Reflecting on the use of RZA’s techniques.

Having discussed and researched RZA’s production techniques, I was very interested to start exploring his style practically; largely because of how different it is to my own process. Due to technological limitations in the equipment (comparative to now), RZA’s way of constructing music requires a selective mindset when sampling. An AKAI S2000, a sampler from the same era that we used in class, has only 1 MB of memory for you to record your samples onto. This means the length of what you can sample is very minimal versus contemporary gear. This limit of memory presents some interesting differences and challenges comapared to modern sampling, from both a pure musical aspect and a more technological one too. From what I recall of the workshop, the S2000 allowed for 2 seconds of audio recording in mono, 1 second of audio in stereo (at 44.1kHz). This forces you to be intentional and selective with what you want to take from a record. Although it came with some frustration, I did enjoy working with this limitation and felt it’s effect on what I was creating when usually I can take as much as I want without thinking much about it. It pushes you to take only small segments of melodies and then reformat them into something new entirely, instead of being able to just loop the original. Another thing I found interesting with S2000 compared to sampling on a DAW is that if you really want a sample thats slightly longer, you can reduce the quality to allow for that. It makes total sense but its something I would never usually think about. It gives the S2000 a unique sonic edge and forces you to make decisions that actually have consequences. Alfred and I decided to sample “I’d Rather Be With You” by Bootsy Collins and a scene from his favourite film, Titanic. We decided to lean into the lofi aesthetic direction that the sampler can you push you towards, in favour of a 4 second long sample from each of the sources. I found that once We’d got the samples loaded into Ableton and began creating our beat, I felt the scarceness of material compared to other times when I’d sampled other records. However, I did feel that it pushed me to work harder and find new ways to use audio musically, forcing me to make use of audio I would’ve just deleted in my usual workflow.