Ableton Forum

I'm a fan of break spotting and was wondering how people such as Dr Dre, renowned for his sampling of some oldtime obscure numbers, actually find their samples.
I can't picture Dr Dre rummaging around in the crates of his local charity shop for the 'next hit'.

If I was Dre I would have hired someone to digitize/categorize all my records and CD's in to a massive sample library that I could easily navigate through.

I'm not sure how he digs up the samples. With G-Funk the samples are often made on the spot or old samples replayed by live musicians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_funk

chaibuka wrote:I'm not sure how he digs up the samples. With G-Funk the samples are often made on the spot or old samples replayed by live musicians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_funk

Yes but G Funk ain't Dr Dre.
Dr Dre does also recreate samples using live musicians but my point is, how does Dr Dre discover all this old music?
Some of it is stuff one wouldn't usually find in your local pop music shop.
Sure he uses vinyl also.

Dre probably already had a pretty substantial record collection by the time he started getting famous, so that helps - many rap producers start out digging for themselves, and Dre probably has his own network of guys that look for records - most producers do these days.

L.A. would be a good spot to be to look for records, for sure. but for that matter, there are a lot of guys who will go all over the country looking for crazy rare stuff, and there are places that specialize in that. Mr. Peabody's in Chicago comes to mind, i am sure there are others. in my own humble metro area is a warehouse that has literally millions of records, it would take a couple of days just to get through the 12" section. not the most user friendly place, but if you like to look....

It appears that Dre has sold his record collection. Maybe he's moving?!
http://slumz.boxden.com/f87/dr-dre-says ... t-1458806/

eggnchips wrote:I can't picture Dr Dre rummaging around in the crates of his local charity shop for the 'next hit'.

kb420 wrote:

eggnchips wrote:I can't picture Dr Dre rummaging around in the crates of his local charity shop for the 'next hit'.

Looks like Dre was the local shop

wow.... i know a few people with 30k records, but 80k is out of hand. i would hate to have to move them.

It's very common in the upper echelon's of Hip Hop for the top producers to cherry pick the latest sample finds by dedicated professional crate diggers. So in effect the producer sits down and listens to a bunch of prime finds, if they like one they pay several thousand dollars (depending on how good & original the sample is) and claim it for themselves.

Makes sense I guess - buy the best breaks, but certainly takes away the charm of crate digging. Fortunately there's hundreds of producers who still dig out the sounds themselves so all hope is not lost.

D

Well, I'm not technically a hip hop producer but I was introduced to soul and funk by my parents as a small child. From that point I accumulated a fairly large collection of records from that era. I still crate dig heavily but honestly, I only use any samples with the Slice to Midi feature which I find invaluable.

In short though, it's both a challenge of availability as there is still TONS of stuff that hasn't resurfaced yet (thankfully) and just plain getting "schooled" in the who, when, what and how of the soul, funk and R&B roots. And even if you had it all I don't know who has the time to listen to everything. It saddens me that I barely have the time to listen to many of my old favorites.

But again, with Slice to Midi, warping and all the other things Live offers you don't need a lot of records, just a nice selection that capture that sound or feel you want.

Q. How does Dr Dre find his samples?

A. Quite Nice!

Sorry. Couldn't resist!

Piplodocus wrote:Q. How does Dr Dre find his samples?

A. Quite Nice!

Sorry. Couldn't resist!

Ever thought about quitting music and becoming a comedian?