A major epiphany has taken place, itself the result of a workflow realisation. For a while I have been struggling with the following conundrum: How to know when to stop mixing the samples? As a samplist, I understand whether a source functions effectively in the context of sample-based Hip Hop when I hear it as part of the process, as part of the production layering. When trying to create a phonographic moment outside of this context, albeit...
I often remember the aha! moment that occurred when I first ‘chopped’ my own constructed (blues) phonographic material on the MPC sampler (a Renaissance model borrowed from University of Westminster where I used to work as a lecturer). I was going through an analytically-focused rather than practice-based phase of my PhD, whilst previously, I had been recording multi-layered, overdubbed performances in various styles that could facilitate a...
...Not a diary, but "a critical questioning of experiences"
(Cunliffe, 2016, p. 762). Insights is a reflexive journal I have kept throughout the making of album KATALH3H and whilst writing Reimagining sample-based Hip Hop: Making records within records. It deconstructs, exposes and provides interpretations of the thinking, analysis and sonic motivations behind both the book and the album. It's a place of fragility, conceptual pursuits, eureka...
