When Radiohead sampled Paul Lansky (2000)

http://paul.mycpanel.princeton.edu/radiohead.ml.html

by jtmetcalfe • 5 years ago

130 58 5 years ago

paul.mycpanel.princeton.edu

ohadron• 5 years ago

This is the Radiohead song, Idioteque: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svwJTnZOaco

setgree2• 5 years ago

[deleted]

rStar8• 5 years ago

please don’t spoil, and thank you for your thoughtfulness and for reading to the end of the article. i owe you one, setgree

HankWozHere• 5 years ago

The sample was taken around the 44 or 45 second mark of the original (I think…?)

brian_herman2• 5 years ago

The sample is around 0:51 of Lansky's song and 0:34 of idoteque.

rezmason• 5 years ago

I like recognizing samples in their original contexts, but something made the moment of recognition especially poignant this time.

What an awesome piece of music history.

fumblebee• 5 years ago

I’m in no way surprised it was Jonny Greenwood who discovered the record; imo he’s far and away the resident “nerd” of the group (intended in a positive light).

rStar8• 5 years ago

i’d go with the drummer if i had to pick the biggest nerd. amazing artist.

elpakal2• 5 years ago

which one? :) there are 2 now...

jefurii• 5 years ago

Really? I really like his drumming in Radiohead but what else is he up to? I saw a video or two from his solo record but it seems to just be regular folk music. What am I missing?

smoldesu• 5 years ago

Greenwood is the real unsung hero of Radiohead. He's supposedly responsible for composing a pretty legendary MF DOOM Remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZByHno9Jpsw

elpakal2• 5 years ago

100% agree. his scores are incredible, nothing like his music.

TomWhitwell• 5 years ago

My favourite Paul Lansky track: https://youtu.be/SFoT3HykaPs recorded in 1988 on an DEC MicrovaxII https://www.popmatters.com/141865-idle-chatter-about-paul-la...

iainctduncan2• 5 years ago

I was about to recommend the same! So good, one of my favourite computer music pieces and an early inspiration. :-)

rStar8• 5 years ago

and it was spectacular

rStar8• 5 years ago

when i heard idioteque i was immediately smitten. i new this story and have for years wondered where that gd sample was used. now that there’s a prize i’ll have to study it in earnest over xmas. no cheating people!

setgree2• 5 years ago

I'm always amazed when artists and producers can recognize a sound as something that can be radically transformed, because I'm pretty musical but my imagination doesn't work like that. Kanye is a genius at this.

Here are two other examples I like:

* Daft Punk's 'One More Time', represented visually: https://twitter.com/nehhlmao/status/1363925150958317568

* Pusha T's 'Numbers on the Boards' sampling and reimagining a single measure from an obscure jazz song: https://www.whosampled.com/sample/230451/Pusha-T-Numbers-on-...

killtimeatwork• 5 years ago

Do you think they imagine the end result at the beginning of the process or do they just play semi-randomly until they find something that has potential, and then refine it?

durnygbur• 5 years ago

I wonder is it an enourmous talent and sound engineering skills, or simply drugs? Or being popular peformer people queue with ideas and it's enough to pick the interesting ones?

TonyTrapp2• 5 years ago

Most of the time, sampling like this is just fumbling around and happy little accidents. There may be a goal they have in mind, but rarely would you know in advance what the end result should sound like exactly.

rStar8• 5 years ago

songs come together in pieces. mostly. the jre with billy corgan is a great place to hear some real knowledge dropped on this subject. i’ve always appreciated billy corgans approach to songwriting and his willingness to talk about it.

hnlmorg4• 5 years ago

The way it works is a producer will grab dozens of samples, then they'll loop things. Some stuff will sound good, some wont. Most of it will require a little polish (EQing etc) to tidy up. While a producer will have an ear for it to begin with (which can be a learned skill) you have to bare in mind that you only hear the samples that did sound good and none of the dozens of samples that were rejected afterwards.

Source: I used to write a few dance tracks in a past life

lostgame• 5 years ago

I produce sample-based music[0] - and - like a lot of sample-based producers, also listen to a lot of vinyl.

Listening to records, I will instantly know when I hear a ‘sample’. I’ll put the needle back and play it a few times - importantly (hence turntables) - play with the speed and pitch in a lossless way - and eventually record, trim, loop it, and load it into my AKAI sampler or my DAW.

YMMV

[0]https://open.spotify.com/track/7cBQ1zyG6e9Tx4jqNc3vvY?si=hsw...

racl1012• 5 years ago

If you have a synth that can sample you can load a sample and then play with filters and other features to see if it will work or not.

Very rarely do artists just know that something will work out, but the more they do it the better their skills get at recognizing samples that will work or can be turned into interpolations that work.

Not everyone gets to be DJ Shadow (king of sampling).

jakecopp2• 5 years ago

If you want more visualisation like that Daft Punk sample, see how the samples in Jamix xx's Girl come together!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3LCqcC61mk

qwertox• 5 years ago

Just leaving this here without any context, but this song (Olivier Orand - Thursday Night) is the only one which really raised a desire to "debug" it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-z2IW0CBBo

It's awesome.

dougSF70• 5 years ago

Personally, I like the use of Bobby Byrd's "I know you got soul" by Eric B & Rakim on their track conveniently called "I know you got soul". A combination of multiple samples punctuated by Rakim inventive lyrics make it a timeless classic IMO.

deeblering4• 5 years ago

While listening to music you might hear something that stands out to you. Maybe a drum sound or chord or certain part. So you record a sample (or make note for later), then load the sound up in a sampler, chop it up, repitch it, warp it, etc and store it in your library. Once its in your sample collection it becomes just another color to paint with.

