How I created a track completely out of samples

We did a task in class one day where we were to go out and record some samples with a Zoom H6N microphone, and then attempt to create a track entirely out of those samples we created. In a group of myself and two others, we recorded these sounds in various locations.

I personally thought that the track that I created by the end of the lesson (we had about 3 hours to create the track after recording the samples) was really cool sounding considering I made it entirely from sample. It still has a lot of characteristics of the music that I would produce too which I think makes it all the better.

I had also gone through the recordings to pick out samples of what we liked, as well as cleaning this up a bit with Izotope De-noise or EQ’s.

Heres what the track sounded like. Please excuse the mixing, after all it is a song make completely out of samples

Let’s discuss some of the production techniques I have used to achieve the sounds

First off, the song starts off with some drum sounds. The main body sound of the kick is actually the sound of one of us tapping something on a metal pole outside of SAE. I pitched this down a lot using Ableton’s Re pitch mode and added a couple of EQ’s where I boosted the low end and removed all of the top end, and added some saturation.

I then layered this drum sound with the sound of a bongo being tapped, which we recorded in one of the Live rooms. I placed this on a different pattern than the kick in order to give more rhythm to the drum section.

Then we have the bass sound, This sound is my voice saying “Aaaah”, which we recorded in the live room. I slowed and pitched this down using Ableton Re pitch, this time by a lot, and faded in the sound to give it that side-chain effect you hear.

The next sound is a metallic snare type sound, which was the sound of me hitting the live room key on a piece of metal or glass.

Progressing into the actual song (rather than just the drum intro) we can hear a quick fill before jumping into the chorus. A member of my group had a violin with him that day so we used this to get some interesting effects. When moving the bow on a string very quickly we recorded this sound that we noted almost sounded slightly like a radio quickly scanning through channels. I used a small section of this to act as the fill. Sections from this same sound are heard in the chorus too, however this time an autotune plugin was placed on them to make them in tune with the rest of the song.

There is then a bleep sound that transitions into the chorus. This sound is actually taken from a member of my groups iPhone as one of their notification sounds. I put a large reverb on this sound, and in order to help it transition, I reversed the sound and used a fade so that is comes in more seamlessly rather than suddenly. I used Ableton's Tuner plugin to see what note this sound was hitting so it would be in tune with the rest of my song.

The bass that I have made in this section is actually just the same violin from earlier, this time being plucked. I used Ableton’s tuner again to see what note this was, and then played it at a lower octave (not while keeping the timing) to give it more low end.

The chord sound on the other hand, (the almost pad sounding instrument which plays the chords of the song) is the same bass pluck, just this time reversed and with the beginning transient cut off to give it a smoother effect. I then put some EQ and compression on this to make it sound a bit more present in the mix.

The Bongo almost sounding drum in here is a recording of me tapping a tom in the live room. I did this at different levels of intensity, which i then loaded into Native Instruments Kontakt, and mapped to the velocity on the keyboard. I believe this gives it more of a realistic effect rather than two completely stagnant hits.

The snap sound in the drums however, is just the sound of the live room key (which is a card) being dropped on a hard surface.

In the outro an odd, distorted sound can be heard, which is actually just another take of the key being dropped, this time with a guitar amp (I used Native Instruments Guitar Rig 5) being placed over it, I also sped the vocal bass up by 50%, making it both twice the rate, and an octave higher.

Then at the end of the sound, just to push the idea of sampling to another level, I’ve decided to do some metaphysical sampling, where I’ve sampled the entire song (which is made up of samples) and slowed it down with Ableton's Re pitch mode.

I hope you like the sound of it! It was good fun to make.