Sampling Italian Folk

[Mentalography]

Hey everybody, my name is "OC" the street pizon and I was looking for some input. For some reason when I sample for the melody of a beat, I don't sample with the common progressive style known by most East Coast producers and for some reason it makes me a little hesitant to sample at all. To make things worse, I am not into sampling common genre's like Soul, Motown or Jazz, I'm into old Italian folk music.

Heres the real issue, with Italian folk/Traditional Italian music, it's similar to current Mexican music, its recorded in 3's not fours. This totally throws me off when trying to reproduce an old song into my own version for the sake of Hip Hop. Does anyone have any suggestions?

NOTE: I do realize that much of Jazz is this way but the way many sample jazz is not the style I'm trying to apply to Italian Folk.

 

[Fade]

So you're trying to sample an entire melody to loop it or to chop it up? I've tried genres like that (not Italian folk necessarily), and it seems impossible to fit into a beat unless you chop it up. For example, you could chop it into segments and recreate the melody. Is that what you're looking for?

 

[djfeedme]

So when you are sampling something of a different time signature (i.e. 3/4 time) make your beat in 3/4 time. Most hip-hop is 4/4, so attempting basic sampling/looping will not work.

Without chopping and making something 3/4 into 4/4, it will not sound like "most" hip-hop. But that does not mean you cannot make 3/4 hip-hop. Experimentation and understanding how to make your sampler work the way you want it to work will be the best way to understand what is possible.

 

[djfeedme]

I just googled "3/4 hip-hop" and found some links to some youtube videos and some other discussion on forums. You might wanna check that out.

Here's a pretty dope beat in 3/4 time.

 

[djfeedme]

I think probably the most difficult thing would be wrapping your head around the aspect of changing your normal drum programming and making it into the 3/4 time.

 

[Fade]

@djfeedme has a good point. Unless you want to go with 3/4 then the other option is chopping and arranging for a more traditional beat (my preferred method).

 

[UncleJoe]

Layer it so the 3/4 time is contained within a run of the ill 4/4 beat but maintains its italian folkness. i don't have any examples but it could look something like this:

*-- -*- --*
1 [ 2 [ 3 [ 4

Where the 3/4 is in and between triplets that are within the 4/4; you could still have snares on 2 and 4 and your melody would be in those triplets I noted as *. I guess you'd still have to chop a bit but it'd probably sound closer to that Ital flava. Does this make any sense?