Sampling was an idea that appeared in the analog days of console organs and 15-watt amplifiers. The concept was to record a sound and be able to play it back on command; flutes, choirs, and strings were common needs. The Mellotron was the first sampling-type machine that was widely accepted. In it's days before digital recording, it actually used small strips of magnetic tape, not unlike the ones in today's audio cassettes, and wiped them back and forth across a playback head at different speeds so that different pitches could be made. A quick listen to the first few seconds of "Strawberry Fields Forever" demonstrates the unique sound change made to a simple recording of a flute note.

In the early 1980's, digital sampling appeared and made the process much easier. It recorded sound on a small, low-power computer chip and played it back at different rates to produce different pitches. No mechanical failures, less expensive, and a lot easier to carry around. The ease of use of the first digital samplers (which were available at almost any price range) found artists creating unique new textures; instruments at very slow or very high speeds, orchestral passages played back in electronic contexts, drum breaks repeated to create 'drum loops', chain saws playing melodic lines, and the first thing a sampler ever does in the hands of the uninitiated: a belch playing "The Blue Danube". My favorite example of this type of sample experimenting is the early records of "The Art Of Noise", who's name represents the concept behind their sound.

Before too long, samplers got brought in to the recording studio for more diverse tasks. When there weren't enough tracks on tape to record a group shouting "Hey!", why not sample it, and then just play the shout onto one track when you needed to? Nobody would know that it was the same shout - it was short enough to be stored in a sampler, and it would sound consistent. Samplers could also copy "that" string sound or piano sound you needed for a song or jingle, instead of having a grand piano or 16-piece string section in your studio. The sound quality was a bit less than optimal, but buried behind narration or other instruments, it was good enough.

Some artists soon became "sample fiends" who would go through old record collections and find interesting sounds they could sample and use in their own records. James Brown quickly became known as "the most sampled artist in history", thanks mostly to drummer Clyde Stubblefield. A competitive argument grew in the late 1980's; when most of your song was sampled from other places, how much of it was your song? If a Clyde Stubblefield sample was the drum track, and a Gary Numan sample was your melodic line, where should the royalties go? Was it considered an art just to collect and combine these sounds? It wasn't until the 1990's that independent sample clearinghouses were established who would work the administrative details and make sure samples were credited and properly paid for.

As samplers grew in memory capacity, processing speed, etc., they were used for even more: they could hold entire vocal takes as well as hundreds of drum loops and textures, and coupled with a computer, could control an entire studio's musical output! Sampling soon grew into "digital editing", where you could take large recorded sections of music and splice them together (as you would have with analog tape), but keeping the ability to undo what you had done! This enabled "comping" of vocals, guitars, and other parts where a single apparent performance is actually a seamless combination of many, many takes. It is here where some performers draw the line and call it "cheating", while others call it "enabling". Some artists recently have crossed even further and simply lifted entire songs and put new or modified lyrics to it. At this point you have to ask whether this is considered art, or even songwriting; it's almost musical plagiarism!!