sampling

Syllable breakdown

Dictionary meaning

the practice of incorporating recordings of existing sounds — whether from commercial recordings, field recordings, or purpose-built sample libraries — into new musical compositions, typically through digital manipulation that allows the samples to be pitch-shifted, time-stretched, looped, chopped, and rearranged; sampling became central to hip-hop, electronic dance music, and experimental music from the 1980s onward, enabled by technologies including the Mellotron, the Fairlight CMI, and then affordable hardware samplers like the E-mu SP-1200 and Akai MPC; sampling raises significant legal questions about copyright and intellectual property that have reshaped the music industry's licensing practices, while its creative use as a form of musical conversation across time represents one of the most significant aesthetic innovations in popular music history