Get Samples

A sample is a snippet of an existing music recording, which is cut out and re-used in a new piece of music. A sample can be anything from a drum beat or instrumental lick to a recording of speech or ambient noise.

Sampling in essence is when you include an element of a pre-existing recording by someone else in your composition. The sample can be anything that you've 'sampled' from another track; a rhythm, a melody, a beat, vocals or speech, which you then manipulate, edit, chop up or loop to fit creatively within your work.

Sampling in music involves taking a section of audio from another source – in this instance, an existing song – and then reworking it into the creation of a new track. Some ill-informed musicians have described it as blatant, shameless plagiarism, but this is an ignorant view point to take.

The best (and legal way) to use that perfect, copyrighted sample is to get it cleared with the songwriter or the publisher who owns the rights. The same thing goes for the particular recording of the song you sampled. The copyright, in most cases, is owned by the artist or their record label.

Conclusion. Using samples in beats is not cheating as long as you are still being original with some aspects of your creation. And if you still have a nagging feeling that sampling will take away from your authenticity, simply don't do it! It's really a choice that is all your own.

Best websites for free music samples in 2023 Looperman. Production Music Live. W.A. Production. NASA Audio Collection. Freesound. SampleSwap. Cymatics. SampleSound.

: a representative part or a single item from a larger whole or group especially when presented for inspection or shown as evidence of quality : specimen.