Jonny Greenwood came across it in a used record shop when the band was on tour in the United States recently I think it sold about 7000 copies, which is a lot for a classical recording.

I think it’s more experimentation with musical ideas and happy accidents. Had Johnny not gone into that shop maybe idioteque would sound a lot different today.

rjtavares• 5 years ago

While we're sharing some our favorite examples: Mobb Deep's Shook Ones, from original sample to final beat - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLECcOpU7ok

crtasm• 5 years ago

and it was only worked out around 2010 I think? sign of a well manipulated sample when it takes so long!

eyelidlessness• 5 years ago

I'm always amazed when artists and producers can recognize a sound as something that can be radically transformed, because I'm pretty musical but my imagination doesn't work like that.

I’m usually the same way. I will say though, I once had what felt to me like a stroke of genius when I realized that a sample from the theme from American Beauty fit perfectly in my cover of NIN’s The Day The World Went Away.

I’d share, but I hate my vocals and I don’t have the original source tracks to make an instrumental mix. But if you listen to the Quiet remix you might be able imagine how it fits.

dole• 5 years ago

Nice ambient and piano sample flipping in Drake's Started from the Bottom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v_hUNxHuDA

rsfern2• 5 years ago

spoiler alert — the article poses a riddle/challenge to find the sample in question, be careful reading the HN discussion if you want to try for yourself

dvsfish• 5 years ago

Damn, if you're familiar with the Radiohead track, this is so satisfying.

jakecopp2• 5 years ago

Radiohead listeners might like the recent (Nov 5th) release of Kid A Mnesia - unreleased material from the recording sessions of Kid A and Amnesiac!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_A_Mnesia

misiti3780• 5 years ago

They finally Follow Me Around from the studio!

_russross• 5 years ago

I was expecting it to be hard to recognize, but I guess all those countless hours listening to Kid A on repeat back in the day have finally paid off. The moment is unmistakable.

iainctduncan2• 5 years ago

For those interested, Csound is the closest tool to Music 360 (the system used for the piece) that is still active.

royletron• 5 years ago

I almost giggled when I heard it. I recognised it instantly (but have heard the end song more times then I could possibly count). I still listened to the rest hoping there might be more, and was fascinated by the whole thing. This is a truly wonderful thing to stumble across and further support for my love of HN. Perfectly bisecting all of my geektastic tastes. Good job

vadansky• 5 years ago

Same, I haven't listened to Radiohead in almost a decade and thought I would never spot it, but when it came on I got a huge smile on my face right away.

brian_herman2• 5 years ago

The sample is around 0:51 of Lansky's song and 0:34 of idoteque.

gdubs• 5 years ago

This is great. The original immediately brings me back to the mood of circa 2000 when I first heard Kid A in the dead of winter. Hard to believe that’s over two decades ago.

Anthony-G2• 5 years ago

In case anyone is thinking of emailing Paul with the answer, note that article submission is from 2000. The Last-Modified HTTP header for the web page is Thu, 20 Dec 2012 18:32:42 GMT and the Wayback Machine does not have a record of this URL before 2013 (I guess it lived at a different URL before then).

Back on-topic, being able to pick out a few seconds from a 18-minute, primitive electronic music recording and transform it into something much “catchier” is an impressive musical talent.

srwhittaker• 5 years ago

I emailed Lansky with the answer in 2000 or 2001. Unfortunately I no longer have his reply, but the link to his "second computer piece, which has never been recorded (commercially released), and never will be" was to his 1976 piece "Artifice (On Ferdinand's Reflection)": <https://paul.mycpanel.princeton.edu/artifice.mp3>. The piece is also (publicly) available via <https://paul.mycpanel.princeton.edu/mymp3.html> and on UbuWeb with this little program note:

Here is my very first speech piece, never recorded, done in 1976. The entire piece is made from a male and female speaker uttering the phrase "This music crept by me upon the waters". It's about 22 minutes long.

jollybean2• 5 years ago

The sample is dead clear.

I have a musical background but I would expect anyone who is at all familiar with the song to pick it out instantly.

Imagine if you were listening to someone speak Russian for 5 minutes, and they uttered a familiar phrase in English somewhere in there.

The English, because it's understandable/familiar to you, would pop out.

If they highly modified the sample (i.e. Daft Punk) it would be hard to pick out.

But this one is pretty straight forward.

Anthony-G2• 5 years ago

I think you misunderstood what I meant by the phrase, “pick out”; I was actually referring to Johnny Greenwood’s gift for choosing which musical phrase to sample. I probably should have used a word like “select” instead of “pick out” but I figured the second half of the sentence, “and transform it into something much catchier” would suffice to communicate my intent.

As a Radiohead listener, I recognised the sample as soon as I heard it. It was quite a pleasurable experience to hear it in a very different context and to learn about a chapter of electronic music history that I had not previously been aware of.

As a music consumer (not a musician) and without the gift of hindsight, I probably wouldn’t listen to a piece of music – particularly an 18 minute track – attentively enough to notice and think to myself that there’s something potentially special about those few seconds compared to the rest of the 18 minutes of the track. That’s the gift that I admire sampling artists for: the ability to recognise the potential of a seemingly unremarkable snippet of music and transform it into something special.

waffletower• 5 years ago

My favorite Paul Lansky piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFoT3HykaPs

racl1012• 5 years ago

The excerpt of Paul Lansky's recording used for Idioteque was my phone ringtone in the late '2000s.

It's funny because the isolated sound fades in. It doesn't sound like the pulsating beats that go along with it .

When Radiohead sampled Paul Lansky (2000)

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