling them i think. also, i heard somewhere that the oriental-ish melody that comes in on eskimo is a sample from some bingo beats track, can't remember who it was by.

also: people sampling from computer games and stuff is pretty common. an old east connection track, i think, sampled the same film dialogue that dj scud's 'kill or be killed' track does. also, about a year ago there were a few tracks that sampled ring tones. that was wicked.

i guess it's more common in grime to sample incidental little sounds rather recognisable bits from songs. [another example- the camera whirr sample used on roll deep's 'salt beef']

my favourite grime sample ever is on danny weed's creeper, the vocal that goes something like, 'no breathing, no heart beat, no, no, no'....

I would say grime is very sample based:

2 examples, big tunes:

jammers destruction vip uses a loop, listen to the intro.

skepta's serious thugs uses a big sample of bone thugs and harmony in a very recognizable way.

Also, almost all the production techniques, sometimes basslines included use samples, even if not in the sense of using loops, grime is very 'audio centric' relying on a lot of digital audio for its sound.

A great example of grime style sample usage is wiley's trademark ploink sound which I believe is from a nintendo hockey game. It appears on MANY wiley beats (most notably avalanche) and then was reused by Wonder for What as well as by the producer of Pum Pum and countless others.

The music does tend to focus more on cutup and manipulated samples but I wouldnt say its not sample based, even in the traditional context of referencing, ie the wiley usage above.

wiley = proteus 2000

to me although grime does use samples, it's the use of synths in fresh ways that have become it's calling card. i'm sure the choice to use synths was a reflection of the technology available to producers. is grime the first genre to blossom in the mass soft synth (ie downloadable) era? technology fully in the hands of the people.

Simple answer....


The sampler in fruity loops is shit.

i was thinking about this in the car this monring.. how many of the signiture 'grime' sounds were born out of the fruity loops preset sounds? 808 kicks and claps, that cowbell sound, the bass sounds... sure they've progressed and gotten bigger, more distorted, more interesting enveloping etc. but, did the first 'grime' experimentation start with those presets, and a focus on the rhythym... come to think of it, fruity loops 'default' tempo is around 125 / 126 innit? interesting thread!

just checked... its 140.

People still use fruity, they just acquire soundbanks. People also use VST plug ins wired through fruity on PCs which always impresses me.

Most people end up moving on to Logic and a G4/5 though.

i noticed that they were using logic in the risky roadz extras . . . but i mean, would grime sound the way it does if for example, the fruity loops preset soundbanks were accoustic drums and the preset tempo was 100bpm?

I don't think the preset tempo really matters all that much. Even before the rise of the new grime producers the tempo was around 140 bpm. Most of that Oris Jay/Jammin/Zed Bias stuff was around 140 bpm

And lots of people use Fruity to make faster and slower music.

i always felt Zinc's 138 Trek was responsible for the shift from a housey 130-134bpm to 138bpm and above. Fruity Loops had another effect on grime, namelyas it's a step sequencer i understand it is hard to make long sections: hence 8bar switches instead of extended tracky developing structures.

Zinc had nothing to do with the speed of "Garage" music changing.

It was already being made in excess of 138bpm anyway years before Trek came out.

If anyone had anything to do with it approaching the 140bpm barrier it is So Solid.