How to Replay a Disco Sample

Sometimes you can't clear a sample, sometimes the only rip you can find is buried under a vocal, and sometimes you just want more control over the thing than a loop will ever give you. Replaying the part yourself solves all three, and it isn't as hard as you'd think.

Work out the notes

Slow the sample down first. Half speed, or slower if you need to. Everything that sounded like one blur of chords separates out, and you can hear the individual notes clearly enough to play them back.

Play it rather than draw it

Record real instruments wherever you can. Guitars, strings, brass. Even a rough take played by hand carries something a piano roll does not.

If that isn't an option, Native Instruments' Session players are the best substitute going, since they're built around real performances and the timing and dynamics already sit right.

If you're drawing the notes in, resist the urge to make it perfect:

• Don't quantize fully, leave things slightly early or late
• Vary the velocities. A section played by people is never even
• Let small mistakes stand

Those imperfections are doing most of the work.

Getting a cleaner source

Before you start the replay, check for a usable part first. Stem splitting the original will often pull one out on its own. It's also worth hunting for alternate versions of the record, since instrumentals and 12-inch mixes often have isolated parts that the single mix buries.

Making it sound like it was recorded then

A cleanly played part will sound far too modern, so age it:

• Tape saturation. Chow Tape Model is free and does the job properly
• Vinyl noise. If the original came off a record, iZotope Vinyl is free and gets you most of the way
• A 12-bit bitcrusher, for the same reason the old samplers sounded the way they did

Glue it together

Anything that would have been played together in a room wants treating together, so send your backing vocals to one bus and your strings and brass to another, then put a multiband compressor across each followed by tape saturation; that shared processing is what makes separate takes sound like one performance in one space.

For reverb, Logic's Space Designer has vintage plates and chambers that suit brass and strings far better than a modern algorithmic reverb will.