Culture of mixing and sampling: Theories applied in John Oswald’s Plunderphonic CD

Introduction

Mixing and sampling are two most common terms in new media. Music production is one of the fields in new media applying these terms. Most of the current songs are based on sampling and mixing/remixing technique. For example, American Idol Season 6 runner-up Blake Lewis’s “Gots to Get Her” is with a melody sampling of Fred Astire’s “Puttin’ On The Ritz”. Besides, many rap/hip-hop artists would apply sampling in order to enrich their songs’ aesthetic presentation. Kanye West is one of the famous hip-hop artists known for sampling style. He widely uses recorded orchestra pieces for his songs and used vocal sampling in his songs, such as his remarkable No. 1 hit single “Stronger” containing a vocal sampling of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” by Daft Punk.

In DJ culture, mixing and sampling are considered to be the important factors in sound production. Paul Miller (2004) has addressed that DJ culture is all about the potential of combining exciting pieces (p.349). In one kind of mixing, DJ would put a great number of hit popular songs in samplers and remix them with dance-style drum beat, mostly techno, and other effects. This also brings out the fact that almost every hit song has more or less mix/remix versions and the labels will release them in either B-side or LP/EP mode. For example, American Idol Season 8 runner-up Adam Lambert has released an EP titled Remixes with five remix versions of his two current singles. Also, Justin Timberlake has an album 12" Masters - The Essential Mixes containing 12 different remix versions of his career-long hit singles as solo artist.

John Oswald is one of the greatest mixing and sampling artists in music history. Milo Miles has judged that “For the moment, John Oswald is a solo movement, the most exciting school of one in music” (Canadian Music Centre, pars. 1). Oswald is a saxophonist and multi-media artists, but his best known work is his practice of Plunderphonic CD in 1989, which is a collection of his plundered sampling and radical re-editing of pop recordings (Oswald, 2004, p.131). The word Plunderphonic is a musical term significantly explains Oswald’s works in the mid-80s. In his paper titled Plunderphonics: Audio Piracy as a Compositional Prerogative in 1986, he argued that “for anyone who wanted to respond to a media environment that was saturated with lowest-common-denominator music, the only way forward was to impose your own preferences directly onto the very substance of that environment” (Duguid, 1994, pars. 31). Choosing this concept, he later examined it in his Plunderphonic EP with four tracks sampling different music artists’ works.  

Mixing and Sampling

       Mixing and sampling based on editing process is a creation of sequence (Miller, 2008). In the ideal of new media, the basic principle is about dueling with information. The concept of montage, collages and modularity in new media all take discrete databases and combination information into consideration. Izhaki (2008) has defined that mixing is “a process in which multitrack material—whether recorded, sampled or synthesized—is balanced, treated and combined into a multichannel format, most commonly two-channel stereo” (p.4). The practice of mixing is somehow similar to Burnett’s (2003) idea in modularity, which he stated that “modularity is based on the fact that an information database is composed of pieces of information to be retrieved separately and combined in whatever way the user wants” (p.3). Izhaki further stated that one of the crucial purposes of mixing is to create emotion and ideas (p.5), which Miller’s phrase of “the samples are given meaning only when re-presented in the assemblage of the mix” supports the same statement (2004, p. 350).

The idea of sampling also relates closely to the idea of modularity, where Professor Steve Fore (2010) in his lecture mentioned that “individual sound elements in a digitized file are discrete, and may be selected and assembled in any order”, a similar statement to Burnett’s. According to Paul Miller (2008) and David Sanjek (1997), the practice of sampling is based on familiarity. Holm-Hudson (1997) has addressed that Sanjek classified the practice of sampling primarily by the recognizability of the original source in four categories, where the first category he cited is “sufficient familiarity (may let the listener) recognize the quotation and may, in turn, pay more attention to the new material as a consequence of that familiarity” (p.19). Also, the third category from Sanjek that “recordings can be constructed wholecloth from samples to create a new aesthetic” (p.19) is also an important point in new media sampling.

Oswald and Plunderphonics

Oswald’s sampling works are different to the concept of sampling in rap/hip-hop artists, which the difference is known as plunderphonic sampling. This kind of sampling, according to Hom-Hudson, recontextualizes familiar fragments of popular music in which smallest musical unit is taken (p.21). Also in Andrew Jones’s word, plunderphonics is the concept of recognizable musical quotation (1995, p.132).

His “Dab” is one of the representative works to the idea of plunderphonic sampling. The work basically took out small pieces of Michael Jackson’s “Bad” and rearranged the fragment to a new song. In this song, we as the listener can hear that the sequence of “Dab” actually follow the original “Bad”, where the verse and the chorus were mixing separately, but each part of “Dab” only took a small piece of the lyrics and drum-beat from “Bad”. However, the sequence of “Dab” still has the verse-chorus structure. This kind of using a few second sampling is as Miller (2008) stated that music as information which the creator creates a loop of repetition and all of that is the fragment of time. In “Dab”, Oswald was using this repetition to interpret a new meaning to the aesthetic of art. As Sanjek stated, the practice of sampling is playing with similarity. In “Dab”, we can clearly identify it was Jackson’s voice due to his identical moaning, and the melody from the samples give the clue.

Another work “Pretender”, plundered Dolly Parton’s “The Great Pretender”, is a significant piece of Oswald’s. Leach (2000) said that “Pretender” seems to have garnered the most praise from music critics (p.126). Differed from “Dab”, “Pretender” was not sampling a small piece of the original song. On the contrary, it took the whole “The Great Pretender”, modified and distorted the whole song in different pitches. The modification creates a fresh feeling to the song. “The Great Pretender” is a soft and emotional country song, touching but flat. In “Pretender”, the frequently changing of pitches not only excites the song but also make Parton’s voice theatrical. Furthermore, in most of the “Pretender”, Parton’s voice was lowered in a baritone level. This interesting changing is to interpret and present a different version of the original song and also display Oswald’s ability in modify a song, and as Leach (2000) stated, a realization of certain latent meanings and nuances of the original song (p.126).

Conclusion

       In new media, the idea of cut-and-paste, assembly and modularity is about taking existing objects, dividing them into discrete pieces and recombining them. The idea of mixing and sampling in sound applies the similar system in which people, no matter they are professional or amateurs, can rearrange existing sounds. Many successful mix/remix art works demonstrate that the practice of mixing and sampling is essential in the contemporary music culture.

Sampling is a notion of presenting similarity, while the notion of mixing is related to reinterpret the discrete information (sound). In the case of John Oswald, he efficiently utilized existing materials, like post-modern sculptors, to create a new idea of aesthetic. His “Deb” is a plunderphonic idea that only uses a small piece of samples to compose a new art form, which the playing with similarity, stating by Miller and Sanjek, is manifested. “Pretender” applies another type of editing technique that gives the song a new sense of meaning and aesthetic.

       Oswald’s art works are successful and earned praise for his outstanding concept of plunderphonic sampling. However, his was threatened with legal action by the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) acting on behalf of CBS Records and Michael Jackson’s management corporation. This issue not only propelled Oswald surrender all of his remaining CD copies but also led to the questions of fair-use and sharing in digital period. In further study, these issues could be concentrated in a deep analysis.