Daft Punk’s INSANE Sampling Masterclass | Breakdown & Recreation

no intro to this video there's just no time I have so much to tell you about the Daft Punk album Discovery and specifically how it all comes together on the song face to face why it's a masterclass and sampling songwriting and why this album is more than just fun dance music this is high level art I mean I guess it was kind of an intro whatever let's dive in Daft Punk's 2001 album Discovery is a masterpiece they took some of the house music ideas they explored in their first album homework from 1997 and then ventured away polishing the production adding even more samples chopping them up even more and rolled together so many different genres of music into this electronic album for example the album opens with the song one more time if you only know one song from this album it's probably this one they sampled the song More Spell on You by Eddie Johns from 1979 and right from the start of the album they're showing what they can do with sampling alright so here's the original sample make sure to slow it down and you'll start to hear it here we go foreign [Music] [Applause] have taken this obscure Liberian disco song chopped it up flipped it and built a house music hit Around It featuring one of their biggest influences Rome Anthony but if you think this sampling is crazy just watch as we move through the album the second song on Discovery is aerodynamic which takes this chopping technique to a new level again this song is built from sampling a single song in this case ill mcquillage Lady by Sister Sledge from 1982. Sister sledge's biggest hits Where We Are Family and he's the greatest dancer from 1979 but this song is from early 1982. it's that in between period where disco is fading but Thriller hasn't been released yet and the sound that we now think of as very 1980s hasn't really completely solidified yet so Daft Punk is taking a lesser known song from a well-known group primarily known for disco and just chopping it up to the point where you can tell the samples in there but you're not sure how exactly alright so here's the original sample we'll slow it down and already you'll start to hear fragments of the song in there it's just that much and you can see I have a lot of little chops in there just cue points right so I got base notes and then there's other guitar parts in there as well right [Music] now let's put that all together make something new [Music] so the first track chopped up one song the second chopped up one song even more and the next few tracks all use longer samples from songs around the same era the late 70s Digital Love uses longer samples taken from the intro of George Duke's 1979 song I love you more harder better faster stronger samples the 1979 Edwin bird song song Cola bottle baby which yes this song was then in turn sampled by Kanye West for the 2007 song Stronger there's a lot more to that story so much so that I actually already made another video about the genius of Edwin Birdsall after that christendols uses a sample of can you imagine by The Imperials from 1977 and then we get to night vision some people have speculated that this samples the 10cc song I'm Not In Love from 1975 but this has never been officially confirmed regard list I'm not in love is clearly the inspiration behind this song alright so here's night vision by Daft Punk sounds an awful lot like I'm Not in Love by 10cc so don't forget actually you know you know could do if I slow yep I'll slow this down speed this up a little uh I'm gonna have to change keys on this to match and then let's take out everything but the vocal here and then let's see if that works so don't forget it I'm going through there you go [Music] and when I say it's inspiring I don't just mean that the songs sound similar 10cc used an insane technique to create this song they essentially recorded themselves singing Oz on a series of notes manually created 12 foot tape Loops out of them then literally played the mixing board so the Ethereal choir sound that you hear is the four members of the band sitting at the mixing desk raising and lowering the faders of the mixing desk creating chords and effectively playing it like an instrument hold on to this idea as well as the sampling we've talked about so far because this all comes to a head on the penultimate track face to face I've never used the word penultimate before that was fun just came out really naturally I don't know it felt right I want to say a quick thank you to ripex for sponsoring this video if you love sampling and remixing or you just want to practice along with the original song this is an incredible tool let me show you really quickly some of the things this software can do if you just want to extract stems check this box and it'll make high quality separated stems in the instruments you select but let me show you what else we can do because it gets pretty crazy I play bass and I want to practice along with it so I can isolate the bass and learn the part or mute the bass so I can play along over here I have inputs for selecting audio and midi and MPE devices I can record my own base part in after muting the original or record a vinyl record for sampling or audio cleanup but here's where it gets mind-blowing now I can grab individual notes out of this chord and change the chord you want to layer in an additional kick sound with the kick that's happening you want to add an effect to just one part [Music] let's make it sound like a marimba this version is using ripex's deep create and deep remix but the Deep audio module goes even further with tools like harmonic editor and audio cleanup so you can get the exact sound you want at the highest quality possible to download your free 21 day ripex trial go to hitandmix.com the next two songs superheroes and high life use the longer sampling and chopped techniques respectively and throughout this album Daft Punk isn't just sampling they're putting drums underneath and other instruments on top then on the next track something about us there's no samples at all it's just Daft Punk playing guitar bass keys and singing this mellow understated almost r b song but still decidedly electronic Voyager the next track has this crazy funky bass line then veridus quo which is basically a play on very disco begins with this very Bach sounding intro before the rest of the instruments come in and you know I love me some Bach and then we get to Short Circuit I love this song so much it doesn't have any samples and it feels almost like a cartoonish version of an electronic song like it's leaning into the things that people who don't like electronic music would complain about but then it comes full circle because the song is actually so cool Midway through the song this breaks down a bit and then the bits start to break apart it starts sounding like a very low quality Ninja recording this has been described by Daft Punk as the act of shutting down and afterwards you gain Consciousness and are face to face with