7 ms·
When Radiohead sampled Paul Lansky (2000)
- HankWozHere 5y agoThe sample was taken around the 44 or 45 second mark of the original (I think…?)
- rStar 5y agoyou people really suck. read to the end of the article and don’t spoil it for everyone
- nkozyra 5y agoSeems pretty harsh. I wasn't reading the article like an Easter egg hunt and the original piece is fairly long.
- brian_herman 5y agoThe sample is around 0:51 of Lansky's song and 0:34 of idoteque.
- TomWhitwell 5y agoMy favourite Paul Lansky track: https://youtu.be/SFoT3HykaPs https://youtu.be/SFoT3HykaPs recorded in 1988 on an DEC MicrovaxII https://www.popmatters.com/141865-idle-chatter-about-paul-lanskys-notjustmoreidlechatter-2496021210.html https://www.popmatters.com/141865-idle-chatter-about-paul-la...
- iainctduncan 5y agoI was about to recommend the same! So good, one of my favourite computer music pieces and an early inspiration. :-)
- jakecopp 5y agoRadiohead 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kid_A_Mnesia
- misiti3780 5y agoThey finally Follow Me Around from the studio!
- Anthony-G 5y agoIn 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 5y agoI 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 https://paul.mycpanel.princeton.edu/artifice.mp3>. The piece is also (publicly) available via <https://paul.mycpanel.princeton.edu/mymp3.html 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.
- jollybean 5y agoThe 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-G 5y agoI 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.
- ohadron 5y agoThis is the Radiohead song, Idioteque: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svwJTnZOaco https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svwJTnZOaco
- setgree 5y ago[deleted]
- rStar 5y agoplease don’t spoil, and thank you for your thoughtfulness and for reading to the end of the article. i owe you one, setgree
- rsfern 5y agoI realize they’ve spoiled the challenge, but Kid A was released over 20 years ago. It’s fine to ask for a spoiler alert, but you’re coming off kind of aggressive here IMO
- rezmason 5y agoI 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 5y agoI’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).
- rStar 5y agoi’d go with the drummer if i had to pick the biggest nerd. amazing artist.
- smoldesu 5y agoGreenwood 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZByHno9Jpsw
- elpakal 5y ago100% agree. his scores are incredible, nothing like his music.
- rStar 5y agoand it was spectacular
- rStar 5y agowhen 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!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- setgree 5y agoI'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 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-the-Boards-Anthony-King-John-Matthews-Pots-%27N%27-Pans/ https://www.whosampled.com/sample/230451/Pusha-T-Numbers-on-...
- killtimeatwork 5y agoDo 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 5y agoI 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?
- rStar 5y agoimagination, confidence, salesmanship, musicianship…and drugs
- TonyTrapp 5y agoMost 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.
- hnlmorg 5y agoThat's not exactly true. While there are plenty of happy accidents there's also plenty of times I've taken a sample and looped it knowing full well what it would sound like before I started.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rsfern 5y agospoiler 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
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- dvsfish 5y agoDamn, if you're familiar with the Radiohead track, this is so satisfying.
- _russross 5y agoI 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.
- iainctduncan 5y agoFor those interested, Csound is the closest tool to Music 360 (the system used for the piece) that is still active.
- royletron 5y agoI 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 5y agoSame, 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_herman 5y agoThe sample is around 0:51 of Lansky's song and 0:34 of idoteque.
- gdubs 5y agoThis 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.
- waffletower 5y agoMy favorite Paul Lansky piece: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFoT3HykaPs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFoT3HykaPs
- racl101 5y agoThe 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 .