All right. Hi, this is Kylie Swenson. I am the editor of Remix Magazine, and we are here with Code9, who came all the way out from the UK. And he was just on a panel with Just Blaze and Eric Cooper. Damn it. Why can't I? Cooper. Eric Cooper and Rob Swift and a whole bunch of guys. I forget, Buckshot? Anyway, so we had a pretty interesting panel, and one of the things that you mentioned was that when live musicians replace a sample, it often sounds really dry. And I thought that was interesting. I wanted to see if you could, you know, expand on that a little bit. Yeah, maybe before I do that, I should just qualify it by saying that probably what I'm about to say is tainted by the fact that I hate musicians.
You hate me? As someone who never learned how to play an instrument, then I've always... It's a kind of hard process of working stuff out in such a slow, painstaking way. So that's all I mean I've got. I have a skepticism about what it takes to get stuff done the hard way. so that comment was I hear it in a lot of let's say hip hop tracks where you hear the original and it's got some grainy crackly sampling it from some soul track from the 50s and 60s where you can hear not just
the voice or the instruments that are being played but you can hear the room you can hear the room that it's recorded in you can hear the material that it was recorded on, the vinyl that it was sampled from, the hiss of the tape or whatever. And that adds something to it that getting some really talented, skilled session musician to play the same notes again on the same instrument, you just, without sounding precious, you can never replace that. obviously with plugins these days you can attempt to replace that but I think the the point was really just about it's not just about replacing the instruments it's about replacing you know the
room the distance between the microphone and the instruments that the effect of that space and the effect of the recording medium that it was recorded like especially sampling when you're sampling off vinyl. There are definitely plugins now that attempt to replace that. So I think that's a crucial thing when it comes to trying to replace samples. Personally, I don't have to do it because none of the music I make sells enough to be in the legal targets. But so many times I've been disappointed where someone's released a single, a boxing that sounds cool, and then they release the album because the album's going to be higher profile,
then they've replaced... And then they had to replace it. Yeah. So where do you go to for sampling fodder? You know, if you're looking... I mean, you say it's not high profile enough to be a target. What if... I mean, do you go to high profile places? You know, a lot of people go to, like, James Brown albums for a sample. Timberlake. Yeah, where do you go for your samples? Anywhere that is... A sample from anywhere that has grabbed me enough to stick in my memory long after I've stopped listening to it. And, you know, so when it dawns on you that you're still remembering something, then obviously it's had some kind of power over you. Yeah. So it's kind of subconscious in a way.
It's just stuff that gets inside you and stays with you. And you're like, oh, why is that there? And then you go and hunt it down again. Okay, yeah. And that can be in pop stuff or it can be in grainy old records. It doesn't matter. So you only work with samples? You don't work with live musicians? I only work with samples and stuff that I bang out in the studio that you know tiny little melodies it took me four days to work out and things like that so I don't work with musicians I just work myself who could hardly be called a musician and samples and vocalists
you know I wonder it's interesting to me because I don't sample myself but I I wonder if when you are working purely with samples, it's like a puzzle, you know? And how do you get certain samples to work and fit perfectly with others, you know? I mean, again, not coming from a kind of musically trained background, I really value a lot things like dissonance, where a sample from one source and a sample from another source, you put them together and you know someone is coming to it with a purely tonal ear to do with you know whether something harmonically should work or not i would say no that's wrong and i i get a lot from from those kind of things that aren't musically correct oh okay i get you know
things are off tune warped or just jar a little bit with each other so Does it bring like a darker vibe to it? Yeah, it gives it this slightly, makes it slightly atonal and slightly disturbing. Yeah. Maybe. Which is kind of a part of like dubstep. Yeah, it's kind of edgy music. It's urban edgy music. It's quite dark. A lot of it is quite dark. And it's quite DIY. So for me it's important that anything goes mentality is important which is why I'm whinging about musicians. Because the minute you're a musician not everything necessarily can grow. Obviously I'm generalizing.
Wait, say that again? The minute you're a musician, I'm using musician in a very narrow sense here. Sure. musicians that do interesting shit. The minute you're policed by a set of rules to do with frequencies and harmony and melody and tone and so on, it does limit what you can do. I kind of agree with you actually in one respect and that is like, you know, in some regard, I'm, you know, I'm certainly no virtuoso guitar player. It's like one of my instruments I use to to write with but you know the keyboardist in my band is you know I would say more in the virtuoso and like he really knows everything about theory and you know he can play circles around you know
the rest of us but well not the rest of us around me because I don't want to insult the other band members but um you know sometimes like I would find we would ask you know hey like we have to kind of pull in the reins a little bit because he would just like play a little too much or just a little too you know be too like constraints of that knowledge if I had musical knowledge that's why that's why I'm so skeptical of it it's just good it's good I think to have the push and pull of like a little innocence you know to playing you know because sometimes it took a while for me to be like hey you know I have this idea and he would look at me like well you know I am the real musician here you know and I'd be like yeah but I have an ear and that counts or something you know? Yeah, having an ear is very crucial obviously and you don't need to be trained
to have an ear. And often it's just about taking positively what your ear tells you is good as opposed to it not being correct one way or another. Yeah. Cool. Thank you so much. Nice to meet you. Cheers. I will see you at... You come to love? Yeah, I will I will be there. Sorry, we'll see you there.