reality and wouldn't you know it as soon as this song finishes we get to what I think is the climax of the album face to face I consider this the climax for a few reasons for one face to face was produced by Daft Punk as well as American house music producer Todd Edwards Daft Punk credits Todd Edwards as a huge inspiration so they were very excited to work with him on this track their other big inspiration that they mentioned was Rome Anthony who's featured on the first and then last tracks of the album so Daft Punk is sort of bookending the album with features from their biggest Inspirations for two the original concept of this song was that it would go with a live action movie scene and this is the climactic moment in the movie where the protagonist is in a battle but then it's revealed that he's actually facing himself in a mirror Todd Edwards had this in mind when he wrote the lyrics and specifically wrote them so that they could be sung to another person to yourself in a mirror or to God I mean that's fine but it's just the lyrics this is just a fun dance song right Edward's vocals are doubled meaning there's two takes of him being heard on the track so all right face to face I get it that's a nice touch I like when artists do stuff like that too bad there's no mirroring effect like that with the music and then there's the samples we just dug through the rest of the album and saw a variety of sampling styles used some longer samples some chop some pitched or slowed down Etc but when it comes to face to face the climax of the album Daft Punk is in full Master Class mode okay first up is Evil Woman by Electric Light Orchestra from 1975. let's just play a little snippet of it [Music] that right there let's take that shop right around there there's also a few other chops from this same sample so let's grab those I'll load that into my drum rack next up is another Electric Light Orchestra song from 1974 can't get it out of my head that's it right there let's grab that okay so we're pitching this up four half steps two whole steps four semitones whatever you want to call it here we go that's it right there let's export that get that into our drum rack next up is silence and I by Alan Parsons Project from 1982. here's the original that hit right there is what we need zoom in and we're gonna grab it all right so we're pitching up this hit three semitones into the drum rack it goes let's keep that Parsons train going with old and wise from 1982. [Music] that's what we want right in the middle here let's tune this up perfect now we got it in the drum wreck Loggins and Messina house it Pooh Corner 1972. who would have thought Winnie the Pooh and Daft Punk would get along this is my favorite sample by far because this is insane who would think to take this [Music] this bird right there he sent Christopher Robin and Pooh right crazy all right let's take that chop it up we're gonna pitch that up put in the drum rack there's also a shorter version of that sample that just doesn't finish the whole phrase and now we got those in our drum rack and finally Twins theme by Dan Fogelberg and Tim Weisberg just a couple of Bergs okay so this is the first section right here let's take all these micro chops and put them together this was probably sequenced on Daft Punk's and so they're not actually playing it live but just to show you how involved this is I'm gonna do the best I can now some of these Twins theme samples that's happening in there but I'm not really going to be able to play that while I'm playing the rest of them this will get us mostly there all right here we go [Music] now this has drums and additional production to it but this is the core sampling of the song This chopping method is what Todd Edwards is known for so he's a big part of why this song sounds the way it does if we've bookended the album with their influences face to face is a culmination of everything that happened in between we've got the most involved sampling on the album keeping with some of those 70s and 80s samples and oh remember that 10cc song where they played the sound board as the instrument that's exactly what's happening here with face to face they're playing samples from multiple different songs and turning it into a new instrument it's very similar to how a midi keyboard will trigger the sample of like a Rhodes or a piano or whatever except instead of a single note it's cueing a part of a song on face-to-face Daft Punk is doing somewhat of a Victory lap touching on all of these production elements that we've just heard through the rest of the album but we haven't even talked about the coolest part this new instrument that's being played it's not just instrumental it's vocal too Daft Punk and Todd Edwards are singing words with these samples that house of Pooh Corner sample was selected specifically because it sort of sounds like he's saying face to face but in a sort of a scrambled way [Music] face to face and face to face now heard in that context this instrumental section takes on a brand new life you are face to face now you are face to face with me come on go back and listen to this song with this understanding of it and it's unbelievable the album ends with the song too long and we're right back where we started a house track featuring romantic this album almost just has like a hero's journey Arc to it we start with a house track the genre that their previous album homework was in it features Rome Anthony a big influence of theirs and then it moves through many different production Styles and musical genres all coming to a climax with face-to-face which incorporates and transforms all of the elements that came before it right down to using the samples to sing the hook and then we finally arrive back home a house track with romanity but everything is different now this album has had a massive influence on many songs albums and artists since its release and it even changed the way Daft Punk made music they felt much more comfortable venturing into other areas musically and working with other people after this album this culminated into what would be their last album and most collaborative 2013's Random Access Memories so I've never done this before so it's gonna be kind of an experiment if you liked this video would you do me a favor and hit the like button I've also got a lot of other videos like these so click the Subscribe button and hit the Bell so you don't miss anything and then remember how I mentioned that Edwin Birdsong sample Daft Punk sampled Edwin and Kanye sampled Daft Punk but there's a lot more to Edwin Birdsong and his larger impact on music I mean a lot more but for that whole story you gotta watch this video [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Digging The Greats

Views: 866,490

Keywords: brandon shaw, b shaw, music history, digging the greats, daft punk, discovery, recreation, production, random access memories, sampling, breakdown

Id: wrrnE9p4GyQ

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Fri May 12 2023