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Kelly

does anyone know if anybody has pressed audio to vinyl specifically for the purposes of sampling it, i'm so white i only know of Daniel Pemberton having done it but i'm curious who else has, and, boy i don't usually wish i had more followers but idk why i'd expect an answer here?

13 comments
Darius Kazemi

@kelly Yes! There is a long history of scratch DJs pressing/selling their own "battle records" or "scratch records" which are compilations of samples meant to be played at DJ battles, or as tools for other DJs.

Super Seal is one that I still own from my DJing days. You can listen to it linearly here, and you can hear that there is a "beep" cue before each sample begins to help the DJ.

youtube.com/watch?v=AbLF4vVnM_

Darius Kazemi

@kelly you'll notice the samples gradually trigger faster and faster in "tempo". This is because they are locked to the radial angle of the record, so that if your needle skips and lands in an adjacent groove, you are probably still going to land at the same spot in the same sample!

Kelly

@darius 🤯 this is... exponentially a better answer than i ever could have dreamed, thank you beyond words!

do you happen to know of any specific (i guess famous?) artists who've done it while producing an LP? this thought brought to you by I'm Currently Obsessed With The New Avalanches, And, With Them, I'd Assume, But Like, You Never Know, etc. and Special Interests Inc.

Darius Kazemi

@kelly I can't remember specific artists but I am aware that a lot of DJs when producing LPs would press non-vinyl stuff like old VHS movies to acetate (aka dubplates) in order to scratch the samples on record. Acetate records degrade really quickly and don't hold up to a lot of plays but they make sense if you want to cut something during record production.

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetat

Darius Kazemi

@kelly I'm gonna guess that D-Styles probably did it when he made Phantazmagorea. More on that record here:

factmag.com/2014/03/07/forgott

I can't find any good interviews about the making of, unfortunately.

Kelly

@darius this is so good. so many rabbit holes, nweeeheeheehee thank you i'll send you postcards from down here

Kelly

@darius thank you, you are an embarrassment of riches

um like in a good way!!

Darius Kazemi

@kelly also, typically, I think that most hip hop artists who wanted to add a "vinyl" sound to a non-vinyl sample would simply drop it in an SP-404 or similar and use its excellent vinyl sim, with filters, flutter and wow, and crackle youtube.com/watch?v=FJ01-DDLwV

Darius Kazemi

@kelly putting things on physical record was as far as I know pretty much limited to "we want to scratch this". Of course once CD turntables came out most people just moved to ripping CD-Rs and using those instead

Kelly

@darius right, yeah, that also tracks, no pun intended. i was specifically musing about post-Paul's Boutique producers who specifically wanted That Warm Sound (as opposed to, probably these days people add a vinyl overlay i'd imagine?) or to sample something that they created out of necessity to avoid copyright problems; this is all already so wonderfully more specific than i expected and i am geeking out hard over here

Darius Kazemi replied to Kelly

@kelly You can check out the dub-plates.org website circa 2009 where they specifically advertise their dub plate pressing service as "a quick way of giving dj an authentic warm sounding format to play" in addition to its normal utility of being a "rough draft" of what your commercial record will sound like on vinyl

web.archive.org/web/2009010515

Kelly replied to Darius

@darius admittedly we are making dinner here but i literally salivated, thank you, this is so wonderful i feel like all of humanity will be saved through records. like a teenager. this is so good

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