Digital media, however, simplifies the process. The “analogue to digital” method of sampling requires a microphone or instrument to be recorded directly into a sampler. Sampling is frequently defined as “the process of converting an analog signal to a digital format.” While this definition remains true, it does not acknowledge the prevalence of digital media. This paper explores the ways in which technology is used to adapt previous recordings into new ones, and how musicians themselves have adapted to the potentials of digital technology for exploring alternative approaches to musical creativity. Sample-based music is premised on adapting audio plundered from the cultural environment. The practice of sampling challenges established notions of creativity, with whole albums created with no original musical input as most would understand it-literally “records made from records.”
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Hardware and software samplers have developed to the stage where any piece of audio can be appropriated and adapted to suit the creative impulses of the sampling musician (or samplist). Sampling technologies, however, have taken musical adaptation a step further and realised Cage’s prediction. Musical “quotation” is actively encouraged in jazz, and contemporary hip-hop would not exist if the genre’s pioneers and progenitors had not plundered and adapted existing recorded music. Similarly, Nirvana adapted the opening riff from Killing Jokes’ “Eighties” for their song “Come as You Are”.
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If stuck for a guitar solo on stage, Keith Richards admits that he’ll adapt Buddy Holly for his own purposes (Street, 135). For example, Vivaldi appropriated and adapted the “Cum sancto spiritu” fugue of Ruggieri’s Gloria (Burnett, 4 Forbes, 261).
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Certainly, musical creativity has always involved a certain amount of appropriation and adaptation of previous works. In 1956, John Cage predicted that “in the future, records will be made from records” (Duffel, 202).